THE PUBLISHER

The monthly publication of the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand is always read with much interest by Bookman Beattie. Although now retired from direct involvement with book publishing they kindly keep me on their mailing list. This is because I have the enormous honour of being a Life Member of that august body- an honour I greatly cherish.

In the June issue published yesterday the following piece appeared from the Association's new Director Anne De Lautour:

In my new role as Association Director for BPANZ, I am looking forward to meeting members individually at the earliest opportunity – catching up with those I already know and introducing myself to those whom I haven’t met.
My background in publishing covers 20 years in various roles with publishing houses large and small, so I am no stranger to the industry. My new role as Association Director is a welcome opportunity to use the experience and knowledge I have gained over this period.
My challenge is to build on the existing operations that BPANZ does well and to introduce new initiatives to support members and encourage growth. This is an exciting new stage for BPANZ and you can look forward to regular updates from me on our progress.
Anne de Lautour, anne@bpanz.org.nz

Other items of interest include reports on the London & Bologna Book Fairs and career snapshots of Nicol Legat (Random House) and Anna Craig (Hachette Livre), and details of the ANZ Society of Indexers Medal.

This latter award is dear to my heart because publishers in this part of the world, and this is a very broad generalisation, do not have a good reputation when it comes to the matter of indexes. I am constantly amazed and disappointed at the number of non-fiction titles published without them. Recently I was looking at a gardening title and a cookbook both of which had been rendered user-unhelpful by the lack of an index. Not good enough and my advice to authors of such titles is to insist with their publishers that an index is included. Forget about ever winning awards of maximising sales if you publish without one.