A rather excellent video featuring Jamie Byng, who’ll be appearing at Mountains To Sea in Dun Laoghaire in September

Upwardly mobile | moving in and what not
And he discusses new digs!
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Book Launch: Renegades: Irish Republican Women 1900-1922
Ann was on Pat Kenny yesterday, interesting book this one.
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Moving on
This really should be read, considered, parsed, filed and re-visited by publishers across the globe. It’s message, however unpalatable, is a vital one!
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Gollancz appoints Nash as digital publisher
On a very selfish level I admire Gollancz as a publisher, if only because they publish some of the finest sci-fi and fantasy.
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Miriam O’Callaghan and Mercier Press title
And why wouldn’t they? (I commissioned Moxie while working at Mercier Press)
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Sell, Socialise and Survive at the Frankfurt Book Fair
Good advice on Frankfurt. IPN will be there so don’t be afraid to send us your stories and releases!
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Edinburgh
Nice note on Edinburgh from Laura!
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Waterstone’s to open bar and restaurants
I think this makes sense, but don’t quote me on it!
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Samsung launches e-reader with W H Smith
When will the ebook and ereading bug bite home here? 
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PW Select: A Quarterly Service for Self-Published Authors to Launch in December
Publishers Weekly will launch a quarterly magazine in December focusing on announcements and reviews of self-published titles. However, listed self-published titles will come at a fee of $149 to the author and reviews will only be on selected titles.
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Publicity for Mercier Press titles
Three of Mercier Press titles were reviewed in national papers at the weekend.
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Reivew: Rules for a Perfect Life by Niamh Greene
IN Rules for a Perfect Life, each of the 27 chapters, like those in some self-help manuals, is headed by a maxim, which will, if followed, apparently change your life for the better.
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Tales of the Burren, and other places
A nice list of new local history titles
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Ireland’s desperadoes of the veld
Masked Raiders: Irish Banditry in Southern Africa, 1880-1899, By Charles van Onselen
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Book Club: Tenderwire by Claire Kilroy
An interesting move this!
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Review: Jumping in Puddles by Claire Allan
The Balamory lookalike seaside village of Rathinch may look postcard-perfect to summer visitors. But for locals who live there all year, it is a place of squinting windows, a hotbed of righteous gossip.
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Founder of the Waterstone bookshop chain, Tim Waterstone will join, Jamie Byng, whose publishing house Canongate published Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father and the global success, Life Of Pi, author Matthew Kneale and journalist Rachel Cooke in the Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire to debate the future of reading, writing and books.

The session takes place on Sunday 12th September at 1.45pm as part of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown’s book festival, Mountains To Sea which is entering it’s second year in 2010.

The discussion comes at a time of great change in the world of books and the panel will explore this new digital landscape. With the launch in Ireland of Apple iPad and news that Amazon’s newest Kindle device is both the best selling Kindle ever and the best selling product on Amazon there will be much to discuss.

Day jobs and writers (4)
I think this is a great series, one to read!
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Luke Johnson Agrees With Me
Some Thoughts On bookshops that somepeople didn’t like!
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Amazon Start Taking Pre-orders on New Kindle DX
A fancy new Kindle DX
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Salmon Poetry presents the Galway Launch of ‘Where’s Katie?’ by Elaine Feeney & ‘Invitation to a Sacrifice’ by Dave Lordan
Salmon Poetry invites you to celebrate the publication of two new collections of poetry
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Darren Shan Q&A
Nice Q&A with Darren Shan
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Old stories prove new hits as Binchy takes top spot
Maeve is doing well in the UK as well as in Ireland!
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It has been a busy month for Irish Publishing News. So busy we didn’t get a round up post out so here, as a monthly digest, it is! To celebrate the iPad launch in the UK and the forthcoming launch here in July we’ve added a rather nice image from Flickr User Jesus Belzunce.

Lots more to come in June!

Awards celebrate national talent
The books of the decade poll is really pulling on attention!
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An Orthodox Approach
William Ryan is getting some interesting reviews!
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What will be the big digital issues in January 2011?
Good question
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Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE WHISPERERS by John Connolly
John Connolly’s The Whisperers is reviewed over at Crime Always Pays
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David’s got a mountain of posts from the CBI conference, all worth reading if, like me, you couldn’t make it along at the weekend!

