Introduction to "Irish Publishing Industry."
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The last gentleman of publishing was John Murray of the publishing house of the same name. John Murray conducted his business from a comfortable armchair beside a coal fire. Quite often, in the matching armchair on the other side of the fire, sat his old friend, Prince Philip.
John Murray is long gone, and now the young Turks run the show with their computers and statistics and Blackberries. Talent is not nurtured, good authors not ‘brought on’. Profit and accountability to the stock exchange is god.
Not all this change can be blamed on the publishers. The booksellers are no longer little men in dusty shops, who carry a font of knowledge of books and authors in their head. Bookshops are now places of the same young Turks. Very precisely, except in a (increasingly rare) dedicated bookstore, only 30% of space is allocated to books. Any more than that is uneconomic.
Apprentices no longer run between the printers and the publishers with proof folios folded over their arms. The books are printed in India, the covers in Spain and everything is put together in Italy – Or something like that.
In spite of mechanisation and commercialisation in the publishing industry, there is still room for the maverick. It was coming across the story of one of these men in Books Ireland that gave me the idea for this paper.
To read the paper click HERE
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