The Strange Case of the Missing Zero and the Over-mighty Neighbour

It sounds like the title of a Sherlock Holmes story. In fact, we’re talking about something more prosaic: the relative strengths of publishing industries in two neighbouring – albeit unequal – countries.

About ten years ago, I had lunch with a handful of publishing folk. The guest of honour was the head of the International Publishers Association – the body which regulates the book publishing industry around the world. Among the topics we discussed, one comment has stuck in my mind: when he looked up the figure for the number of releases from book publishers in Ireland, he thought there was a zero missing.

At that time, there were around 100,000 new books published every year in the United Kingdom; the corresponding figure for Ireland was around 1000. I looked up the current figures the other day, and they are: 200,000 for the UK, and 2000 for Ireland. In other words, the number of new books published each year in the UK and Ireland overall has doubled, but the ratio (100 to 1) remains the same. Given the relative populations of the two countries – around 70 million for the UK and around 7 million for Ireland* – and the fact that they are both predominantly English-speaking, you would expect the figure for Ireland to be around 20,000. My guess is that, if you went back a hundred years – or two hundred – you might find a similar situation (albeit with a substantially different political arrangement of these islands, pre-independence).

In other words, each year Irish publishers release only about a tenth of the number of books you would expect them to, given the size of the population. It’s a problem that would have taxed even the great Sherlock Holmes. In a future post, I’ll look at the reasons why this might be the case – and what, if anything, can be done about it.

Seán O’Keeffe is Publisher at Third Age Books

*Whether you include Northern Ireland in one or other – or both – of the two countries’ figures complicates the situation, but it doesn’t substantially change the overall picture.