The O’Brien Press Blog

Nominations are now open for The O’Brien Bookseller of the Year Award. The closing date for entries is February 19th 2010.

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The Secret of Kells animated feature film (on which the O’Brien books of the same name are based) has been nominated for an Oscar in the prestigious Best Animated Feature Film Category. Fellow nominees include ‘Coraline’, ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, ‘The Princess and the Frog’ and ‘Up’. All five nominees will go on to compete for the top prize at the Oscars in LA on 7th March.

The Secret of Kells picture book, novel and DVD are all available from www.obrien.ie.

A musical based on the classic children’s best-seller Under the Hawthorn Tree by Marita Conlon-McKenna has been nominated in the category of ‘Best New Work’ at the Ovation Theatre Awards in Vancouver, Canada.

It’s a very special honour as award nominees are chosen by leaders of the theatrical community in Vancouver.

The Ovation Awards take place on Sunday, 31st January. Good luck to everyone involved!

Author Conor Kostick, he of the critically-acclaimed Epic and Saga, recently gave a talk to a group of students, which he does regularly. The difference being that this time Conor was in Ireland, and the school was in New Hampshire in the US. Conor’s books are hugely popular throughout the US, and with the aid of Skype, he’s able to connect with his fans overseas and take part in events. Teachers and students at the New Hampshire school reported that their event with Conor was a great success and that it was a thrill for them to be able to talk to one of their favourite authors.

Conor is also the author of The Book of Curses for younger readers, and Move, for older readers. He is the recent recipient of the Reading Association of Ireland Special Merit Award 2009, not only for Move, but also for his overall body of work and his contribution to science-fiction writing for children. He looks forward to taking part in lots more transatlantic events in the future!

More good news here at OBP this week with the announcement that The Guinness Story by  Edward J. Bourke has been shortlisted for a Gourmand World Cook Book Award.

First published in 2009, The Guinness Story was named the ‘Winner in Ireland’ in three categories: ‘Best Drinks History Book’, ‘Best Book for Professionals’ and ‘Best Beer Book’. It will now go forward to compete with the best international titles from 2009 in the category of ‘Best Drinks History Book’. The Guinness Story is one of just four titles to be shortlisted for this prestigious Award.

The winners will be announced at the Paris Bookfair on 11^th February. Fingers crossed!

In 1990 a very unusual manuscript from a new author arrived in The O’Brien Press. It was a story about the Great Irish Famine and involved the desperate journey of three starving children across the country to find their relatives: it involved death, danger and a faint hope of safety — and it was aimed at children. Nobody had read or heard of anything like this before, and we realised that this was an opportunity to show Irish children their own history in a unique way.

We had been publishing children’s books for a few years at that point, convinced that there was a need for Irish material for Irish children, rather than continuing to rely on books from Britain: lashings of ginger ale drunk on the White Cliffs of Dover simply did not reflect the experience of Irish people! This book, Under the Hawthorn Tree, was exactly what we were looking for.

We commissioned fine artist Donald Teskey to paint the cover and do chapter-head illustrations, and we published the book, which was a sensation: within three years an incredible 45,000 copies were in print. Author Marita Conlon-McKenna was a celebrated writer and wrote two more books, Wildflower Girl and Fields of Home, which completed what became known as the Children of the Famine trilogy.

Ten years later the book was selling as strongly as ever and, in 2000, we felt that a new look was in order. We commissioned Anne Yvonne Gilbert to produce new cover artwork for the trilogy. By this stage the international success of the book was well-established: in 1991 it won the Reading Association of Ireland Award and International Reading Association Award in 1991 in America, and was available in many translations: there have been 14 at the last count!

An amazing 20 years after first publication, the book continues to build: last year we decided it was long past time for us to work with Ireland’s premier children’s illustrator, PJ Lynch, and he created fabulous new covers for the trilogy. A new US edition was published last April by Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, one of the most imaginative independent presses anywhere. And now we have just received stock in for the 30th printing of this book: 30 printings in 20 years, and life sales of over quarter of a million copies sold of our editions alone: which all goes to show that a great story, in the hands of a gifted storyteller, can transcend the fascination with the new that the book world is often accused of.

So congratulations to Marita on this great achievement and for keeping history alive for children the world over.

Ivan

I promised some exciting new promotions for the start of 2010, and we have just launched the first one: in association with Hughes & Hughes booksellers and Kelloggs, we are absolutely thrilled to be part of Rice Krispies Storytime. As you can see from the picture (taken in my local supermarket the other day: my first sighting in the wild after months of planning), every pack of Ireland’s Loudest Breakfast Cereal is promoting reading at the moment, with a selection of six O’Brien Press books on the front and back of the box. There is a lovely website to follow soon and an official launch at the start of February.

In time-honoured fashion, the cereal boxes have vouchers to collect and these can be redeemed against the books for a small postage and packing fee. One recession-friendly change to this pattern is that the Storytime books can also be collected directly (at no charge) from any Hughes & Hughes bookshop, where the books will be prominently displayed.

