An author in Poland earns roughly PLN 2.87 — about US$0.76 — from the sale of a single book. That number sits at the heart of a new campaign by the Polish Literary Union (Unia Literacka), the country's leading writers' association, which is pressing for a statutory minimum royalty rate of at least 10% of a book's cover price Publishing Perspectives.

A royalty is the slice of the sale price that goes back to the writer; in many European markets it is negotiated house by house, contract by contract, with no legal floor. The union's "10% campaign" asks the government to set one in law — inspired by a French initiative led by children's authors affiliated with the association La Charte, who have pushed similar demands in France.

The Polish Literary Union is now in talks with Polish authorities to fold the provision into a draft bill from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, a bill designed to protect the Polish book market more broadly. The union itself is no newcomer to legislative work. Founded by a group of writers who conceived the idea at the London Book Fair in March 2017 and held their founding meeting that September, it was entered into Poland's National Court Register in July 2019 and has since participated in drafting Poland's artists' insurance law and the Polish implementation of the EU copyright directive unialiteracka.pl.

Its membership includes Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, and its track record runs well beyond lobbying. The union co-established literary residencies in Gdańsk, Kraków and Warsaw with the Association of Literary Translators (STL) and local governments, ran 50 online author events during the early pandemic under the banner "UL z książkami" (UL with Books), organised a fundraiser for writers hit financially by COVID-19, and co-organised the Book Congresses in Kraków — where writers, translators and publishers agreed the Kraków Convention, Poland's first code of good practices among those three groups unialiteracka.pl.

Not everyone is convinced the 10% floor is the right fix. Writer and publisher Mariusz Szczygieł, who heads the Polish nonfiction publishing house Dowody, told Publishing Perspectives that the measure could push certain publishers — particularly smaller outlets — out of business Publishing Perspectives.

That tension — between writers who say a book sold should pay its author more and publishers who say a fixed minimum may sink the houses that actually print them — is the debate the draft bill will now have to settle. The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage has not yet indicated a timeline for the legislation.