As I was reading the exciting press release from the new London-based publishing company, Citron Press, I kept wondering what the catch was, though for a while there didn't seem to be any.
For instance, it was good to learn that this new venture, founded by New Zealander Nikki Connors, "offers hope to the thousands of aspiring writers whose manuscripts are rejected, unread, by mainstream publishers or agents every year".
It was good, too, to learn that Ms Connors plans to launch up to 1,500 new fiction writers every year and that Citron Press will give these new writers ("who feel permanently excluded from the world of mainstream publishing") what the "vanity presses have never even pretended to offer: an audience, a fair hearing and a chance to excel".
Finally, it was good to find this new publishing house being endorsed by writers of considerable eminence and renown - "a wonderful idea," enthuses Melvyn Bragg, while Martin Amis thinks it "a brilliant idea - an idea, indeed, of almost mathematical elegance".
But what exactly is this mathematical elegance to which Mr Amis refers? Here's what it is: "Budding authors, whose manuscripts are judged to be of sufficiently high quality by Citron Press, pay £399.99 for a basic sub-edit and publication".
In other words, unless I'm missing something, it's a vanity press by any other name. Or is there really an alternative way of describing a publisher which, rather than paying the author for publication of his or her work (as the much-maligned "mainstream" publishers do), demands that the author provide the money for the privilege.
Many rejected and frustrated authors may well do this, but they should be aware of what they're doing, and they should also perhaps bear in mind that there might well be a downside publicity-wise - the literary editors of newspapers and magazines have always ignored vanity publishing, and if that's what they decide this new venture essentially is, they'll ignore Citron Press's titles, too.
Incidentally, Citron Press promises that its published authors will receive annual royalties. That's common mainstream publishing practice. But it also promises that the authors will receive twenty finished copies of their book and that they can write their own "descriptive copy" for the Citron catalogue - common vanity press practices.
However, far be it from me to stop you sending your manuscript to Citron, which has its registered office at Connors Corp. Ltd, Suite 106, Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, Islington Green, London N1 0QH. Alternatively, if you haven't managed to find an agent for yourself up to now, the London-based Lisa Richards Agency is touting for business in Ireland.
Faith O'Grady is the person looking after the new Irish branch, which is keen to represent Irish writers of fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. If you're interested, you should send a synopsis of your book, along with a covering letter and two specimen chapters, to: Faith O'Grady, Lisa Richards Agency, 15 Pembroke Street, Dublin 2.
Criostoir O'Flynn's There Is an Isle: A Limerick Boyhood, will be launched in Limerick's City Hall next Wednesday evening, with its publisher, Mercier Press, stressing that Criostoir's memoir provides "the opposite perspective to that of Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes".
Certainly "an industrious father" doesn't figure in the McCourt book, though while Frank and his brothers may not have been as "ambitious and eager to be educated" as Criostoir and his siblings, they come across as just as "bright". However, Frank him self would be the first to concede that his viewpoint isn't as "boldly nationalistic and Catholic" as Criostoir's. Not nationalistic at all, in fact, which suits me just fine, and not too Catholic, either.
Criostoir, who now lives in Co Dublin, tells me that he began his memoir twenty years ago and finally "polished it up" last year, and that he has another book due out next month. Entitled Blind Raftery, it's an edition of Raftery's poems with Criostoir's own translations, and with an introduction "slagging Frank O'Connor and Thomas Kinsella for denigrating Raftery". Criostoir wouldn't be Criostoir if there wasn't some slagging somewhere.
Cliodhna Shaffrey, arts officer for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, sends me details of this year's Poetry Now festival, which runs from April 2nd to 5th, and which includes readings by Seamus Heaney, Tom McCarthy, Joseph O'Connor and many others.
It also includes an evening in honour of Lar Cassidy, who was the Arts Council's literature officer until his untimely death last year and who was a resident of the borough. This event takes place on April 4th in Monkstown's Church of Ireland and features contributions from Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (who is Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown's current writer-in-residence), Dermot Healy, Paula Meehan, Frank McGuinness and Dennis O'Driscoll.
Incidentally, the Arts Council's new literature officer, just announced, is Sinead Mac Aodha, who had been acting literature officer twice over the last couple of years when Lar was otherwise engaged or ill.