Emu Ink Publishing - A History
Emu Ink started out as an independent publishers bridging the gap between self publishing and traditional with a new type of format - Assisted Publishing. The company was officially launched on March 27th, 2013, in the Irish Writers' Centre, by the then Minister for Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan.
Essentially what we did was assist people to publish. Those looking to take publishing into their own hands but not specifically self-publish, and seeking the professional service you would expect from a traditional company, were our target market.
And we published a lot of books!
During our time in Assisted Publishing we had the opportunity to publish the youngest independent author in Ireland, Joe Prendgergast. At nine years old Joe wrote a trilogy of books - The Great Fragola Brothers - and he donated the proceeds to the Cancer Clinical Research Trust, in memory of his father.
After Joe we published more child authors. We also ran a programme in schools, which our founder, Emer Cleary, delivered personally and after which pupils became real published authors.
The demand increased so much and so quickly for this programme, however, that it was impossible for Emer to reach all of the schools during requested terms. So we developed it online and the Emu Ink Schools' Publishing Programme was born.
Today we have published thousands of primary school pupils, as well as post-primary school and Youthreach students, across the island of Ireland. We have also published the work of the many contributors to our sports books and will be publishing thousands of English Language School students in the near future!
