Written under the pseudonym Scarlett O’Kelly, the author gives an eye-opening picture of what she experienced when she resorted to prostitution to maintain her comfortable home and family lifestyle in the face of the financial collapse.

It is significant that a serious publisher like Penguin Ireland is bringing out the book, which is titled Between The Sheets. “This is a detailed account of a real person’s life,” says Penguin Ireland’s managing director, Michael McLoughlin. “We have checked this woman’s story thoroughly and we are satisfied that it’s genuine. What her book reveals is going to shock a lot of people, but it’s important that we all understand the impact the recession is having on our society at all levels.”

via The Irish middle class Mum who became an Escort – Books, Entertainment – Independent.ie.

The wonderful English novelist Joanna Trollope is the first guest author in the DLR Library Voices series which starts next month. Trollope is the author of 16 highly acclaimed best-selling novels, the latest of which, The Soldiers Wife, deals with the difficulties facing a military wife awaiting her husbands return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

via Trollope is star guest of Gleeson – Books, Entertainment – Independent.ie.

Aoife Walsh, who worked as an assistant editor with Four Courts Press and is now Information Officer with Ireland Literature Exchange, has launched a new quarterly ejournal of new fiction, The South Circular.

Walsh said that she had ‘been watching the irresistible way in which digital is changing the consumption of content’ and that ‘rather than fear[ing] these developments, THE SOUTH CIRCULAR is committed to being an active participant in this continuing conversation on the communal reinvention of the publishing process.’

The journal has started accepting submissions from unpublished writers, from Ireland and abroad, of short stories of up to 2,000 words. Issue 1 will be published in March 2012.