The books and authors involved are

• Boo and Bear by Enda Wyley
• Bertie Rooster by Maddie Stewart
• Granny’s Teeth by Brianóg Brady Dawson
• Mad Grandad and the Mutant River by Oisín McGann
• Hazel Wood Girl by Judy May
• Epic by Conor Kostick

This is the first time we have done a promotion in association with an FMCG company (fast-moving consumer goods ie the stuff you find in supermarkets!) What I really love about this one is that it’s Irish: many multi-national brands don’t seem to make any real effort to appeal to their local audience, preferring to rely on their international muscle to do most things on a multi-national level. Kelloggs, however, have arranged this locally with an Irish-owned chain retailer and an Irish-owned publisher to appeal to Irish kids, and have put a lot of thought and effort into it – well done them, I say.

Now, let’s get all our kids reading, seeing as it’s too cold for them to be outside at the moment!

Ivan

So it’s the official end of 2009, when the last of the stock is still piled up in the shops as people scramble to fill those stockings! Several autumn reprints, and a few titles out-of-stock for the last week or so, mean we must have been doing something right, but it’s been one heck of a year. The main memories of 2009 will be of change and pressure to be a part of that change: a transformed economy meeting a rapidly transforming book world.

As what are now called “traditional publishers” we have to read the writing on the wall: we may have had our obrien.ie domain for 20 years now, and a commerce-enabled website for over 10; we may have developed and enhanced databases and workflows to reduce repetitive tasks; we may have half a dozen staff who connect to the office either solely, or largely, via VPN (ie over the internet); we may even be supplying all of our title information in the new-fangled Onix format (if you don’t know what this is, you don’t care: believe me) but the full impact of the digital world is certainly upon us — people are now buying content digitally, so we have to become a Content Company instead of a Book Publisher, and we have to do it fast.

This blog has been running for a year now, and I would not have thought when I started it that, by now, we would:

• have developed custom web gizmos for the site (see the flashy new caroussels on the homepage!)
• be trialling a range of .ePub conversion tools, including custom software, to enable our books to be sold through a range of new channels, whether e-readers or on-screen
• be building our own iPhone application (and no, I won’t tell you what it is. You’ll have to be patient …)
• immerse ourselves in quite the degree of blue-sky thinking that we are doing

Many of the old-fashioned things that publishers do have stayed the same: publish a great book and people will buy it. Build a marketing model, or an export sales structure, and great things can happen (more on this in the New Year, when we can go public) but given what 2009 has brought, I wonder what O’Brien Press (and the rest of the publishing world …) will look like come the holidays next year: answers on a postcard, please!

Happy holidays to one and all: and make sure you read a good book (I can recommend a few …)

Ivan

Following the huge success of our cover design competition last year, we teamed up with Children’s Books Ireland again with a fantastic competition to interest and challenge Ireland’s young artists, and to celebrate the Children’s Book Festival.
A brand new edition of Sam McBratney’s classic title The Lough Neagh Monster is due for publication in spring 2010 and we asked readers around the country to design the cover.
We were really impressed by the talent out there and judging all of the entries was a very difficult job. But now we’re delighted to announce the results!

In first place is Sophie Courtney (10) from Carysfort N.S. in Co. Dublin, whose bold illustration and inspired concept for the title text will be featured on the front cover of the new edition of The Lough Neagh Monster. Congratulations to Sophie!

In second place is Ciára Taggart (12) from Dominican College in Co. Antrim, who’s clever incorporation of both monster characters and brightly coloured lettering will be used for the back cover.

And the three runners-up whose designs will be used on the inside covers are Stephen Kissane (14) from Salesian’s College in Co. Kildare, Christina Jefferson (13) from Downshire School in Co Antrim and Orla Donoghue (15) who entered through her local library in Tallaght, South Dublin.

This great new edition of The Lough Neagh Monster will be available from bookshops in Spring 2010.

In the meantime, all five winners will also receive a hamper of O’Brien Press titles and special certificates commemorating their fantastic achievement.

A big congratulations to everyone who took part, and to Children’s Books Ireland who helped make the Design A Cover Competition a great success! You can check out all the winning cover designs here: Design-A-Cover Competition

A bit like the number 17 bus, you wait all year for a digital seminar, and then three come at once (Well there was one last month, but stick with me here)!

Tomorrow there’s a digital seminar organised by Publishing Ireland about online marketing (with Ireland’s leading online marketing evangelist Damian Mulley: is Twitter the answer to all our needs? How much content should we give away free? Lots of potential for fun there …), bibliographical information (with Tim from Anko: dull-sounding but really important stuff about how the world learns about books) and digital rights (from Samantha Holman, ICLA).

No sooner is that over than it’s off to London for the Independent Publishers Guild Digital Quarterly Meeting: this is a great idea whereby four times each year the independents throw ideas around, share success (and failure!) stories from the e-universe and help each other compete against the conglomerates.

And as if that was not enough, on Saturday, I’ll be on the panel at the Children’s Books Ireland Digital Developments Seminar, organised by Eoin Purcell.

There’s no question that all publishers need to get on the electronic road sooner rather than later, while some have jumped headlong into the choppy waters. Instant access to worldwide markets, the potential for direct selling, the threat to bookshops (who are our main customers, after all), and the huge pressure on pricing brought about by the amount of free stuff out there are all becoming more important issues now that the format wars appear to be dying down a bit. Interesting times.

Ivan