Daily Archives: February 8, 2010

Links

Daily Links 08/02/2010

February 8, 2010 – 10:35 pm

Events at The Gutter Bookshop
You know, I didn’t get the Gutter reference until this post!
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Penny the Pencil illustrator nominated for an Oscar!
The illustrator of Penny The Pencil has been nominated for an oscar!
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Award for ‘Dictionary of Irish Biography’
Library.ie covers the DIB award
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Interview: Dr Conor Kostick, historian and children’s author
Pue’s talks to Conor Kostick, author and historian
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Dublin: One City One Book 2010
One city one book is The Picture of Dorian Grey
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Irish Times Online Bookclub
Clare Library covers the Irish Times book club
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Bait
A nice note from Raven Books
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Sawbones | an unrecommendation
Love it! David UN-recommends a book!
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News

Arts Council Literature Fund Down 13.48%

February 8, 2010 – 4:15 pm

The Arts Council has announced funding for the Literature Sector of some €1.9 million. That figure is down 13.48% in 2009 because of overall budget cuts.

In an accompanying statement the Council said:

Faced with a particularly difficult budgetary environment – the Council has €9 million less to invest in the arts than in 2009 – it has not been possible to maintain the same level of funding to the same number of organisations as in the past. A number of organisations will cease to be funded under the three main grants programmes.

Among the biggest losers in the sector in percentage terms were:

    The Yeats’ Society Sligo*
    Plearaca
    Cyphers
    Coisceim
    and
    Mercier Press

In terms of value there were significant cut for many including Poetry Ireland, Carysfort Press and Ireland Literature Exchange. The complete list of awards for the sector is here including amounts lost/gained and percentage change on 2009.

* UPDATE: Sarah Bannan (head of literature at the Arts Council) has been in touch to let us know that The Yeat’s Society did not apply for funding this year.

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Irish Top Ten

Irish Top Ten Week Ending 30/01/2010

February 8, 2010 – 9:45 am

We have the somewhat odd situation at the end of February where Alice Sebold occupies two slots with one book (in different editions), a product of the motion picture hype and the impressive performance of Irish actress Saoirse Ronan. Colum McCann makes a return after a somewhat strange disappearance driven I suspect by poor restocking or perhaps a rushed reprint. Larsson remains strong and two weeks in a row without Meyer. If Meyer’s fading sales are consistent worldwide, Hachette may need to find something soon for 2010 if their figures have any hope of matching the results from 2010.

1: The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
2: State Mathematical Tables
3: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
4: Living with Evil, Cynthia Owen
5: The Girl Who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson
6: Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
7: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, Stieg Larsson
8: The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
9: Stolen, Lesley Pearse
10: The Lovers, John Connolly

Source: Nielsen Bookscan, ICM

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Books & Authors News

RIA's The Dictionary of Irish Biography Wins US Award

February 8, 2010 – 8:45 am

The Royal Irish Academy‘s Dictionary of Irish Biography has won the prestigious PROSE* award from the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division is part of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) in the Multivolume Reference/Humanities & Social Sciences category.

The Irish Times is currently featuring extracts from the book in its weekend section and a reader from Santa Monica in Californian is blogging his way through the 9700 entries.

The Dictionary can be accessed online here.

*

The PROSE Awards annually recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in over 40 categories. Judged by peer publishers, librarians, and medical professionals since 1976, the PROSE Awards are extraordinary for their breadth and depth.

From the Prose Awards Website.

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Books & Authors

The Irish Times Launches An Online Book Club

February 8, 2010 – 8:45 am

The Irish Times has launched an online book club.

The club features a weekly column, a blog and interaction with the club host, Rosita Boland via Twitter.

The first book was Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. The first post on the blog can be read here.

This article is part of Irish Publishing News’s catch-up for 25 January – 8 February.

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Comment & Features

Guest Column: Publishing & Self-Publishing: Where Things Stand In 2010

February 8, 2010 – 8:30 am

I read quite a lot each day about the issues going on in the publishing world, but in particular about self-publishing and the part it now plays within the industry of book publishing. Note the subtle emphasis on the word within. Say nothing—keep it under your hat—just maybe they, the industry, won’t notice! What is significant today is much of what appears in trade magazines, news services, publisher and writer blogs, as well as the wider media dealing with the latest technological and digital advances in publishing is just as relevant to independent and self-published authors as it is to the most seasoned publishing houses or bestselling authors. I would go further and suggest the challenges facing publishing houses—trade and independent—in the current economic climate are what self-publishing authors experience in their microcosm world of publishing. Make no mistake—self-publishing a book is a business decision and slowly but surely authors entering the field are realising this fact.
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