Ireland's newest publishers live in a beautiful house in Co Kilkenny, surrounded by animals, from where they plan to nurture writers. Can their idyll last, asks Rosita Boland.
"The art of writing before the profit of publishing." This is a hopeful, even lofty motto for a new book company. Pillar Press is the latest publisher to set up in Ireland - and quite possibly the smallest. It must have the prettiest office, one whose ivy-fringed Gothic window frames a view of the adjoining ruins of St Mary's Abbey, in Thomastown, Co Kilkenny.
Pillar Press, which is named after the pillars in the ruins, is being run by the writers and first-time publishers Marian O'Neill and Stephen Buck, a husband and wife who arrived from Dublin in 1999. Their house in Ladywell is full of character, looking onto the street from one side and the ruined bulk of the abbey on the other. It's a jigsaw of a house; a tall, narrow part from the 18th century is spliced together with a newer section, reflected in the fact that half the downstairs floors are stone slabs and the other half wooden boards.
Two dogs, two cats and a recently-acquired white cockerel named William share a small pie slice of garden, apparently in harmony. William lately got accidentally locked in the shed with the cats for the night but lived to crow another day.
When the couple lived in Dublin they worked for a time in Hodges Figgis, the bookshop, where they met. Later, O'Neill worked part-time as a librarian at UCD's Michael Smurfit School of Business, in Blackrock, Co Dublin. She also worked for Gandon, the publishing company. Her first novel, Miss Harrie Elliott, was published by TownHouse in 1999. It did well, and a second novel, Daddy's Girl, was published in 2002. Buck wrote radio plays, several of which were broadcast by RTÉ.
The move to Kilkenny was partly due to house prices in Dublin and partly because "we both wanted to negotiate more time for writing", O'Neill says. When they had done up their new home, and settled in, Buck came into a windfall - "the cost of a moderately-priced new car," as he puts it. They didn't buy a car, though. Instead, they put the money into establishing their press.
"It had always been in our heads to have our own publishing company," says O'Neill. "So we decided to do it. We wanted to bring out two or three books a year and do it all our own way. We wanted to have complete autonomy. And because we'd worked in bookshops and libraries and with Gandon, we had a much better understanding of the trade than someone coming to it with no experience."
Books form the spine of their house. One room is given over to a library, the most prized volume of which is a wonderful Shakespeare and Company edition of Ulysses, bought from an antiquarian bookshop in Dublin. O'Neill takes it from the shelf. The edition, which has a distinctive plain royal-blue cover with white lettering, has inspired the design of Pillar Press's books.
They are entirely funding the printing of their launch titles, Seeforge, which is O'Neill's third novel, and Seconds, a 30-page poem about suicide and depression by a local poet named Sid Evans. They were so impressed when they heard Evans perform poetry in a local bar that they asked to look at his work. They are printing 700 copies of the novel and 500 of the poem, to be sold for €12.99 and €9.99. Easons has agreed to distribute the books. If things go well, O'Neill and Buck will look for Arts Council funding next year.
Pillar Press regards itself as a publisher of literary fiction. Is there not a danger that by publishing one of O'Neill's novels it could be perceived as a vanity press, with little commercial and editorial objectivity? "I think it makes more sense to self-publish a third novel than a first one," says O'Neill. "I have already proved myself. I had the opportunity to take control of publishing my own work, and I took it. Vanity publishing is only when you can't get anyone to publish your first book."
Buck adds: "We're aware that the poem might not sell so well, but, hopefully, the sales of the novel will alleviate that."
Some of the publishers' other mission statements are: "Pillar Press publishes authors who are unlikely to have immediate commercial success"; "authors will have overall editorial control of their work"; and "Pillar Press will read manuscripts with care and assess them under a range of literary, not commercial, criteria."
How can any business so determinedly play down the importance of making a profit and still survive? Do authors get paid? No, is the answer. There are no advances. But, once printing costs are covered, authors will get 50 per cent of any profits, and they get to keep their world rights.
Why would any author want to be published by a company that doesn't pay them, instead of approaching a mainstream publisher that would, as is standard practice, pay them? "We're aiming to attract first-time writers, mainly, and work that wouldn't be described as easily marketable," Buck says. They are looking for manuscripts for next year, in both fiction and poetry.
Is it not also risky to offer authors - particularly inexperienced, first-timers - overall control of their work? "This is what makes Pillar Press different from other publishers," says O'Neill. So would it postpone a printing, if, at the last minute, an author decided that he or she wanted to rewrite part of it? "Yes. We'd rather leave an author work on a book for five years than have them publish before they felt ready to do so."
Naive ideals or admirable philosophy? Time will tell for Pillar Press. The couple behind Ireland's newest publishing venture have decided to give themselves three years to see if they can make their company a success. So take note, aspiring writers: just in case they can't, you had better not spend five years honing your manuscript once it has been accepted.
Pillar Press publishes its first two titles this week; see www.pillarpress.ie