Writers are demanding royalties before they grant permission to allow their work to be included in the National Library of Wales’ online archive. The BBC reports that a year after the library received nearly £1 million in lottery funding to digitise modern Welsh writing, the library and writers have not yet been able to agree on payment to the writers.

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Wales’ former national poet, Gwyneth Lewis said the dispute represented “the thin end of the wedge” and ensuring that writers were paid for digitised content would be one of the biggest issues facing writers everywhere. She added, “If a writer’s work is going to be put on a different platform, rights need to be negotiated with the writer for that extension, and that hasn’t happened, therefore they can’t have the work.”

The library aims to make some 600,000 pages of Welsh literary works, including poetry, translations and reviews available online. It has said it will take down any material by writers who object—calling this a “reasonable compromise.” But some, like literature promotion agency Academi wants writers to be paid. The agency’s chief executive Peter Finch called the programme “extremely exciting,” but “…what’s wrong with it is there is no small sliver in there for paying the writers.”

Other writers were happy, however, to allow their works to be published online without payment. Writer and publisher Lewis Davies, said, “As a writer I’ve already been paid for my work published in the magazines which are due to be digitalised and the fact that the work which would otherwise be largely lost, unread and scattered is now to be universally available at the National Library of Wales is a significant extra payment in itself.”