Irish language publisher still turning over new leafs

Started as a hobby, Cló Iar-Chonnachta now produces 15 to 18 books a year, has a back list of some 300 titles and operates a traditional music label

ASK ANY Irish publisher about the ups and frequent downs of the business and you’ll find you’ve hit a nerve with sensitive ends: it’s tough and it’s competitive, its place in today’s world is fragile – was in yesterday’s too – it’s vulnerable to a changing market, to mercurial readers. And always, always, they will tell you that publishing is the only business they want to be in. So much for the English language publishers.

Micheál Ó Conghaile has been in the smaller world of Irish language publishing for 23 years now, since 1985 when he started Cló Iar-Chonnachta (CIC), as a hobby. Through the years since then, with their fads and turmoils, economic ups and downs, Cló Iar-Chonnachta has grown slowly and surely to a place of regard and with more than a few successes behind it. That’s the way it’s going to continue too.

“We will go on,” Micheál Ó Conghaile says, “we’ve kept going and we still believe in it. There will always be books and people will always buy books.”

That’s publishers for you. They’re a breed apart and Ó Conghaile is exceptional only in that he’s also a talented and accomplished poet, short story writer, playwright and novelist.

He and Cló Iar-Chonnachta are strongly supportive of An Clóchomhar, a more specialised Irish language publishing house which is 50 years old this year. Choices from the An Clóchomhar list – the company has been run for the last 40 years by Stiofán Ó hAnnracháin – include large numbers of academic, prose and poetry books and are on offer through Cló Iar-Chonnachta by way of celebrating the older company’s half century.

Micheál Ó Conghaile was born in 1962 and grew up on the small island of Inis Treabhair off the coast of Connemara, in the parish of Leitirmoir. “It was a small community, only five or six houses,” he says. “When I started there were maybe 21-22 students in school with me. It was down to seven or eight by the time I left in 1975.”

He was the second youngest of eight children and, with no secondary school on the island, went the way of his siblings as a boarder to St Enda’s in Galway. He was happy there: “There were lots of plays, as well as debate and sport.”

He went to UCG after that, did a BA and then “an MA in the social history of Connemara and the islands based on novels, poetry and drama, a source not often used. I was writing all the time and edited Macalla, the UCG literary magazine for a year which gave me a taste for publishing.”

And so he came to 1985, the year he “felt it would be interesting to be a publisher. People don’t start publishing for money,” he understates, “it’s something you do because you’re interested. I wanted to publish Gaeltacht writers who weren’t being published, people like Antoine O Flatharta, Johnny Chóil Mhaidhc and Joe Steve O Neachtain.”

He based himself in the family home in Beal an Daingean in Ceantar na n-Oileáin. The hours were long, the work hard. The company grew. “It was very small at first, just one or two books a year. I began with Bairtle, a book of the poetry of Sean O Curraoin from Connemara. It sold 400-500 copies in the first six months. Then I published Croch Suas E a collection of newly composed local songs which were sung a lot on Raidió na Gaeltachta. It did very, very well. The publishing was by way of a hobby at first; all Irish language publishers then were part-time, still are. I was working in St Pat’s, Drumcondra, which allowed me go on. After a few years I decided to go full time to see how it would go.”

CIC grew big enough to move to premises in Clódóirí Lurgan, Indreabhán, the local printing company which still prints most CIC titles. Ó Conghaile then built his own house in Indreabhán, added offices and operated from there for a while. When it outgrew this arrangement the company moved to where it is today, four miles west of Spiddal in Údarás na Gaeltachta premises on the Sailearna Business Park. And now, the company ever growing, even those premises are becoming too small.

“The first person to join the staff was Seosaimhin Ni Chonghaile,” its founder recalls, “she was with us four years. Things built up slowly and today there are four full-time staff, two/three part-timers and a new editor starting soon. For 10 of the last 25 years I did virtually nothing but publish, then I started writing again.”

Writing to effect – his new play, Go dTaga do Riochwas performed to acclaim at this year's Galway Arts Festival.

CIC produces 15-18 books annually and has a back list of some 300 titles, many of them translated into English, Romanian, Polish, German, Greek, Danish, Croatian and Breton. CIC is the publisher of the authorised biography of President Mary McAleese, Máire Mhic Ghiolla Íosa: Beathaisnéis and operates a traditional music label which has a catalogue of over 200 albums.

"We do the spoken word too, with poets like Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Cathal O Searcaigh and Louis de Paor. Certain of our titles will have CDs as additions to the book. We've also got folktales on CD, and Máirtín Ó Cadhain's novel Cré na Cille. We sell directly from the office, by post and via our website (www.cic.ie). AIS distribute our books – as they do for all Irish language publishers. Claddagh and a handful of very good music shops take our music titles. Design work is commissioned out to different designers around the country and we use a fair few local artists. Brian Bourke and Padraig Reiney do work for us."

He has the greatest of faith in books. “I don’t believe the internet will take over. There will always be books, people will always buy books. If someone invented the book today people would think it something wonderful! The internet works for us, as it does for lots of smaller businesses who don’t have a great deal of money for advertising. More and more people know the internet as a place to source books they want.

“We’ll continue on and improve standards all the time, improve marketing and distribution too. Distribution is one of the bigger problems for Irish language publishers. There are between 100 and 200 books in the Irish language published every year; 30-40 of those from An Gum for children; and some 1,500-2,000 from Irish-English language publishers.

“There were 6,000 novels alone published in the UK last year. All of these compete for space on booksellers’ shelves and we compete for the same space. But people know us and know the quality of our work and that they can get what they want from us.

“We’ve published people like Alan Titley and been there for writers over the years. We are the only full-time Irish language publisher in the country with people employed full-time which means we can do a lot more with promotions, and so on, than other publishers. We’ve built up a lot of links over the years with places such as libraries and universities, and sell a fair few abroad, especially to the US.

“I’ve a theory that a lot of people who buy books in Irish do so to learn or improve their Irish. The market for Irish language learning is huge so we’ve published grammar books and some teenage books in Irish.”

He’s taken something of a back seat for now: “I want to write. I don’t want to be dealing with everything every day! But I want to go on publishing, to grow slowly at the pace we’ve grown until now. I want to continue encouraging new writers as well as publishing established writers who we have been there for over the years.”