For 40 years Blackstaff Press have published some of the freshest, funniest and most thought-provoking literature in Northern Ireland. Now, to prove that this old publishing house can learn new tricks, they are launching an eBook list.

‘I suppose we have been thinking about it for a while,’ managing editor Patsy Horton explains. ‘It is a growing market. More and more people are reading ebooks and using ereaders, and I think it is our job as a publisher to give them the content they want to read in the format they want to read it. We want people to keep reading.’

And people do want eBooks, whether they read them on an e-reader, a laptop, a tablet device or even their phone. In 2010 eBook sales were 5% of the book-buying market. In 2011 Amazon, whose latest Kindle device is omnipresent in Christmas ads this year, revealed that they sold more eBooks than hard-copy books. And Dorchester Publishing have abandoned the traditional publishing format entirely for ebook catalogues and print-on-demand.

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