Irish children’s author Siobhán Parkinson was named the first ever Laureate na nÓg in a ceremony in Dublin yesterday. A new initiative by the Arts Council, with the support of Children’s Books Ireland, the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and Poetry Ireland, the honour was awarded to Siobhán by President Mary [...]
Nominations are now open for The O’Brien Bookseller of the Year Award. The closing date for entries is February 19th 2010.
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 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 [...]
every country in the world! I was at a really good seminar on Wednesday in London, hosted by the Independent Publishers’ Guild (IPG), on the book markets in India, China, Africa, Australia, the US and Ireland (which I presented — how come the others all got continents to talk about, with up to a billion [...]
The Irish publishing industry posed a question this March: how could we create a promotion that would run in the book trade (ie shops) whose key message would be about Irish Publishing? With so many irish writers published abroad, it is very easy for people to miss the fact that there is an industry in [...]
There have been no new entries here for the last few weeks and the reason why is very simple: the Frankfurt Book Fair. As the focus of the international side of the publishing year it takes a huge amount of time, energy and planning to make the best possible impact. Myself and Michael (seen above [...]
This is the lovely title that Milan Poche have given to their edition of one of my favourite OBP children’s books of the last few years: The Silver Notebook by Enda Wyley: a beautifully-told story of growing-up, friendship and the secrets that parents keep. We put a lot of effort into the packaging of this book [...]
Well, the Irish Book Awards were last night, and a fierce glittering occasion it was too. Famous Seamus (Heaney) held the whole room enthralled as he presented Edna O’Brien with the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Ronan O’Gara walked up to the podium with a video of his drop-goal against Wales playing in slow-motion from five angles [...]
Well, you can now get OBP books in another country, as copies of our first Albanian editions have arrived in the office! It’s amazing that so many countries, and small countries at that, can justify the effort of producing and selling literature in translation. Obviously, doing a local edition of an international blockbuster is an easy [...]