Irish Publishing News

The Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar is one of four Irish bookstores nominated for the Independent Bookseller of the Year Award, 2012.

They form one of seven regional sub-categories in the competition which offers a prize of £5,000

The final regional winners will be decided by The Bookseller, Gardners and the BA will pick seven regional winners who will then compete for the overall prize.

The winners will be announced at the Bookseller Industry Awards which will be held at London’s Park Lane Hilton on 14th May.

The Irish nominees are:

The Castle Bookshop (Castlebar)
The Gutter Bookshop (Dublin)
The Blessington Bookstore (Blessington Co. Wicklow)
Kenny’s Bookshop (Galway)

 The full list is here.

IRISH-OWNED book and stationery retailer Eason has reached agreement with staff on a cost reduction programme that will involve about 150 voluntary redundancies as it seeks to achieve savings of €5 million a year.

The company has also decided to close its shop at Talbot Street in north inner city Dublin.

It will cease trading on March 12th

via Eason plans 150 job cuts to achieve €5m saving – The Irish Times – Wed, Feb 08, 2012.

Voters across Ireland have chosen John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas as their all-time favourite of the 21 books which have won the annual Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Award since the awards began in 1990!

The Bisto Ballot was launched in March 2011 to mark the 21st anniversary of the awards. A specially commissioned 21st anniversary exhibition documenting the history of the awards and each of the winning titles has been on tour for the past ten months, allowing people the length and breadth of the country to cast their votes.

via And The Nation’s All-Time Favourite is: | | Childrens Books Ireland.

Like its predecessor, The Cats of Copenhagen was written in a letter to Joyce’s grandchild, Stephen James Joyce, while the author was in Denmark and the four-year-old Stephen was in France. The new tale is “exquisite, surprising, and with a keen, almost anarchic subtext”, said Ithys, which has printed a limited run of 200 illustrated copies, ranging in price from €300 (£250) to €1,200.

“In early August 1936, Joyce had sent his grandson ‘a little cat filled with sweets’ – a kind of Trojan cat to outwit the grown-ups. A few weeks later, while in Copenhagen and probably after hunting for another fine gift, Joyce penned ‘Cats’, which begins: ‘Alas! I cannot send you a Copenhagen cat because there are no cats in Copenhagen.’ Surely there were cats in Copenhagen! But perhaps not secretly delicious ones. And so the story proceeds to describe a Copenhagen in which things are not what they seem,” said Herbert. “For an adult reader (and no doubt for a very clever child) ‘Cats’ reads as an anti-establishment text, critical of fat-cats and some authority figures, and it champions the exercise of common sense, individuality and free will.”

via James Joyce children’s story The Cats of Copenhagen gets first publication | Books | guardian.co.uk.

Liberties Press is delighted to announce that Tony Hayes will be handling sales for Liberties Press on a temporary basis for the next six months. If you have any queries about any of our backlist or frontlist titles, please feel free to contact him at tonyhayes.butlersims@gmail.com.

Liberties Press
7 Rathfarnham Rd
Terenure
Dublin 6w
www.LibertiesPress.com

Amazon has expanded the territories it will ship its Kindle Touch product to. The new line up of countries includes Ireland.

Irish shoppers can order the wi-fi version of the device through Amazon.com for $139.00 plus shipping charges bringing the cost to just under $200.

The 3G version of the Touch is still not available for Irish customers however nor is the tablet, the Kindle Fire.

Lots to read in this article but two particlar notes:

1) Digital revenue now 11% or total revenue
2) ‘non-Larsson’ titles revenue rose 83%

In a sign diversification is working, Quercus on Monday reported that turnover from “non-Larsson” titles rose by 83 per cent year-on-year and now comprise an estimated 80 per cent of total revenues. Full results will not be released until later in the year.

Ebook sales rose from 3 per cent to 11 per cent of total revenues in 2011, and Quercus plans to further boost digital sales to more than one-third of total turnover within the next three years

via Quercus looks to life after Larsson – FT.com.

The BA has called for more free parking in town centres and a reduction in red tape to help struggling businesses.

It also argued that charity shops present “unfair competition” to bookshops due to the valuable tax breaks they get. There are more than 250 specialist charity bookshops in the UK, while a further 8,000 charity shops sell books as part of their ranges.

Tim Godfray, the BA’s chief executive, said that bookshops are facing “huge pressures from so many quarters”.

via Hundreds of bookshops face closure – Telegraph.

ON Homer Avenue in downtown Palo Alto is a tiny, two-story building that once housed the maker of Palo Alto Bread. It was here, in March 2009, that Barnes & Noble brought a few new hires to create the Nook. Outsiders weren’t quite sure what the company was up to. The landlord figured that Mr. Lynch wanted to open a store.

What began as an almost quixotic effort to catch up with the Amazon Kindle has now grown into a 300-person operation in the heart of Silicon Valley. Mr. Lynch has hired engineers, software developers and designers, who are today spread among five low-slung buildings.

via Barnes & Noble, Taking On Amazon in the Fight of Its Life – NYTimes.com.

Written under the pseudonym Scarlett O’Kelly, the author gives an eye-opening picture of what she experienced when she resorted to prostitution to maintain her comfortable home and family lifestyle in the face of the financial collapse.

It is significant that a serious publisher like Penguin Ireland is bringing out the book, which is titled Between The Sheets. “This is a detailed account of a real person’s life,” says Penguin Ireland’s managing director, Michael McLoughlin. “We have checked this woman’s story thoroughly and we are satisfied that it’s genuine. What her book reveals is going to shock a lot of people, but it’s important that we all understand the impact the recession is having on our society at all levels.”

via The Irish middle class Mum who became an Escort – Books, Entertainment – Independent.ie.

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