Feature New Zealand publishers Guest list
Hana Pomare Founder Hana Ltd Educational publishing on behalf of New Zealand’s Ministry of Education is the core of Hana Ltd, one of the smallest publishers in the NZ pavilion. It specialises in developing multimedia resources for “kura kaupapa Maori”—schools in which all teaching and learning is done through the Maori language. “For me publishing in New Zealand
is fantastic, particularly being able to publish in the Maori language,” says founder Hana Pomare, who is making her first trip to the fair. “What I hope for in the future is a freer ability to make educational titles available in a commercial context. I’d like to ensure that minority languages and cultural content are not confined to resource storerooms in schools, but can stand on bookshelves in libraries and book stores throughout New Zealand and the world.” To that end Frankfurt 2012 heralds
the publisher’s first step into commercial publishing. It has three traditional stories from the Pacific Islands—retold by Pomare herself and illustrated by Ellie May Logan who joins her in the pavilion—and hopes a wider audience may be found. Te venture is tinged with poignancy since some of the original stories were published by Pomare’s great- great-grandfather Sir Maui Pomare in 1930. Sir Maui was a parliamentarian and NZ’s first Maori doctor. “We are a small company—just the two of us—but we view our size as a distinct advantage in the types of projects we are involved in. We work with small communities to tell their stories,
HANA LTD
Founded: 2000 Turnover: NZ$500,000 Number of staff: 2 Number of titles: Varies each year; 15 in 2013 Top titles for 2013: a 12-title project on Maori food
In the second of two features, Roger Tagholm meets some of the faces behind the Kiwi publishing scene
Peter Dowling M.d. Oratia Media Just listening to indie publisher Peter Dowling talk about his company’s name is enough to make you want to visit. “Oratia is where we live in the forests of the Waitakere Ranges, just west of Auckland. Its name means ‘place of long-lingering sunshine’. I’m a keen student of place names and our location is important to our positioning; plus, we just love this beautiful place.” He runs the company with his Italian
wife Alessandra Zecchini, a food writer and cook, and Oratia publishes principally children’s, history, Maori culture, illustrated and general non-fiction, and books on Italian and Latin American topics of interest. “Although Australasia has been less
share their knowledge and develop resources that link to the unique curriculum that New Zealand has to support Maori learners—‘Te Marautanga o Aotearoa’. Often people are protective of their stories, histories and indigenous knowledge and being small allows us to spend time with them and get to know them. It is probably one of the things we love most about our work: the people we meet, their stories, and the enduring relationships we have with them.” She believes the GoH programme
will generate extra interest in NZ’s publishing houses and hopes Hana’s traditional stories will appeal to “curious visitors. I am looking forward to meeting other publishers, sharing the stories we are bringing and being open to opportunity”.
affected by recession than Europe or the US, book trade veterans are still saying things have never been this tough,” says Dowling. “Sell-ins are under pressure in the bookshops and you have changing consumer behaviour, with the impact of the web on the use of non-fiction titles. Also, with Internet-based retailers consumers are importing directly, so they don’t have to pay NZ sales tax on purchases from Amazon and others. So it’s not a level playing field.” But he adds that despite this,
“there is still some cool publishing happening, and particularly encouraging signs in the Maori subject areas that form a core part of our list, even though it is almost impossible to publish commercially in the Maori language”. Dowling was born in north London
ORATIA MEDIA
Founded: 2000 Number of staff: three full-time, two part-time, plus freelances Number of titles per year: 6-10 Top titles for 2013: New Zealand Tattoo by Chris Hoult and I Need a New Bum, “a rambunctious picture flat” from Dawn McMillan and Ross Kinnaird
to Kiwi parents and must be one of Arsenal’s most distant fans as a result. He studied in Christchurch and spent 10 years overseas in publishing and journalism in Australia, the UK, Japan and Italy. An accomplished linguist, he is also interested in toponymy and is the revising editor for Place Names of New Zealand. It’s Oratia’s third successive
Frankfurt and he hopes to secure further rights and distribution deals and advance co-edition work with partners in Europe. “Frankfurt is a chance to test the global market and gives us an important barometer on our future publishing plans. Guest of Honour has brought a lot of attention to New Zealand and ups the profile for a small country that is sometimes overlooked in global publishing.”
thebookseller.com
11 OCTOBER 2012 | THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT FRANKFURT 17
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