The closing date, for stories to be considered for issue 1, is Monday, 12 December 2011.

~~~
For submission guidelines, please visit: www.thesouthcircular.com/submission.html.

Anne McCaffrey, legendary SF and fantasy author best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series, has passed away. Random House has confirmed that McCaffrey died of a stroke at her home in Ireland on Monday, November 21.

via Anne McCaffrey, 1926-2011 | Tor.com.

This year’s Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards marked a victory for UK publishers and their Irish based imprints with only O’Brien Press, who recently acquired Brandon Books, among the native houses to win a prize.

Now in its sixth year, the awards nevertheless saw some 33.000 members of the Irish reading public cast their votes for the favourite titles and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney presented with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award by President Michael D. Higgins.

Despite the poor showing of Irish publishers, Irish authors did well, with winners including film director Neil Jordan, Irish Times journalist Belinda McKeon, celebrity chef Rachel Allen, cycling star Nicholas Roche and popular fiction author Sheila O’ Flanagan, crime author Alan Glynn and children’s authors Anna Carey and Chris Judge.

UK newspaper columnist Caitlin Moran won The John Murray Show Listeners’ Choice Award for her comic memoir, How to be a Woman.

The Crannóg Bookshop in Cavan won the award for ‘Bord Gáis Energy Irish Bookshop of the Year’

RTÉ Television will be broadcasting the highlights of the ‘Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards’ on RTÉ One on Thursday 24 November 2011, at 10.45pm. This programme will showcase one of the biggest celebrations of Irish books and writing with many of our most celebrated and loved authors in attendance.

The full list of winners is below:

The Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year:
• Mistaken by Neil Jordan (John Murray)

RTÉ Radio 1’s The John Murray Show Listeners’ Choice Award:
• How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (Ebury)

The Ireland AM Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year:
• Bloodland by Alan Glynn (Faber)

The Argosy Irish Non-Fiction Book of the Year:
• Easy Meals by Rachel Allen (Collins)

Eason Irish Popular Fiction Book of the Year:
• All For You by Sheila O’Flanagan (Headline)

Irish Sports Book of the Year:
• Inside the Peloton by Nicolas Roche (Transworld Ireland)

Bord Gáis Energy Irish Bookshop of the Year:
• Crannóg Bookshop, Cavan town

Sunday Independent Best Irish Newcomer of the Year:
• Solace by Belinda McKeon (Picador)

International Education Services Best Irish Published Book of the Year:
• Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom by Tim Robinson (Penguin Ireland)

Specsavers Irish Children’s Book of the Year:
Junior
• The Lonely Beast by Chris Judge (Andersen Press)

Senior
• The Real Rebecca by Anna Carey (O’Brien)

The trial phase of Eason’s new eStore feature is now finished and the company now has 25 in-store ebook and ereader sections. Several of the stores are in Northern Ireland and the rest in the Republic.

The company is currently selling four ereaders the Elonex 621EB at €99, the  iRiver Cover Story (EB05) at €129, the  iRiver Story HD (EB07) at €149 and  Sony’s Reader PRS-T1 at €149. The devices are displayed on a dedicated shelving section alongside specialized accessories and information about ebooks and how customers can buy and download ebooks.

The spread of prices put the Eason offering in a very competitive position in comparison with the Kindle which is for sale in PC World, Curry’s and Tesco (as reported on IPN last week) for between €109 and €195 depending on the model.

US aggregator, OverDrive, is supplying Easons with the content for the ebook retail side of the operation. Overdrive has been in the Irish market for some time as they supply ebooks to a number of Irish library services.

IPN spoke with Stephen Boylan of Eason and will post details of that interview and discussion of Eason’s ebook strategy next week.

David Gaughran talks about Crowdsourcing his latest self-published novel, A Storm Hits Valparaíso , through the recently created Irish website, Fund It.

Self-publishers have lots of advantages over the traditional route: we are quick to market, we can price very competitively and still turn a profit, we can write (and publish) whatever we like, we earn up to 70% royalties on our work (more if we sell direct), and we control every aspect of how our books are presented to the reading public.

One of the obvious downsides is that we have to pay for things like editing and cover design, and if you are committed to a professional approach, you will have to shift several hundred copies before you break even for all those out-of-pocket expenses, let alone recoup anything for all of your own time invested in writing, publishing, and promoting each title.

When I first heard about the US crowdfunding site Kickstarter, I was intrigued. Here were a bunch of artists, filmmakers, and writers who were leveraging the power of the internet to fund their creative projects. In return for their support, funders received rewards based on their level of contribution (from a copy of the book or movie to magazine subscriptions, special editions, unique artwork, or an invitation to the premiere).

Self-publishers have used Kickstarter to cover editing costs, pay for hardcover print runs, commission cover art, release limited editions, and create audiobooks.

Rather than a begging bowl being passed around, the rewards can be quite tantalizing, representing a bargain for those pledging. While some projects are unsuccessful in hitting their targets (and those who pledged are never charged), the slickest presentations with the most creative rewards are often oversubscribed, sometimes hugely. The only problem, for me, was that Kickstarter was only open to US artists.

Last month, I came across an Irish crowdfunding site called Fund It – an initiative created by the Temple Bar-based non-profit Business to Arts, and supported by the Department of Arts, Heritage & The Gaeltacht and British Council Ireland.

Using Fund It, successful projects have included poetry performances organized by a small press, an interactive storytelling map of Dublin for locals and tourists, a year’s print run for a student literary magazine, and soon, hopefully, my project.

Essentially, I’m using Fund It to take advance orders for digital and print copies of a novel that will be published in December. If successful, this will allow me to turn a profit before the book is even released.

This project was on a relatively small-scale, but I can see so much potential here. In the future, as my audience grows, I could use Fund It to pay for an offset print run or a limited edition hardback.

Aside from the rewards they receive, crowdfunding allows readers to feel like they are a part of the publication process – helping a book come into being – and they will see their name in the Acknowledgements too.

Book marketing, these days, is all about connections. Self-publishers (and small presses) can’t compete with the wall-to-wall promo that accompanies a blockbuster novel from a big-name writer. What we have to do is seek out those passionate readers who will champion our books to others – generating that ever-elusive word of mouth.

And what better way to get that conversation started than including your readers in the very act of creation?

____

David Gaughran is the author of If You Go Into The Woods, Transfection, and Let’s Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should. You can catch him at http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com

If you find this interesting, you may enjoy our latest post about ebooks & ereaders in Ireland useful too.

Tesco Ireland is selling Amazon’s Kindle reader in store.

The store is offering both the basic fourth generation Kindle wi-fi for €115 and the third generation Kindle keyboard with 3G or €195.

The prices are only slightly more expensive than purchasing the device from the US Kindle store (as all Irish purchases must).

The Kindle units are for sale in standalone display bins along with device covers.

Irish consumers can now purchase ebooks through Apple’s iBooks reading application.

Irish readers can purchase Maeve Binchy (one of three features Bestselling Irish Authors) ebooks for as little as €1.99.

Apple’s Irish customers can buy in Euro and directly through iBooks/iTunes Ireland rather than being forced to use the US store unlike the Amazon Kindle offering.

Until this launch visitors to the Irish iBookstore were offered only public domain books or books that Apple had chosen to make available for free.

As well as launching their iBookstore business in Ireland, the tech company yesterday brought 25 other countries around Europe into the program including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Replublic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portgal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

The Irish Consumer Market (ICM) has seen a sales decline in the first twenty-eight weeks of 2011 of 4.5% in value and 6.9% in volume according to Nielsen Bookscan.

The company reported that the market had sales of €57.8m in value and 5.6m units down from the same period lat year.

Reflecting the situation in the UK consumer market Fiction was the sector worst affected in the ICM with sales by value of €17.5m (down 6.7%) and sales by volume of 1.9m (down 8.5%).

Despite the dominance of Fiction in the top ten, Non-fiction has outperformed Fiction although it has also seen a decline with sales to date of €28.1m (down 4.1%) and 2.1m units (down 5.0%).

Children’s books performed best of the major sectors with sales of €11.8m (down 2.3%) and 1.6m in volume terms (down 7.5%).

Nielsen’s figure cover between 60 and 70% of the market including Amazon’s physical sales, Easons, Tesco and a panel of independents.

Image Credit
Some rights reserved by James Byrum