Sir, – Desmond Fennell (Opinion Analysis, July 2nd) complains that the “magazine shops” do not offer for sale journals of ideas. It is true that there is no great enthusiasm for “that sort of thing” in Ireland, but there is also a problem with distribution that has a social and political dimension.
Our “magazine shops” must pay rent to Dublin’s commercial landlords, whose appetite for bloated rents is legendary. This barely regulated sector renders it difficult, if not mathematically impossible, to provide services and products which happen to be low-profit. As many excluded services are socially valuable, the result is less diversity and a diminished cultural experience for citizens and visitors.
In my case this is not a theoretical argument. I have some experience of the commercial culture of the city as I have been selling literary and intellectual journals in addition to other literature in Dublin for over 30 years, managing to survive in the face of a hostile rental culture largely through compromise.
I am also joint editor of a journal of ideas, the Dublin Review of Books ( www.drb.ie), and our answer to the distribution problem has been to publish online. Now in its sixth year, the DRB enjoys an international and Irish circulation far in excess of that possible for a comparable locally distributed print journal. We would like to complement the online DRB with a print edition but given prevailing conditions, this seems unlikely. I hope that Dr Fennell may find some comfort in the relative success of the DRB. – Yours, etc,