The life of a publisher

Diana Dekker, Dominion Post, 28 February, 2011

  Roger Steele established Steele Robertson because he wanted to publish something others had rejected. Photo - Phil Reid/The Dominion Post

 The big, international publishers Penguin, Random, Harper Collins, Macmillan are all based in Auckland, their overheads large but their incomes cushioned by overseas blockbusters.

In Wellington, shoestring publishing operations turn out successful books from New Zealanders for New Zealanders, all with dedication and the hope that something might make it big internationally and pay for the intellectual indulgences of several years past.

Pride, enthusiasm they practically resonate from the people who run publishing houses such as Awa, Steele Roberts, Bridget Williams Books, Huia, Victoria University Press, Gecko and Phantom.

Without small publishers there would not be books like the 2010 NZ Post Book of the Year, Encircled Lands: Te Urewera 1820-1921, written by Judith Binney (who died last week) and published by Bridget Williams Books, or Big Weather: Poems of Wellington, which was published in 2000 by Mallinson Rendel (the assets of which were sold in 2009).

Big Weather, which was expected to break even, is still selling steadily into the thousands which poetry books hardly ever do.
Contested Ground, Te Whenua I Tohea, on the Taranaki Wars, 1860-61, is just one of a raft of books from Huia giving new voice to Maori and presence to Maori history.

Somewhat lighter is How to Look at a Painting, by Justin Paton, one of a how-to series from Awa, to be the subject for a television series, and Awa's The Torchlight List of 200 good books.
Such special books keep on coming, recession or no recession. Their publishers, pared to the bone anyway, carry on regardless. Roger Steele, of Steele Roberts, says "when I hear of people earning the minimum adult wage we dream of it".

In New Zealand there are about 120 publishers of all persuasions, including trade, tertiary, scientific and technical publishers, as well as the international publishers.
A 2008 survey by the New Zealand Publishers Association determined that about a quarter of publishers accounted for 92 per cent of turnover.

The money-spinners do not include the vibrant little publishers in the Capital.
Because they all have much the same in the way of difficulties and each has something of a niche market six-year-old "baby" Gccko, for example, concentrates on translating remarkable overseas children's books they have a sort of admiring, sibling relationship with one another.

In the past there has been tension between them, and at least one multinational publisher intent on poaching authors, but even that has settled down. The multinationals operate on a grand scale and the independents graft away.

Enthusiasm and the lottery of new authors and new work propel all these modest businesses. Almost all of them run on a shoestring and under the steam of the one or two driven people who set them up and stay.
 Mallinson Rendel was only sold off to Penguin when Ann Mallinson with a QSM for her efforts was 75.

There have always been very strong independent publishers in Wellington, says Tilly Lloyd, of Unity Books, where about 30 per cent of the stock comes from them. "They're world-class," she says. "Think of Encircled Lands. Such impeccable writing, impeccable production and the highest possible quality. I'm hugely grateful.It helps us to define our shop and it helps define New Zealand."
There are, Lloyd notes, many admirable independent publishers outside Wellington, such as the university presses, Canterbury, Auckland and Otago, and Craig Potton in Nelson, but Wellington is central.

She rates Victoria University Press at the top of the Capital's independents, although strictly speaking it has the advantage of some university funding, allowing it to take a punt on books.

Read the full piece at stuff.co.nz

Footnote:
In response to this story Mary Varnham of Awa Press wrote the following letter to the Editor of the Dominion Post:

Dear Editor,

In an otherwise excellent article on independent Wellington publishers (Your Weekend, Feb 26-27), I was quoted as saying: “Creative New Zealand gives money to the multinationals. We don't get a cent.” What I said was that Awa Press hadn't received a cent in 2010. In fact, only one independent publisher received a grant from the 2010 publishers’ fund, while grants were given to two multinationals, and another to a subsidised university press.

Though I don't begrudge that funding, I do question the inequity that often sees leading independent publishers receive far less, or (as with us last year) nothing.

Awa Press is a serious publisher of contemporary non-fiction. Our books and authors have won such major awards as the Montana New Zealand Book Award, Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize and Spectrum Design Award. Yet with such a small domestic market, we struggle each year to stay afloat while producing these exceptional books.

For the record, we have received a number of small publishing grants from Creative NZ in previous years. We have also received assistance to travel to two overseas book fairs and one international publishers' programme. For this we are extremely grateful.

MARY VARNHAM
Awa Press

Further footnote:
Several independent publishers, not based in Wellington, have contacted me to point out that independent publishers are found all over the country not just in Wellington.That is true of course, Tilly Lloyd ,mentions several of them, but this story is about Wellington-based independent publishers, and doesn't mention them all by any means, and of course the story was published in Wellington's daily newspaper.
The largest independent NZ publisher is probably David Bateman Ltd, a family firm based in Albany on Auckland's North Shore.