In the good books

Fred Hanna was "flabbergasted" when he won the Independent Booksellers Award at the ninth annual British Book Awards earlier this year. For those interested in geography and semantics, who may be wondering how an Irish bookseller qualified for a British Book Award, all is explained by a spokesperson for Publishing News in London, which organises the award. "Well, Ireland is a British Isle, isn't it - so that's why in a nutshell."

Post-colonialism aside, Fred Hanna has reason to be very proud indeed of this award from within the trade. "These awards are the Oscars of the book trade," he explains. More than 900 people attended the awards dinner in London's Park Lane Hotel; a Hollywood-like feat in itself. "It's been just amazing, the feedback I've had from customers since. People are e-mailing from all over the world as well as coming in off the street to congratulate us."

Fred Hanna's Bookshop has been on Naussau Street since 1910. The present Fred Hanna (64) is the third generation of Hannas in the trade. Like politics, the book trade seems to run in families in Ireland, with names such as Hannas, Kennys, and Keoghanes that span generations.

Apart from the stock of academic textbooks which Hanna's carries, being literally across the road from Trinity, its speciality has always been books of Irish interest. "Walter, my father, was always keen on antiquarian books. So that part of the stock gradually expanded."

While there are always a few particularly rare first editions behind glass downstairs, Fred Hanna still remembers wryly "the Maunsell books". Maunsell published the good-tooled hardbacks of Yeats and Synge that are today coveted by collectors, academics and museums alike. "We bought the stock when the press closed down. We sold them off as remainders. They're worth a fortune now."

Today, Hanna's faces strong competition just around the corner, from Waterstones and Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street. Hodges Figgis, which was owned by Dillons, has recently been bought by Waterstones in a huge merger. Waterstones opened its first shop in Ireland 10 years ago and now has six shops here: two in Dublin and Cork and one each in Belfast and Coleraine. No plans have yet been announced for the Hodges Figges premises, but it seems unlikely that we will be seeing two Waterstones facing each other on the same street. At present, Waterstones is not commenting about its future plans for the Irish market.

Fred Hanna is pragmatic about the advance of the British chains. "Competition is always good for the trade. Waterstones made people wake up. We were forced to become more commercial, certainly."

He's more guarded on the subject of the amalgamation of Dillons with Waterstones. "The bigger you are, the harder you can squeeze publishers for discounts and I'm not sure that's a good thing. It's very difficult to compete in that respect. And of course, Waterstones have a huge marketing machine behind them, which generates a lot of media attention.

"But independent bookshops offer a personal service and that's the unquantifiable difference between ourselves and the chains."

Dervil Keoghane (29) came to Galway three years ago to open a third branch of the family bookshop. The other two are in Sligo and Ballina. Her grandfather, John Keoghane, who established the first bookshop in Sligo 49 years ago, had "the first direct account with Penguin in Ireland. We still have the hand-written order for those first six books."

John Keoghane was also one of the co-founders of the Yeats Society. "Yeats was his big passion." Unsurprisingly, Yeats is the biggest-selling author in the Sligo shop. What are the big sellers in Galway? "Mind, Body, Spirit is huge in this town." Mind, Body, Spirit is not the title of an individual book, it's the collective name for a genre of self-help, new age and psychology books. "It reflects the openess of Galway," Dervil says. Independent bookshops are like pubs - everyone has their own favourites, so any attempt at inclusiveness is doomed to failure.

But names that seem to be on everyone's list are: Charlie Byrne's in Galway; the Winding Stair and Books Upstairs in Dublin; O'Mahony's in Limerick.

Kenny's, Hanna's and Keoghane's can all be found on the web at the following sites:

www.kennys.ie www.hannas.ie www.iol.ie/ bookshop