Starting today with the figures for August, and monthly from now on, Irish Publishing News will report the Top Ten Bestselling ebooks through Eason’s ebook store.

Obviously this is only one outlet and the figures for ebook sales are in that way somewhat biased. However until we can secure more sales data from other sources, they’ll remain the best we have.

Interestingly they represent a very different top ten then the weekly print top ten (for the lastest see here). Though this list will cover fiction and non-fiction, no fiction title has made the list.

According to Stephen Boylan, Eason Books Purchasing Manager, the best selling non-fiction title is Matt Cooper’s Who Really Run’s Ireland, but it isn’t selling enough to make the top ten.

Boylan also said, ‘Non-fiction (including academic) is a strong seller, but it tends to be spread across a wider range of titles whereas the new titles in fiction have repeated hits.’

And so, courtesy of Easons, the first Irish Top Ten Ebooks:

1) Pieces of my Heart by Sinead Moriarty
2) The Help by Kathryn Stockett
3) The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
4) The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
5) The Radleys by Matt Haig
6) The Passage by Justin Cronin
7) Legend of a Suicide by David Vann
8) The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
9) Champagne Kisses by Amanda Brunker
10) Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

The Irish Independent has launched a book club with a twist.

Instead of hosting the conversation online as with the Irish Times Book Club, the Independent instead is travelling around the country to meet with local book clubs to discuss their monthly choice.

The first book club to feature was The Gutter Bookshop Reading Group which meets once a month in the Gutter Bookshop in Cow’s Lane, Temple Bar.

The book under discussion was Clair Kilroy’s, Tenderwire.

The group is moderated by The Gutter Bookshop’s Bob Johnston, who selects the title for discussion each month.

Cló Morainn Covers
Nice post again!
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The economics of political memoirs
Interesting note on Political memoirs in the Uk and their sales!
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I Am Number Four – Pittacus Lore
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WH Smith slashes prices as e-book war intensifies
It’s getting hot and heavy there in ebooks!
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Smarter Than The Average Alec
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CALL ME ‘WRITER’ NOT ‘POET’, PLEASE
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James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Walt Whitman are a girl’s best friend
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The Life of a Full Time Writer – yep, that would be moi!
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Room
Nice review of Room from Raven Books
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Lennon takes the lead
Rampaging ex-paramilitaries, undercover cops and the return of familiar serial killers – there’s lots out there for lovers of the crime genre, writes DECLAN BURKE  
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Review: Girl In A Spin by Clodagh Murphy
Write what you know, they say, but Dublin author Clodagh Murphy has broken the rule and set her second novel in the world of British politics.
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The Temple House Festival – Music & The Arts
Was there for No Place Like Dome, smashing grounds.
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Go Read This | Author Ray Connolly explains why he is publishing his latest novel chapter by chapter, online | Books | The Guardian
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Panel Picking: SXSW 2011
It thrills me that the book community is actively participating in the South by Southwest Interactive festival.
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Movie adaptation – No Country for Old Men
I loved the book, just loved it! Aint seen the movie yet.
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Armouron Toys Hit the Shelves
Go Oisín
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More Concerns about Australia/New Zealand Bookselling Giant; McNally Jackson Still Waiting for Espresso to Brew
Bookstores in crisis everywhere it seems
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Learning some things at dinner in Sao Paolo
Fascinating post from Mike Sjatzkin
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Two editorial staff will leave permanent positions with The History Press, Ireland following the company’s consultation process.

However, the two will work freelance for the company in a restructuring The History Press says is designed ‘to make sure it [The History Press, Ireland] will have a future.’

Publisher for the Irish imprint, Ronan Colgan, retains his position and will continue to commission titles.

Colgan said that the company was forced to make the changes because ‘sustaining the operation at the size it was at was just too difficult given the market conditions in Ireland.’

As part of the restructure The History Press Ireland’s sales rep has left the company and moved onto another role and will not be replaced. Instead, Gill & Macmillan will take over the sales operation for the company effective immediately.

Colgan expects the bulk of editorial work to be done in Ireland with most admin and design being handled by the offices in the UK.

The History Press Ireland was founded in October 2005 as Nonsuch Ireland, an imprint of Alan Sutton’s Nonsuch Publishing.

It operated briefly as an independent imprint under publisher Ronan Colgan when Sutton’s company underwent major restructuring and management changes in late 2007 early 2008 before returning to The History Press stable.

One Thousand Casmurros from LiveAD on Vimeo.

This is, I think you will agree, pretty cool!

Amazon sells out of both Kindles days after launch
Quite a feat!
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Odyssey not commercial, says Makinson
Yes with a but!
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Amazon claims to have 70-80% of e-book market
Which in many ways demonstrates that the market is changing rapidly. Last year it would surely have been 90-95%.
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Want to choose your own adventure? There’s a books app for that
This is a nice development
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E-books to account for 10% of RH US sales, says Dohle
That’s a huge figure!
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The Checklist Manifesto
Nice note this from Raven Books
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Sunday Tribune Paperbacks Tom Widger
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Review: A Mobile Fortune: The Life and Times of Denis O’Brien by Siobhan Creaton
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Review: Dancing Prest by Aidan O’Connor
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Review: The Passage by Justin Cronin
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Review: Broken by Karin Slaughter
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Review: Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex bu Eoin Colfer
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Ten years of publishing worth its Salt
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Summer Fun at Scariff Library
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Dún Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures
They’ve used the cover for one of the first books I published!
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Sixties Fishing Guides
These are excellent
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Book launch: Executed for Ireland
Executed for Ireland: The Patrick Moran Story by May Moran was recently launched in King House, Boyle, Co Roscommon and in Kilmainham Jail.
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DLR LIBRARY BLOG
Two reviews from DLR Libraries today!
MAGIC UNIVERSE BY NIGEL CALDER.
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THE SLAP BY CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS
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Ireland’s largest publisher, Gill & Macmillan, has launched a new website.

