PLR Program Eligibility Criteria

In order to be eligible for a PLR payment, both authors and their titles must meet the program eligibility criteria. Please read the following text carefully to determine whether you are eligible.

Who is eligible?_______________________________

You may be eligible for a PLR payment if you are a:

  • author or co-author
  • translator
  • illustrator or photographer
  • editor with an original written contribution
  • anthology contributor (with no more than six contributors to the title).

In addition, you must be a Canadian citizen (living in Canada or abroad) or have Permanent Resident status, as defined by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

Your work must also meet all of the following eligibility criteria:

  • your work must be a book of poetry, fiction, drama, children’s literature, nonfiction or scholarly work
  • your name must appear on a given work’s title page or copyright page or, for an anthology contributor, in the table of contents
  • your book must be at least 48 pages in length, or in the case of children’s literature, at least 24 pages
  • your book must be printed and have an ISBN
  • your contribution to the book must comprise at least 10% of the length of the book
  • there must be no more than six contributors to the title, excluding editors and translators, but including illustrators and photographers.

No claim may be made on behalf of a deceased author by the estate or survivors. Moreover, the shares of ineligible or deceased contributors do not accrue to other contributors.

IMPORTANT: Titles published after 1 May 2010 must be registered in 2011.

What types of books are ineligible?_____________

  • A practical book or a book giving advice or instructions, a self-help or “how-to” book; a manual or guidebook on any subject including travel and nature guides; a cookbook
  • a professional guide such as legal, technical, medical, scientific, pedagogical, accounting or financial guide
  • a book designed primarily for an educational market
  • a list of any kind: a directory, index, compilation (in which short segments of information are brought together in a list format), bibliography, dictionary, atlas, encyclopaedia or genealogy
  • a book resulting from a conference, seminar or symposium
  • the catalogue of an exhibition
  • a newspaper, magazine or periodical
  • an unpublished work (e.g. doctoral thesis, a manuscript, non-print formats, etc.
  • a second or subsequent edition of an eligible book, unless at least 50% of this edition constitutes completely new text, not revised text. In this case, the new edition will be considered eligible as a new title
  • a report, survey or program evaluation
  • a title prepared for or published by a governmental or paragovernmental or­ganization, institution or corporation
  • wholly or mainly a musical score
  • a calendar, agenda, colouring book, quiz book or game
  • a book created for your employer in the course of your employment.

How do I calculate my percentage share?________

The percentage claim you make is based on your specific printed contribution to the book. Percentage share refers to the portion of a book that is attributed to a contributor, where there is more than one contributor to the book. For example, if a 100-page book consists of 70 pages of a writer’s work and 30 pages of an illustrator’s work, the illustrator would claim 30% and the writer would claim 70%.

Authors or co-authors

  • The original eligible author of an eligible book may claim 100% of a title’s PLR payment only if there are no other contributors to the book. Otherwise, each individual claim must be based directly on the contributor’s percentage share of the contents of the book. For a co-author’s share, please refer to the section titled “How do I calculate my percentage share?”.
  • The author of an eligible translated work may claim an additional 50% for each translated version. This title must be registered separately. If a co-author or illustrator is involved in the original work, this must also be recognized within the 50% author share. (If you are an author of an illustrated book, see also "Illustrators or photographers").

Anthology contributors

Only anthologies with no more than six contributors may be eligible for a PLR payment.

If you have published a work in an anthology and then published the same work as a separate book, you may claim for the work only once. The separate book is likely to be your better bet.

Editors with original written material 

You must meet all of the following four conditions to apply as an editor:

  1. your name is listed as editor or co-editor on the title page or the copyright page;
  2. there are no more than two co-editors listed on the title page or the copyright page;
  3. you have written a foreword, preface, introduction, afterword, or conclusion to the book;
  4. your original written contribution comprises at least 10 pages and 10% of the book’s text. Original written work is considered to be the combination of your prefatory material, your notes on the text, or your other written work in the body of the book. It does not include notes on the contributors, revision work, indices, chronologies, bibliographies, glossaries or table of contents. You must identify your written contribution on the table of contents.

Provided the book conforms to all the eligibility criteria listed above, the editor may claim 20% of the potential PLR payment. If two editors are involved, each claims 10%.

Translators

  • The translator of an eligible book may claim up to 50% of the potential PLR payment.
  • For translated children’s picture books, the eligible author, translator and illustrator may claim 33% each.
  • If more than one translator is involved, the translator percentage claim must be shared accordingly.

Illustrators or photographers

You may be eligible if the space occupied by your illustrations or photos represents at least 10% of the pages of the book.

  • For children’s picture books of between 24 and 32 pages, PLR claims are automatically 50% each for the author and the illustrator. For translations of these books, each of the author, translator and illustrator may claim 33%.
  • For children’s or young adult books greater than 32 pages in length, the calculation of the percentage share claim is to be based on the actual percentage of text versus illustration in the book, counting illustrations of less than one page as that proportion of the page (i.e. it will take two one-half page illustrations or four one-quarter page illustrations to count for one page of illustration).
  • For all other illustrated books, the illustrator or photographer claims the percentage represented by the number of his or her illustrations or photographs in the book.

The PLR Commission reserves the right to re-examine the eligibility of a registered title at any time.

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