Phone: 065 707 1372 | Email: books@bannerbooks.ie
About our book publishing
For Writers, Researchers and Historians
Non Fiction Publications
Our books will be of interest to people living in or visiting County Clare. Examples of the sorts of subjects we are interested in are listed below, but we would like to hear about any ideas you have that might fit our list. Examples are:
- This history of a part of County Clare (a town, village, or townland, for example).
- How something is done or made in County Clare (e.g. making beer in a micro brewery, farming, or boat making).
- A biography of an interesting person from County Clare.
- A memoir (you don’t have to be famous!).
- Walks in County Clare.
Email us with your proposal and we can see if we can work together to make it into a book you will be proud to see on the shelves. Don’t worry if you think your writing skills aren’t up to publication standards. We want to find stories and information that will interest readers and we can work with you to polish your manuscript, if necessary. All books will go through a rigorous editing process to make sure they are the best they can be. We will be working with you during all stages of publication, and writers will be asked to approve any changes.
Email your proposal to publish@bannerbooks.ie.
Fiction and Poetry
As well as factual books, we are interested in fiction and poetry. We are interested short fiction, single poems and short memoir for anthologies. Feel free to submit these to us for consideration, and if we like your writing and feel it would fit with our list, then we will keep it until we are preparing an anthology.
Note that it may be a while before your writing gets to the general public – but do get in touch and we can talk about it.
Bear in mind that if you have a collection of poetry, we will not be the best publisher for you and you would be better off submitting to a specialist publisher. Likewise, if you have written a novel, we will probably not be the best fit for you because we don’t have the distribution channels that a specialised fiction publisher will have. We really want you to get your novel into the hands of as many readers as possible, so you’d be best off trying elsewhere. (We’d love to read it though!)
Writers must have a connection to County Clare, or your story or poem must have an identifiable Clare setting. Email your proposal to publish@bannerbooks.ie.
Local Interest Publications
If you are a historian or you have knowledge of a local topic that you think will interest our readers, but you don’t feel you have sufficient writing skills to turn this knowledge into a manuscript, we are still
interested in hearing from you. We can work with you to turn your notes into a book.
Our main criteria are that the information relates to County Clare, is of interest to residents and/or visitors, and that it is factually correct. You provide the information and we will do the writing, liaising with you every step of the way and asking you to sign off on the project only once you are happy with the text.
Email your proposal to publish@bannerbooks.ie.
Tourism and General Interest
Are your business activities interesting to tourists and local readers? We can work with you to produce a book that you can give or sell to your customers and we can sell to a wider audience.
Examples of businesses that might benefit from a book are:
- Walking guides, giving routes and information on the history and wildlife along the way
- A restaurant, giving the history of the restaurant or the type of food it prepares, and recipes
- A micro brewery, giving the history of the brewery, the history of the tipple and information on how it is made.
- How seaweed is farmed and used
- Tourist attractions.
Email your proposal to publish@bannerbooks.ie.
How long is a ‘Book’?
As long as it needs to be! Most of our books aim to be A5 size and 48–60 pages long. If it needs to be longer, then it can be longer. If it needs to be shorter, then we can make it into a booklet or change the size of it. We don’t add padding for the sake of it, and we like to give readers value for money.
If you have something of interest to say but you can say it relatively briefly, we will keep it for one of our anthologies. These are more likely to be short fiction, poetry and memoir, but there may be the possibility of a non-fiction anthology, so email your proposal to publish@bannerbooks.ie and we can see if it might fit in to a current or future publication.
Are you already published or ‘Out of Print’?
If you have published (yourself or through a publisher) a book that is now out of print and you own the rights to it, we may consider republishing it. We’ve come across lots of books that would be interesting to County Clare readers but are no longer available, and we’d love to give them a second chance.
Email the details to publish@bannerbooks.ie and we can talk about whether your book will be a good fit for our list.