Eoin Purcell

Probably*
Just reading a rather nice review of 2007 from the lovely people at Fidra Books who I have been admiring from afar for some time (Blog is here and main publishing page here):

At no point did I say that I wanted us to buy a shop and open a bookshop or start developing a trade list but those are by far the biggest developments in our business.

Excellent progress I thought as I read and got excited about how well they would do with their list when it cam out packaged the right way. And then I read this:

The other thing that had a huge effect on Fidra was an email from Scott Pack asking why our books weren’t in more bookshops and Susan Hill pointing out that we should be pursuing a wider range of readers than the collectors who made up the main body of our customers.

Thanks to their well timed prodding our books are now available via Gardners to any bookshop that has an account and we’ve seen sales rise through outlets who wouldn’t have otherwise stocked our titles. Scott agreed with me that the ‘retro’ look of our books wouldn’t endear them to mainstream booksellers and we hatched a plan which will come to fruition later this year to repackage some of our bestselling titles in a contemporary format and launch them as a trade list to be sold into more bookshops. It’s all very exciting and when I saw the drafts for the cover designs that the lovely people at Snowbooks are creating for us I was really excited – I’m looking forward to being able to unveil them here soon.

I am delighted to see this kind of encouragement and engagement between independents. It just makes sense, long may it last. Scott seems very eager to share his expertise and that is very refreshing and exciting, especially when he has his own company to think about. Not to mention his busy blog.

Enjoying the season,
Eoin

*Contested only by the lovely people at Snowbooks of course