The site has improved both the e-commerce abilities and the display options for books.

The e-commerce element is powered by technology firm Cormz‘s product Affino.

Yesterday Robert Maguire wrote a long review post on some of the freely available iPad book Apps.

These apps allow readers to download books to their iPads and read them. Nearly all of them offer works for free that are currently in the Public Domain (That is books that have either been published by authors who have died before 1939 as copyright extends for the life of the author plus seventy years or books that have been placed in the public domain by their authors for a variety of reasons).

If you wish to buy books however, other than as stand alone apps, which IS currently possible directly though the iPad App Store, you will need to buy them in Apps other than iBooks.

The Kindle App for iPad is currently in the top Twenty free apps and it offers books for free and for purchase. Kobo also offers books for sale. Both require credit cards.

As soon as we have more information on other devices, we will update this note

This morning iBooks is the number one free iPad App in Ireland.

Amazon’s Kindle for iPad app, at number eleven is just outside the top ten free Apps.

The Elements: A Visual Exploration published by Touch Press is the top ranked paid book app at number 15 in the overall list of paid apps.

Drilling down to the paid apps in the book section, The Elements: A Visual Exploration is at number one, the full version of Disney’s toy Story Read Along App at number two, Alice for the iPad at number three, Self Help Classics at number four and The Cat In The Hat by Dr. Seuss at number five.

iBooks is joined by the Kindle App, Marvel Comics App, Toy Story Read Along App and the Free Books App in the top five free book apps.

For more on reading and book apps, read Robert Maguire’s post from yesterday: To E Or Not To E: A Beginner’s Guide To iPad Ereading Apps.

This week Amazon announced that, for the first time ever on Amazon.com, ebooks had outsold hardbacks, proving that whilst some of us are reluctant to part with our beloved bound volumes, there is an ever increasing number embracing the concept of electronic reading.

And with Apple‘s much heralded iPad finally launching on these shores, we decided to take a look at some of the various apps available for reading books on your iPads, iPods and iPhones, and determine which, if any, are worth their salt.

Kindle has one of the most appealing interfaces- they’ve recognised that swiping seems to be the most intuitive way of turning a page, a feature which some developers have criminally failed to include.

As far as features go, it sticks to the basics, with the ability to bookmark pages, search text, and change the font size and colour. As a basic eReader, Kindle does the trick nicely without many frills attached.

Furthermore, the iFlow range is rather limited, covering primarily classics, and educational texts (philosophy, psychology, etc.). What the iFlow reader does have in its corner, however, is its unique interface.

Utilising the accelerometer, the app scrolls the text along the screen, with the degree of tilting determining the speed of the scrolling. For ease of reading, this this method is by far the most natural. I’ve already gotten through two novels…

Don’t like the line spacing? You can change it. Margins irritating you? No Problem. The somewhat frustrating problem of automatic page rotation is dealt with (why Apple never considered that someone would look at their iPhone while lying down is beyond me), with the ability to lock the page in landscape or portrait mode.
Social networking fans can immediately share what they’re reading through facebook or twitter via a menu of shortcuts which, of course, you can customise.

Arguably its most convenient addition is the concept of assignable hot-keys. The user can designate an action to a particular touch or movement- for example, using the classic pinch and spread motion to adjust font size.

With a wide selection enabling downloads from a variety of eBook retailers, Lexcycle seem to have covered all the bases, providing one of the best eReading apps available. (Lexcycle was acquired by Amazon in 2009)

The experience of Kobo holds up well beyond the opening screen, with a number of ways of going from page to page. This seems to be its main area of customisation, with the other options being quite basic (font size, brightness, etc.).

In offering extra page turning options it pushes itself ahead of basic reading apps, but some of these choices are impractical to the degree that they become useless (manual scrolling??). As far as selection is concerned, Kobo fares very well, and once you’ve created a Kobo account you can purchase and download titles directly through the app itself.

Comics, quite simply, are amazing to read on an iPad. The screen lends itself fabulously to the images, and the technology offers a number of interesting ways to get through the story. For example, this app offers animated transitions, where the panels are displayed one by one, offering a dynamic reading experience well suited to the subject matter.

The app also capitalises on the periodical nature of comic books, offering an update service similar to podcast management, where new issues of subscribed series are automatically downloaded and added to your library. As far as the iPad is concerned, this is one area where the full potential of the medium is explored, and to great effect.

App: ibooks | Developer: Apple | Rating: 4/5
Apple’s own reading app is cosmetically appealing, offering a bookshelf interface similar to Kobo, but endeavors to offer a customisation level similar to Stanza. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite manage to win out in either category, but provides a solid app with several interesting features nonetheless.

Its actual reading interface is one of the most appealing available, particularly when viewed on the iPad, and provides one of the most generally pleasurable reading experiences. Among its attempts at offering functions beyond the basics, iBooks offers a dictionary, accesible through double tapping a word.

While convenient, the strength of this app lies in its style, and its selection, which offers tens of thousands of titles through Apple’s iBookstore (though the selection for Ireland is currently only Public Domain works, this should change soon).

Yesterday, blogger and business consultant Paul O’Mahony decided to document his journey towards buying an iPad. he recorded two AudioBoo podcats and has kindly allowed us to embed them here.

Don’t forget to check in with him tomorrow and see if he is successful.

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