Green Lamp Media | Eoin Purcell's Blog

September 6, 2011

Change Is Good

My career in publishing has been one graced by luck, chance and opportunity. I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked at new publishers, established publishers and with a variety of authors, literary organisations and media companies too. The one constant throughout has been change.

Two years ago I established my own company Green Lamp Media. I’ve done more than I could reasonably have hoped in that period, everything from consultancy to publishing. It has been an exceptional experience and rewarding in every way.

Now it’s time for more change.

On Monday 12th September I’ll be joining New Island as Commissioning Editor. I’m looking forward to commissioning a full list again and excited that I’ll be working for a publisher with the heritage that New Island has.

The Irish book industry has experienced several hard years and there’s no reason to expect the next few will be much better so I have no doubt this position will have challenges as well as opportunities, but I’m keen to embrace them all.

I’m delighted too that New Island has agreed to structure the position to enable me to continue editing Irish Publishing News and to work with my existing clients at Green Lamp Media. It’ll mean I’ll be as busy if not busier than ever, but that just means more fun!

Here’s to change,
Eoin

23 comments

July 11, 2011

Rejoycing in the literary luminaries of Paris | The Post

Kevin power reviewed A Little Circle Of Kindred Minds: Joyce In Paris by Conor Fennell in The Sunday Business Post this weekend. It was a smashing review (which, as the publisher, I heartily agree with), here’s a flavour and a link:

Conor Fennell’s excellent new book – the first publication from Green Lamp Media – is bursting with similarly memorable anecdotes.

A Little Circle of Kindred Minds (the title is from Joyce’s story A Little Cloud) is thoroughly researched, cleanly written and full of sharp-eyed critical insights.

But you could just as easily enjoy it as a compendium of literary gossip, a guidebook to artistic Paris or even as a potted history of how various Irish artists responded to the policies of the nascent Irish Free State.

via Rejoycing in the literary luminaries of Paris | The Post.

You can buy the book for €19.99 for free delivery worldwide here, or in Kindle ebook here.

9 comments

March 25, 2011

Stop Making It Bigger | Green Lamp Media

I have a quick strategy note over on my Green Lamp Media blog for publishers, especially small and medium-sized one, on how they can stop making their backlists a digital problem and maybe start moving towards selling ebooks:

Well to my mind, the first thing ANY publisher needs to do, even if they don’t have immediate plans for digital publishing, is stop making that backlist issue bigger and I’ve a pretty sensible strategy for how they can do that AND start preparing for digital publishing.

1) Stop only holding PDF files
Simple enough really, but if you are using in-house design programmes like Indesign or Quark, make sure you hold onto the Quark or Indesign files of your titles AS WELL as holding on to the PDF. If you are using out of company contractors, make it a condition that designers supply original files to you when they deliver the final files. Doing this means that you have files that are easier to convert then PDFs and will thus cost considerably less money when you decide to explore digital publishing and ebooks.

Cost to you: Nothing

via Stop Making It Bigger | Green Lamp Media.

November 4, 2010

Announcement: The Irish Story & Collca Agree Co-Publishing Deal For Five Apps

I’m really pleased to be able to share this news, it means that at least one (and probably more) of the “Story Of Series” will be available as apps for iOS devices by Christmas.

Press Release
04/11/2010
For Immediate Release

The Irish Story & Collca to Co-publish 5 Titles as Apps
The Irish Story and Collca are delighted to announce that they’ve agreed to develop and co-publish iPhone apps for the first five books in The Story Of series of Irish histories.

The partnership will use Collca’s Condor software and data framework to bring the apps to market in rapid succession starting with John Dorney’s The Story Of The Easter Rising, 1916. The Irish Story and Collca will both actively market the apps which will be available from the Apple iTunes app store as soon they’re published.

The Irish Story publisher, Eoin Purcell, said “I’m very pleased with the deal we have reached. It allows The Irish Story to move beyond ebook formats and into the world of apps, something I’ve been keen to do since day one.”

Mike Hyman, managing director of Collca, added “these books provide a very good overview of key events in Irish history. This deal will help consolidate our position as an electronic publisher of shorter concise texts covering a variety of topics – not just history. I believe that this type of publication lends itself far better to electronic publication than to print.”

Notes to Editors
The Irish Story is the Irish History imprint of Green Lamp Media and is a digital first publisher. Green Lamp Media provides publishing and publishing services consultancy as well as operating a number of content imprints: Irish Publishing News and, of course, The Irish Story.

Collca, the co-publishers of the acclaimed History In An Hour series, was founded specifically as an ePublisher. It currently publishes book-derived and other educational and reference mobile apps primarily for the Apple iOS platform (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch). Collca is also actively planning to adopt the ePUB ebook standard as an additional platform for some new titles.

Further information from:
The Irish Story:
eoin@greenlampmedia.com
+353 87 2955 131 | +353 1 6637 667

Collca:
mike.hyman@collca.com
+44 7980 821222

February 8, 2010

New Post On The Green Lamp Media Blog

Things Publishers Fear: No. 1 ~ Amazon

No 1 ~ AMAZON

Despite the seeming victory of Macmillan in its battle to force Amazon to accept the new “agency model” publishers have a sensible fear of Amazon. Like all businesses that sell their goods to consumers through intermediaries, publishers are forced to subject themselves and their products to the requests and “suggestions” of the retailer.

Amazon controls a large portion of the online consumer connection to books. They may not be the best at this, but they are surely the biggest. They have been on top of pretty much every trend in publishing for some time:

Eoin Purcell's Blog

Tag: Green Lamp Media