Every year publishing houses, booksellers, authors and special guests, gather to meet, discuss and learn from each other in a conference. This year for 2019, The Irish Book Trade Conference which is a join initiative from Bookselling Ireland and Publishing Ireland will take place at The Maldron Hotel in Dublin Airport on Friday the 8th of March.
For the first time, we at selfpublishbooks.ie will be in attendance, Frank Kelly MD and Fionnuala Williamson, Business Development Executive will be there to learn all they can about the state of the book industry in Ireland in 2019. Considering that book sales in Ireland have grown in recent years, it is expected that the event will be a positive one.
The Irish Book Trade Conference features a wide range of voices from both inside and outside the industry, all of which have valuable contributions to make. There are two keynote speeches, the first is by Margaret Heffernan. Margaret is an entrepreneur, multiple TED Talker and is an author of five books. The second keynote speaker is Bobby Kerr, the former Chairmen of Costa Coffee, former Dragons Den investor and the current host of Newstalk’s Down to Business show. Nielsen bookscan will be giving their Consumer Market report, so we can all see how the industry is progressing.
An interesting part will be what is called a Publisher Fever Pitch – this is a unique situation where publishing house get to pitch their book to the booksellers and tell them why they must stock this particular book. From our point of we were are hoping to see some future best sellers at the point, or at least, more books to add to our ever-growing reading list.
After lunch, Economist Jim Power will give an update on the economic and political landscape and there will be a talk from the author Adele Parks. Adele is a very successful writer and has sold over three million copies of her novels and they have been translated into over 26 languages.
Throughout the day there will be networking opportunities for the publishers and booksellers. This growing link between the two industries is to be welcomed, it is important that both industries understand and appreciate each other further, as of course, both industries are reliant on each other in other to do business and progress. They can both learn a lot from each other.
In the evening there will be a drinks reception and dinner dance, as to whether any representative from selfpublishbooks will make this event will be decided on the night as no doubt they will be tired from all the book news and reports from the day, but you never know.
If you are attending all or some of the conference and spot us, please call over and say “Hello”, we will be the ones drinking coffee and enjoying all the expert advice information that the conference has to offer.
