Mick Rooney's Blog – January 2009 Archive (3)

Some of you may remember reading on this site almost a year ago about the Espresso Book Machine (EBM). The machine is a printing press that will produce physical books in-store by means of print-on-demand technology. In effect, it is an on-demand book machine linked to an electronic database of published books. Here is the article we first commented on this in-store technology.…

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I mentioned in an article over Christmas that book retailers in Ireland had performed marginally better in 2008 than on previous profits for 2007. However, early figures suggest that the UK book retail trade recorded profits that were marginally down on last year. There is much discussion amongst UK retailers about the strategy of committing themselves to larger discounts for the buying public. The figures for 2008 seem to suggest that without these extenuated discounts, profits would have been… Continue

I thought I’d take the opportunity on the final day of 2008 to look back on some of the articles and subjects we have touched on during the year.



Overall, the Irish book retail sector has recorded stronger sales than for 2007, a surprise to me in light of the economic downturn and the continued reported news about retailers, publishers and distributors struggling in the final quarter of the year. While the industry may be finding the going rough, it seems the book buying public,… Continue