Eoin Purcell's Blog

It's that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

Category: Irish Publishing

May 23, 2012

Easons Will NOT Be Building A Platform For Ebooks Anytime Soon

Waterstones decided to team up with Amazon and one of most compelling reasons for that was the sheer cost of developing an ereader and a fully fledged ebook platform (just look at B&N’s capital expenditure and increased costs and their need for cash to support their successful Nook business, hence their deal with Microsoft). Which is why reading the paragraphs below make so little sense:

Ireland’s largest book retailer, Easons, revealed plans yesterday to enter the market as well. “We are not getting into bed with Amazon, that is for certain,” a spokesman said.

“But as part of a €20m plan to modernise our entire chain, we will be providing live wi-fi in our stores from this summer and dedicated e-book areas which will permit customers to download e-books from our website. The next phase of this process is to launch our own Easons branded e-reader.”

Rival

This means that the Irish market leader will follow in the steps of the US market leader, Barnes and Noble, which has already developed its own digital reading device to rival the Amazon one.

via Hodges Figgis and Easons to sell rival e-books – Irish, Business – Independent.ie.

If B&N struggled to build a platform and needed $300 million and a Microsoft partnership, and Waterstones joined forces with Amazon, some portion of a €20 million modernisation fund simply wont be enough to do it for Easons, even given a smaller market.

Unless
That is unless the spokesperson simply meant that Easons would use a white label ebook reader with an Eason logo on the outside. That wouldn’t be the worst idea ever, but it certainly does not mean Easons will be following in B&N’s steps!

As Philip Jones, deputy editor of The Bookseller, commented on Twitter:

A nice, nice day here in Dublin,
Eoin 

4 comments
January 25, 2012

Briefly Noted | Doorley new Hachette Ireland editorial director | The Bookseller

Hachette Ireland has promoted commissioning editor Ciara Doorley to the position of editorial director, effective immediately.

via Doorley new Hachette Ireland editorial director | The Bookseller.

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December 17, 2010

LitNet NI Literature Forum, Belfast

On Wednesday I spoke at an inspiring event, the LitNet NI Literature Forum in Belfast. It was hosted by the Arts Council Of Northern Ireland and organised by Catherine McInerney of LitNet NI.

It brings together an amazing range of voices and opinions from the literary and publishing sectors in Northern Ireland, from agents to writers, arts officers to librarians, with a good sprinkling of organisers, poets, publishers and academics.

There was a great energy in the room and while the forum is ony a few months old, it seems to have a real head of steam. My read on the future was that it was secure. It seems ready to grow beyond its original founding and beyond indeed the LitNet NI beginnings into a truly inclusive voice for the literary & commercial publishing and reading sector in Norther Ireland.

So you can see why I found it inspiring, but there’s more.

The same day and the same event was the venue for the sectoral launch of PublishingNI a new company dedicated to promoting and growing Northern Irish publishing and writing.

There’s a real energy and passion at work in Northern Irish publishing sector right now and I was excited and pleased to be part of it.

As for what I spoke about, well I started off with a dispassionate overview of how digital publishing and distribution were fundamentally reshaping the world of books and literature, changing models we have come to see as ‘the right way’ of doing things. I got a little carried away towards the end of the talk and discussed the need for a concerted response from the entire reading and writing sector to the encroachment of technology firms intent and leading the sector in a direction of their choosing. Maybe it was in the air.

But then again, maybe it was a bit intemperate, but it’s not untrue.
Eoin

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August 16, 2010

Quick Link | Ebooks and opensource textbooks for Irish education – EirePreneur

Occasionally Google Alerts throws up some odd links, often old material that for some reason has been refreshed in the cache. This is one of them, and I’m very glad because I find it a fascinating attempt to pull together a very fractured discussion about digital publishing, curriculum development and ebooks in Irish Education. Hopefully, I’ll follow some of the links in the post to some more interesting discussion.

On November 6th last we asked on Twitter – “Can Irish educators explain what obstacles prevent the development of an opensource curriculum distributed on back-friendly ebooks?”

Darren Geraghty, a researcher at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute in Galway was first to answer – “I’m not an educator but I’m told book publishers want it to remain the current archaic way for obvious self-serving monetary reasons”

To which I reponded, “I’ve heard that too but wonder why, in the age of wikipedia, an opensource alternative can’t be developed? Lack of will?”

via Ebooks and opensource textbooks for Irish education – EirePreneur.

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August 13, 2010

A bit of pluggery | Submissions | The Irish Story

The Irish Story (Green Lamp Media’s Irish history imprint) is accepting submissions for both books/ebooks and articles.

The Irish Story is a digital first publisher. Getting the online magazine side of the site running has been my priority for the last few months, thanks to some wonderful contributors it’s doing pretty nicely but now it’s time to open the door to submissions from everyone. So follow the link if you are interested, and get in touch.

via Submissions | The Irish Story.

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