By Mark Garcia-Prats The shortlist for the annual £35,000 Frank O’Connor Short Story Award features an all American cast: T.C. Boyle, Ron Rash, Robin Black, Belle Boggs, and Laura Van den Berg- and British author David Constantine. The announcement of the award’s shortlist comes amidst a flurry of heated discussion regarding Lee Siegel’s recent comments in the New York Observer that …
A List of International Epics
By Mark Garcia-Prats Yesterday, one hundred and six years ago, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus journeyed through the cobbled streets of Dublin. Well . . . sort of. Bloom and Dedalus are the famous characters from James Joyce’s Ulysses, the story of which takes place in Dublin on a single day — June 16, 1904. Each year on that date, fans …
Skulduggery Pleasant Named Irish Book of the Decade
By Siobhan O’Leary The young adult title Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy has bested titles by heavyweights Colm Tóibín, Cecelia Ahern, John Banville and Colum McCann to win the Irish Book Of The Decade title awarded by the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards (the award ceremony will take place in November 2010). The book, part of a four title …
€100,000 Dublin IMPAC Shortlist Includes Three Brits, Two Debuts, One Irish Dutchman
by Ed Nawotka The shortlist for the annual Dublin IMPAC award was announced in Dublin today and includes eight titles (though the judges may nominate as many as ten). The list includes three Brits, two debuts (Bakker, Raisin), and O’Neill, whom the Irish are claiming as their own (though he spent as much, if not much more of his life …
E-books are a Cul-de-sac: Why Publishing Needs to Rethink Its Digital Strategy
By Eoin Purcell DUBLIN: It is a mark of the publishing industry’s poor strategic abilities that e-books have become an all consuming obsession. I believe that, ultimately, e-books are merely a cul-de-sac. Given that sales of e-books tripled in 2009 — and continue to boom — this may seem ever so slightly irrational, but hear me out. Much as we …
Penguin Ireland Sells 100 E-books in 09, 1,000 So Far in 2010
By Ed Nawotka According to Irish Publishing News, Penguin Ireland — the country’s largest trade publisher — sold just 100 e-books total in 2009. But things are looking up. Penguin Ireland MD, Michael McLoughlin, speaking at the Irish Branch Conference of the Booksellers Association in the Hilton Hotel, Dublin this past weekend, said that the company sold over 1,000 e-books since …
Irish Kids Co Little Island Launches Today, Heads for Bologna
By Siobhán Parkinson Little Island is a baby imprint. It’s all-grown-up and very-much-wiser parent is New Island Books, an established Dublin-based independent publishing house. When I say baby, I don’t mean Little Island actually publishes books for babies –- for children, yes, but what we hilariously call “older children.” (How old can you get and still be a child? It’s …
Pushing His Luck, HMH Owner Promises 450 New Jobs
By Edward Nawotka DUBLIN: Barry O’Callaghan, the chief executive officer of Education Media and Publishing Group (EMPG) — the parent company of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt — declared on Wednesday that the company’s investors are “under water,” drowning under $8 billion of debt (half of that representing the purchase of HMH in 2007). On Wednesday, the news broke that the company …
Publishing Expats: Working in France, Germany, Estonia and Ireland
By Siobhan O’Leary Some do it for love. Others for adventure. Many just want a simple change of pace. Moving abroad has its clear advantages and can be rife with challenges, but in the past decade, a number of Americans in publishing have been unable to resist the siren song of the expat lifestyle and have moved to Europe — …
Want More Info on Irish Publishing?
By Hannah Johnson Your in luck because Eoin Purcell, blogger and publishing consultant, has just launched a new Web site called Irish Publishing News. The new site will aggregate links about publishing in Ireland and “feature news stories, interviews and thought provoking essays,” according to Purcell. You should start with the analysis of Ireland’s book sales, which concludes that the …