Support your local library - get it to stock my books

If you live in Westminster (in London) you can get my books out of the library. You can in one or two other places too. In some cases, librarians of charm and intelligence (are there any other kind?) have discovered my books because they are just remarkably thorough and wonderful human beings. In Westminster (although I am sure they are lovely people) they stock my work because someone asked them to.

Most libraries have a way for people to request books that they should stock. It's usually easy enough and it costs you nothing. Could you do it for me? I'd really appreciate it.

If your library doesn't stock my books, you can still ask to borrow them as many libraries can get books from other sources. You may end up being charged for this, though.

Having their books in libraries makes a lot of difference to authors. Besides the warm glow of satisfaction I get when I see one of my books on the shelves, it means that other people see it too: people who may try it and enjoy it and tell their friends about it. It gets books to exactly the people most likely to read them and talk about them and that sort of publicity is priceless. And, at the same time, it actually gives money to authors. Thanks to the wonder of Public Lending Rights (PLR), writers get paid every time their books are borrowed. OK, it's a very (very) small payment, but given that most of my sales are on Kindle and that e-books generate very little revenue for writers, PLR is worth having. So that's free publicity AND getting cold hard cash. It's about as good a deal as most authors are ever going to get.

So...

Give an author (ideally me) this gift for Xmas

1. Ask your local library to stock their books, then
2. Tell your friends that they're worth reading, then
3. Go to the library and borrow them. Even if you've read them before. Then
4. Go back to stage 2 and repeat.

Thank you.