The idea that inspired us to found Irishinterest.ie is very simple: to bring the Irish Interest section of any Irish bookshop to as wide an audience as possible. The idea was conceived more than two years ago when one of us who lived abroad would come home to Dublin and end up being surprised and enthralled every time he entered Hodges Figgis, Dubray’s, or any other bookshop: the diversity of local books that made him realise that there existed huge backstories to events that one only read about in headlines or articles on the net.
The idea grew out of the realisation that while many Irish books are published to cater for a national audience, there is a multitude of local books published yearly that are often only sold locally. Searching the net for such titles did not produce the desired result. We felt that it should be possible to obtain search results expressly linked to books, and Irish books in particular. Thus, the idea was hatched: why not have the contents of the Irish Interest section of every Irish bookshop available on the internet?
With the help of a very capable team, the site took a year to design, test, and build. Since going online last June, readers can already browse a database of more than 1,200 titles with nearly as many authors. New books are added daily. Readers can search for books by title, author, place name, event and several other criteria.
As the site evolved, it became clear that we wanted it to become the default site for readers searching for Irish kooks. With this in mind we invited Irish publishers to register with us and upload their latest titles onto the site. Since Irishinterest.ie is not a sales site but an independent provider of information, publishers can link their books to a retailer of their choice. They can also link titles to book reviews published online.
To have a successful site capable of attracting many viewers we believe layout is one of the most important factors. We also wanted to make the site as interactive as possible, which meant that it was not enough just to provide social media links. As a result we came up with the idea of making short interviews with writers, publishers and others a feature of the site. So far we have recorded interviews with approximately 20 Irish authors, all of which are available on the Irish Interest YouTube channel.
Most of the content uploaded by publishers to date is related to recent, current and forthcoming publications. We would like to have everything ever published in Ireland in the database, which probably means starting with the Book of Kells. To this end, we want publishers to place their back catalogues on the site in addition to their latest publications. We also encourage anyone who is interested to join the site as a correspondent and add titles they know of or, alternatively, to inform us of such titles.
