1. Describe your typical day at O'Brien Press.
As Managing Director, my days typically involve fielding lots and lots of queries about many things from all over the place! The challenge is to find focussed time to ensure that proper thinking and planning can happen. In publishing the timelines are long – books take a year to to develop, and sell over many years when they go well – so you have to ensure that last year’s books, this year’s books and next year’s books are all being given the appropriate level of attention.
2. O'Brien press accepts unsolicited manuscripts. What is the one thing authors should keep in mind when they're submitting their manuscript for consideration?
Please make sure that your book is the type of book that the publisher you’re submitting it to publishes. All publishers have their guidelines available on their website, so please read them! You are asking a publisher to invest in you and make a commitment to your book: it’s only respectful that you do likewise.
3. What is the one thing authors should not do when submitting their manuscript for consideration?
Don’t phone up a week after submitting wondering why you don’t have an answer yet! It can be frustrating, but it takes time to give appropriate attention to submissions, so please wait at least 6 weeks before following up.
4. A lot has changed in the publishing industry in the last decade, with digital technology at the forefront. What trends do you predict for the next decade?
As more entertainment goes online and appears on screens, books have to stand out with beautiful production values. A book has to be thing that the reader really needs, so expect more care and attention to paper, printing, binding, finishing, design and illustration.
5. What is one of the favourite books you've published to date?
It’s always so hard to choose … a book which had huge energy about it right from the start, where every bit of thought, care and attention and every decision that was changed after yet another examination and conversation turned out to be the right call was Blazing a Trail by Sarah Webb and Lauren O’Neill: bringing the lives of Irish women, who had so often been written out of history, all the way to an Irish Book Award was a fantastic journey for the whole team. I’m really proud to have played a role.
6. Do you write?
I enjoy writing, but not to get published. For someone to write a book is a deeply personal, challenging thing to do and I always feel you need a specific drive to do it. Not having had that drive, I’m happy to say that I know my place: and that’s helping books that other people have written get to their readers.
Meet Ivan O'Brien at our International Dublin Writers Festival, now online! Find out more here.
