Dame Fiona Kidman

“In 1973 I was running on the spot with literary jobs…

I had had short stories published, won a national television writing competition, was writing radio drama and had a regular column in The Listener. To make a living, I also had a job with the New Zealand Book Council (now Read NZ Te Pou Muramura) as their first secretary or director. It was the same for everyone. You couldn't live by words alone. 

That year, PEN NZ International campaigned to the government for a public lending right scheme (PLR) though at the time it was called the Authors Fund. When books get to library shelves, they’re borrowed over and over again and where people don't buy a book in order to have the benefit of reading it, the writer loses their royalty payment. It’s a nice concept that our work as writers serves, entertains and educates the public, but we can’t just exist for the public good. We have to live too. A government has to recognise that writers are public providers, but our services cannot be free. Prime Minister Norman Kirk saw the justice in compensating authors for these lost royalties and agreed to introduce the first public lending right scheme in the English-speaking world.

When the scheme came in, I had just taken over a voluntary role as secretary of PEN NZ International (these days PEN NZ is the New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa (PEN NZ)). There was so much gratitude from writers. It made a real difference. Janet Frame would say that PLR was the only thing that meant she could continue her life as a writer. Frank Sargeson was grateful, it was just a ground swell of thank goodness something has happened to make life easier, just a little better.  

I decided to commit myself to maintaining and fighting for PLR, a fight that sometimes seemed lonely, but there have always been helpers along the way. I've got battle weary over the years but I still believe in it fundamentally. If we are to tell New Zealand stories, we have to recognise and reward the contribution that New Zealand writers make in serving the public good. And copyright is just that, the right to own our work. 

In 2020 the fund was increased for the first time in twelve years, a necessary and fair adjustment though one that hasn’t yet recovered the impact of inflation in those intervening years. The increase in the PLR fund is to be meted out over four years and next year’s top-up will bridge that gap. But the work is not over, far from it. The digital age has changed the way people borrow books, and right now there is no compensation for lost royalties on e-books, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I said to a friend the other day, ‘do you ever wish you weren't a writer?’ ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘but it’s something that can't not be done, and in the best parts there are moments that simply shimmer.’ Writing is our profession and most of us wouldn't have it any other way, but the idea that we have to suffer for it is an anathema.

Dame Fiona Kidman is a leading novelist, short story writer and poet. She is a Dame of the New Zealand Order of Merit and was awarded an OBE for her services to literature.