Feature New Zealand publishers Be my guest
Roger Tagholm meets some of the faces behind the Guest of Honour businesses appearing at this year’s Frankfurt
the platform for its country to promote all that it is good at.”
Te Antipodean branch of
the mighty Hachette empire only began formally in 2009, but its roots go back to 1950 when Hodder & Stoughton established a NZ sales office. Tis became Hodder Headline NZ in 1993 and Hodder Moa Beckett in 1995. Today, Hachette NZ represents all Hachette UK’s trade imprints, as well as Hachette Book Group US and Hachette Australia’s locally published books. It publishes in NZ under the
Kevin Chapman Hachette New Zealand m.d. ONE OF THE most familiar faces walking the aisles at Frankfurt, Hachette NZ m.d. Kevin Chapman says the Guest of Honour programme has happily taken over his life for the past 18 months. “It’s a massive event for us, probably the highlight of my publishing career. I say this not only because it gives us a chance to put NZ books and writers right in the centre of Germany’s attention, but also because it has given us a chance to provide the base from which NZ can promote itself in Germany. “So it isn’t only books, or even
cultural events, but our food, our wine, our films. PANZ [the New Zealand Publishers Association] started this, marketed it, and the government picked it up and ran with it. We should be very proud of our cornerstone role. It’s not very often that a publishing industry gets to be
HACHETTE NZ
Founded: 2009 Staff: 29 Titles per year: 20–30 Top titles for 2013: Paul Thomas’ as yet untitled fifth crime novel featuring Maori cop Tito Inhaka; picture book The Weather Machine by Donovan Bixley
Hodder Moa imprint. “Retail in NZ has been generally
weak for some years, so books have been hit by that,” says Chapman. “And of course e-books are making inroads, behind the US and the UK, but growing quickly. We have major issues with internet booksellers shipping into NZ freight-free and tax-free. We have to pay freight and charge 15% tax, but consumers don’t understand why our books aren’t as cheap as those online purchases.” Chapman went into publishing in 1977 after nearly nine years in the NZ army, for which he was decorated. For a time he ran a small publishing company with his wife, living in London and bouncing around the UK, Canada and Australia before returning to NZ in 1998 to run Hodder Moa. He loves sport and has a massive title coinciding with the fair: the autobiography of All Blacks captain Richie McCaw.
Fergus Barrowman Victoria University Press publisher FOUNDED IN the 1970s to publish books of “scholarly value and general cultural importance that would not otherwise be published in the small New Zealand market”, Wellington- based Victoria University Press is run by former post-graduate student- turned-publisher Fergus Barrowman who worked part-time at the house while studying and tutoring “and found myself so at home I have stayed ever since”. For more than 20 years it has been
a leading publisher of new NZ fiction and among its writers to have found international success is novelist Emily Perkins (Picador and Bloomsbury). It also has an illustrious poetry list, while its non-fiction publishing focuses on the NZ market, including Maori language and land
issues. “Te NZ book market
is going through some very difficult years, and is under many of the same pressures afflicting book communities around the world,” says Barrowman. “One particular problem we have is with the strength of the NZ dollar, and the availability of international books in our market from internet vendors, discounted, tax-free and often freight-free, at
prices we cannot get near to matching with local product.” Barrowman is also an academic
assessor on the university’s celebrated creative writing course run by the poet and novelist Bill Manhire, and says that “as an editor, I think of myself as standing with readers. Te opportunity I have had to work with such a stellar succession of brilliant young writers over the years has been a great privilege.” Away from work he listens to jazz “which has led to a regular opportunity to pontificate about new jazz releases on national radio”. Barrowman has been to Frankfurt
and LBF several times and enjoys “making and maintaining the contacts which have contributed to the international successes of so many of our writers. Tis year I am looking forward to the GoH programme turning eyes our way.”
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Founded: 1974 Staff: two full-time, two part-time, plus freelances Titles per year: 20-30 Top titles for 2013: Damien Wilkins’ Max Gate, a novel based on the last year of Thomas Hardy’s life; Elizabeth Knox’s SF horror story Wake
thebookseller.com
10 OCTOBER 2012 | THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT FRANKFURT 27
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