So there I was, looking at lovely book production data, and…
Merciful Hour!
What happened in 2010? Did everyone in the country finally publish their book? All at the same time?
According to Nielsen, the number of titles published in Ireland went from just over 2,000 in 2009 to almost 6,500 in 2010.
That’s a 225% increase, folks. Maybe every author in the country who ever got rejected, ever, suddenly decided to self-publish a book in 2010. But Nielsen also say that the spike was down to a single print-on-demand publisher, and in 2011 the number of titles was back down to 2,000 again, so who knows?
I don’t have any answers today, only one big question. But it would make you think.
(What, I don’t know. It just makes me think. Isn’t that enough for this hour on a Friday?)
Tara Sparling writes 
It’s that drastic drop the following year that is the scary bit. Did everyone who self published then go and tell everyone else not to bother? 😀
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Am I devious to think if that was the case, then now is exactly the time we should be grasping the nettle ourselves! Confidence, Aunty, confidence!
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Well I’m about to do it. This month actually so watch out…. that spike’s going back up 😀
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Gulp! I’m gonna dive in anyway…
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Wow, a real publishing mystery – hope the graph detective will get on to it. In the meantime, sending lots of positive vibes to all those about to take the plunge and create the stats for 2013!
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Have just taken the plunge — not in Ireland but in Scotland. Scary but it moves you on to a different level. Instead of listening to woes and gripes about publishers, I’ve now moved on to building a profile, a brand, and using social media for marketing. In a way it is quite liberating, as you know you can publish when you want. Big question is how a book that comes from a Scottish background can fare against the mass of books from the States. Same language — different culture.
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This is definitely a big, tough question… Do we stick to our cultural guts and use home dialect and references, or globalise it for a bigger market? Do you follow Roddy Doyle and Irvine Welsh, or go all Downton Abbey to pander to a possible international interest, possibly losing realism in the process? I smell a future post on this issue….
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