CBI Conference 2010 | Siobhan Parkinson
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CBI Conference 2010 | Marcus Sedgewick

CBI Conference 2010 | Elena Odriozola
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Children’s Books Ireland Conference 2010
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CBI Conference 2010 | Siobhán Parkinson & Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin
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CBI Conference 2010 | Michael Rosen
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CBI Conference 2010 | Nikki Gamble
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CBI Conference 2010 | Writers’ Panel
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Patrick Ness & Sarah Rees Brennan | Question anyone?
Go on, suggest a question to David for Patrick Ness or Sarah Rees Brennan
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Launch of The Song the Oriole Sang by Philip McDonagh
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Launch of The Summer Campaign in Kerry
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Orion signs Walsh autobiography
The christmas biography market in Ireland is hotting up
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Review: The Fethard-On-Sea Boycott
A pretty fair review I think!
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President Mary McAleese “Books are the stepping stones to your best self.”
The president is a fine speaker.
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The iPad and iBookstore to arrive in UK on 28th May
We must wait until July of course!
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Is There a Digital Talent Emergency in Book Publishing?
Yes if, no but!
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As we reported earlier in the week. Oisín McGann has launched a free ebook partly for promotion and partly as an experiment. But is this development a good idea? Does it devalue content or increase the reader/author link? Let us know what you think!

A somewhat delayed Daily Links, service will return, hopefully uninterrupted!
Editor

The Impending Press Release
Nice note on press releases!
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Defendini to Join Open Road Integrated Media
Defendini was pretty central to building the exemplar of niche communities, tor.com, this is an interesting move.
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An Introduction to QUEEN OF THE HILL by STUART NEVILLE
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Fiction – The Dead Republic
The Tribune does NOT like The Dead Republic
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New Irish Writing – Hennessy X.0 shortlist 2009
The Tribune shares notes on each of the Hennessy X.O. Literary Award nominees
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Irish Times iPhone app
An app from the Irish Times eh?
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Vote for these Northern Irish authors
Lots of Nothern Irish writing news.
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Is Print a Subsidiary Right?
If this doesn’t scare publishers, I don’t know what will!
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Minority report
Interesting book!
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Grimy crime tale set in grim times
Arlene Hunt profile
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Reeling in the Charlton years
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Book review: Where the love gets in
Tara Heavey reveiw
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Is this Ireland’s answer to john the baptist . . .?
Who was John Waters preparing the way for then?
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I love my bed!
Much sympathy with this book today!
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Cashel: Easter events for children
You know what, Tipperary Libraries are very active!
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Motoko Rich: It’s The Economy, Stupid!
Agree with this sentiment!
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PA applauds the passing of the Digital Economy Bill
I’m deeply suspicious of this bill in many ways. I expect “UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES”
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Penguin Ireland MD, Michael McLoughlin, has revealed that Penguin Ireland sold only 100 ebooks in 2009.

Speaking at the Irish Branch Conference of the Booksellers Association in the Hilton Hotel, Dublin, Saturday, McLoughlin said that so far in 2010 Penguin Ireland had sold over 1000 ebooks and he expected that sales would increase over time.

McLoughlin also said that Penguin as a whole expect digital sales to reach a minimum of 15% of all sales over the next five years.

In a wide ranging speech McLoughlin said that change would come to Ireland and that Publishers ‘can’t wait another year or two, because everything is changing so fast’. He finished his speech with the thought that this Autumn would see the ‘first digital Christmas, the question is how big is it going to be?’

McLoughlin’s speech came just a few days before the launch of the Apple iPad which many commentators expect to bring even greater change to book publishing. Penguin Ireland recently overtook Gill & Macmillan to become Ireland’s largest trade publisher, although Gill & Macmillan remains larger when educational publishing is counted.

Lapwing Publications is a poetry press based in Belfast. It was founded by Dennis and Rene Greig in 1988. Since then it has published some of Ireland’s best known authors. IPN contacted them because they have been partners in Google’s Book program for some time. They have kindly agreed to allow us republish this piece by their co-founder Denis Greig.

So it was back to the failing conventions. One bookshop keeper informed me that ‘we don’t stock pamphlets’ – that was our main output form then. ‘Odd’ I thought as we chatted beside a mountain of poetry pamphlets. Then there was the hide them under the table trick.

