Books are my business: Will de Búrca of De Búrca Rare Books
Will de Búrca: 'We used to issue 1,000 catalogues four times a year, it was a mail order business. That completely changed because of covid, now we are 90% online.'
Will de Búrca is managing director of De Búrca Rare Books, the largest stockist of quality Irish antiquarian books in the world, which is based in Blackrock, Co Dublin.
My dad Éamonn started the business. He was originally a builder and built up a collection which was getting too big for the house we were living in at the time in Co Mayo so he decided to size it down — that was catalogue number one and it ended up doing extremely well.
Over the years, he phased out the building and went into the books full-time.
After school, I did a bookbinding apprenticeship restoring antiquarian books.
Then I spent some time in Sotheby’s in New York and after that I came in full throttle to the business.
During covid, if you had an online business, you were positioned very well, and we saw huge growth in the business.
We used to issue 1,000 catalogues four times a year, it was a mail order business.
That completely changed because of covid, now we are 90% online.
We offer a personal touch, whether it is a probate valuation or whatever. If we are not interested in stock, we have contacts and we offer other options for people.
There is a real demand for good Irish history books, people can’t get enough of them, and there are a lot of collectors in America. We also sell a lot of poetry books. Local history also does very well.
It changes according to what emails and calls come in. I keep an eye on auction houses and house clearances, then when we get books and items in, we catalogue, photograph them and upload them. Then I create an e-list of new stock each week that goes out to our online clients.
We have also built up a following on social media, 25,000 followers between Instagram and Facebook. We get inquiries through that so we might call out to people who want to sell a large amount of books. We do a lot of valuations across the country.
We also reprint books that are hard to get. We get inquiries from abroad, so the odd time, I get to hop on a plane and check out collections. We also exhibit at the occasional book fair and we attend a lot.
I love cataloguing and putting together a collection — we are working on a Roger Casement one at the moment. You end up educating yourself a lot.
The number one person who gets the most traction is Roger Casement, number two is Michael Collins and three is Brendan Behan; we have seen a huge resurgence in people wanting Behan books lately. We are lucky to be selling Irish authors.
You can promote them easily because they were such characters.
That the internet has taken over and there’s less dealing with people face to face. You have to spend so much time online dealing with the website. Since covid, when everyone was at home and online, good stock is harder to get.
I found a letter from Jack B Yeats to George Bernard Shaw, it was in a book by Jack B called Sligo, he was joking about how they should meet up and have a boxing match. We are always finding great stuff.
I would love a first edition of . I was the underbidder at an auction in Scotland but it went too high.
My favourite book is by Flann O’Brien. The second one would be by Piaras Béaslaí. I am always trying to read so if I had that much time on my hands, I’d bring that.
We have a first edition of in our new catalogue. It is harder to get them now and they sell a lot quicker. They are very sought after. It depends on the condition, but you would be talking a minimum of €28,000.
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