Cuts in funding to O’Brien Press is unfair treatment by the Arts Council

I am concerned about the reduced Arts Council funding for O’Brien Press; this has been cut by 84% from €63,000 in 2014 to €10,000 in 2015.

The Arts Council has 12 members.

Seven members are from a theatre background.

There is no book publisher, no children’s fiction writer, no novelist, nobody with any critical knowledge of graphic novels.

Two members are from music, two from visual arts and there are two poets.

One Arts Council poet is published by a poetry publisher which gets a guaranteed €150,000 annually while publishing just 10 small books.

Compare this €150,000 for one publisher to the €200,000 shared by 18 publishers under the Council’s Title by Title Scheme, which averages €11,000 each (the highest allocated to an individual publisher being €20,000).

For 2015, O’Brien Press has been moved from the Annual Programming Grant category to the Title by Title Scheme. O’Brien Press got €5,000 and Brandon Books €5,000 under this scheme.

For 2014, there were 10 publishers in Arts Council annual funding categories, sharing €615,750 (averaging €61,750).

O’Brien and Brandon achieve more for their authors, as well as employing more staff than all the literary publishers put together.

I am an Irish crime writer whose first two novels have been published by Brandon Books.

If O’Brien cannot continue to publish books, then authors like myself will look to other publishers.

In my case, this would mean looking to the UK.

Sheila Bugler

Victoria Drive

Eastbourne

UK