I had a great computer programme but the business of setting up a website was torturous. Yes, with a bottomless pocket of cash I could have got ‘someone’ to do the business.

Then along came Google Booksearch Partners project.

Even in the earlier years, we were attracting hundreds of ‘hits’ a week. That meant up to 500 people a week were browsing our listing. Last year 14,000 plus Lapwing publications were browsed and 56,000 plus pages on Google. That is a lot of people reading a lot of poetry. Some titles have been ‘browsed’ between 1000 and 3000 plus times. And although the number of pages that can be accessed is very limited, the Booksearch has become a ‘virtual library’. Necessary now that the barbarians are threatening to close libraries in the UK and the Blackening North.

The Google site also links to major booksellers and resellers. What’s more, it is universally available, it is a worldwide shop window.

Britain and Ireland are feeling the effects of cultural changes, possibly linked or related in GB’s case to the deconstruction of education for the less wealthy children and young people. Related to that is the rise of commercialism where it is a case of quantity counts instead of ‘quality’. Oh yes, the dumb and ghost-written stuff is well produced as machine-made ‘products’ but the literary commercial culture seems to be all about cooks, crooks, tarts and old farts bumping up their pension plans. So ‘kiss and tell’ will sell. Fine, as long as it lasts. The problem is one of confusing public opinion with ‘taste’. Then again a recent study suggests that 5% of poets actually buy poetry books and of those 65% tend to be Heaney titles followed by Simon Armitage. I wonder how ‘they’ worked that out.

However, some 800 bookshops closed in the UK last year alone. Stalinist central buying and high discount levels demanded worked both for and against publishers. For, when people happily added gunge to their lifestyle bric-a-brac, against when the public stopped or cut buying. Why bother when the remainder shops will have the £20 stodge a a few quid a copy. The other pressure has been the simple cost of occupancy. Employers can impose impoverishing regimes on their staff but when it comes to rents, rates and other forms of official robbery, they have no option but to put up or close up. Hughes & Hughes in Ireland seem to have fallen foul of a complex of problems related to occupancy. A certain chainstore in Britain – with an Irish presence – seems to be suffering as well and if rents escalate some places will become unviable.

With Google, the shop window is lit up 24-7 as the cliché goes.

As it is, poetry is a non-commercial venture. Almost 100 years ago, Ezra Pound helped print his own 200 copy edition of Il Lume Spento in Italy. Des O’Grady did likewise!

The market saturation point in Ireland is about 200 to 300 copies and usually a lot less. So, without state grant aid, there would be a lot less published. Granted the overseas market – not Europe I must add – may subsidise the home based business. Gains can be made by farming out work to India and China. Still, it is essential that traditonal publishers continue to be subsidised even if it means the perceived great and good get the lion’s share – at least it is a form of tokenism, a veneer on the masses who don’t read poetry or ‘fine’ literature and the embellishment of icons emerging poets may aspire to emulate.

Distribution tends to be in a few hands so independent bookshops throughout Ireland cannot obtain what distributors do not have on their shelves. The only other alternative is to use the internet to acquire books on order from customers. Yes, the big shops can do that and yes, a Kindle or iPod ebook reader can give access to a load of titles. That is another kind of distribution, the ins and out of which are still wriggling on the floor. Postage and distribution costs are high, so Lapwng offers titles that don’t need toys for boys and girls, simple PDF files and each title at a fraction of hard copy prices.

Finally, which is only a deferred finality, along came freewebs and Adam Rudden, a bright and brilliant young man who put together my attempt at site building, trimmed and polished and continues to develop the Lapwing ‘presence’. He also is making the best use of Google. The changes around us are happening whilst we sleep, ‘measure our lives with coffee spoons’ to paraphrase T.S.Eliot. In the meantime, in the parallel universe of corporate literary culture, retrenchment and a closing of doors is very evident by the cuts in ‘arts’ budgets and the continued Philistine philosophy around literature, if it doesn’t sell dump it. That is what is happening with ‘fine’ literature. It is not a matter of state organisations flooding the ‘industry’ with cash – it is obvious that small publishers and para-literary publications will be ignored. It would be simply a case of the same old song and same old singer blinged up a bit for the modern market. It will certainly not be a case of liberty, equality and fraternity for the establishment’s barricades are well and truly up already.

Dennis Greig