I'm thrilled that the team who run our national Public Lending Right scheme have today published their first-ever list of our Top 50 most borrowed illustrators from UK libraries!
This is a big deal! Every year there's been a eagerly anticipated list of writers' names, but it's wonderful that this year people can find out about the illustrators, too! I didn't even know every single name on the list, and I'm planning to go look up the illustrators I'm not aware of. Seeing their names on a list like this is a great way to raise awareness about the people who contribute to our great UK illustration industry. Here's the list:
Sue Ridge from the PLR team sent a press release with this quote from list leader Tony Ross:
“WOW! That is wonderful, although I would think I have had some help from fantastic authors, such as Jeanne Willis, David Walliams, and Francesca Simon. Thank you library users. I’m surprised, proud, and delighted!”
Here's The Bookseller's article by Katherine Cowdrey:
Read the full article here
Big thanks to PLR, who give writers and illustrators a tiny bit of money for every time someone checks out our books in the library! Julia Eccleshare from the PLR team asked me for a quote as a representative of the #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign:
“Money earned from PLR is a real lifeline to so many hardworking illustrators, but most of the people who tell stories through pictures in books struggle to build a name for themselves professionally. I'm thrilled to learn the PLR team have compiled a list of the top 50 most borrowed illustrators from UK public libraries! I hope one day in the near future, publishers will update their data systems and people will be able to find this information on illustrators as easily as they can find it on writers.”
If you're a published UK writer or illustrator, be sure to sign up your books to the PLR database! And you can follow PLR on Twitter: @PLR_UK.