People wanting to borrow the 2013 Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Luminaries from Dunedin Public Libraries may be out of luck unless they pay to jump the queue.
There are 124 holds registered on the libraries' 18 copies of New Zealand author Eleanor Catton's murder mystery novel, meaning up to a 10-month wait on regular borrowing.
Dunedin Public Libraries marketing co-ordinator Kay Mercer said 10 months was a fair estimate based on the number of copies and holds, but it really depended on how long borrowers kept their copy, and whether they returned it at all.
Dunedin Public Libraries fiction specialist Tracey Milne-Pledger said more copies would be bought only if the number of holds increased.
Mrs Mercer said the alternatives to waiting were paying $5 to borrow a ''hot picks'' edition of the title for two weeks - if one was available - or downloading an e-book copy, for which there was a two-week wait, from the Dunedin Public Libraries website.
- Nick Bosma.
