The list of legislative works includes a draft amendment to the provisions on copyright, prepared by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
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The most important change concerns remuneration for authors, translators and publishers whose books are available in public libraries. This system is to be significantly strengthened.
What is the Public Lending Right system?
The mechanism of remunerating authors for the presence of their books in libraries has been operating in Poland for years and is based on the Public Lending Right model. It assumes the payment of compensation for making books available to readers free of charge.
Although library users do not pay for loans, the state recognizes that authors lose potential income from sales. Therefore, they receive remuneration financed from public funds.
Doubling the wage rate
The key change is to increase the amount of support. Currently it is 5 percent. value of books purchased by libraries in the previous year. The new regulations provide for an increase in this rate to 10%.
In practice this means clearly higher payments for the literary community. The change is intended to cover not only authors, but also translators and publishers.
The Ministry of Culture justifies the project with economic changes in recent years. The current regulations were created over a decade ago, and since then the costs of book production and the cost of living have increased significantly.
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Additionally, inflation made the previous salaries less noticeable. The creative community has been calling for their increase for a long time.
How much money will go to the creators?
In 2024, over PLN 11 million was allocated for authors' remuneration. In the following years, this amount is to gradually increase, reaching approximately PLN 14 million in 2035.
In total, over the course of a decade, the state plans to allocate over PLN 124 million. The increase is due to both the increase in the index and the forecast inflation.
The government assumes that new the regulations will be adopted in the second half of the year.
