PANZ News

Annabel Langbein Media – early to the international market

“An overnight success – 20 years in the making!” laughs Annabel Langbein about the big impact her Annabel Langbein The Free Range Cook television series and accompanying book had on the local and international markets in 2010 and 2011.

“The Free Range Cookbook was a dream, an idea, and it took so much thinking and being really focussed to bring it together,” says Annabel. “Then it was just serendipity that it came at the right time when people wanted fresh to the table ingredients and produce.”

For those who have followed her book publishing career, the payoff is not surprising. Annabel started with taking a stand at Frankfurt in 1995. It wasn’t easy – she recalls locking herself in a bathroom at the Fair and having to psych herself into carrying on, and then she lost a very necessary credit card.

When her perseverance and the investment in going to Frankfurt paid off with her first international sale deal three years later in 1998, it was for half a million copies of Best of Annabel Langbein.

The elation of success then gave way to the concern of “How the heck am I going to deliver on this?” says Annabel. But she coped with the big step up in scale, and even found she enjoyed distribution and marketing.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

www.annabel-langbein.com

Margaret Mahy as an educational writer

Vale Margaret Mahy 1936–2012
As readers and publishers we are in awe of your creativity, imagination and writing, and for putting New Zealand children’s literature on the world stage.
We say good bye with love, affection and admiration.
 

Wendy Pye writes:

She came to me when I had just been made redundant and was beginning publishing on my own. We operated from a converted bedroom in our old house in Otahuhu, one typewriter and a dream, with lots of red wine and laughter.

In the early days, Joy Cowley wrote the early readers and Margaret gave me the treasure of her skills with over 80 titles at the higher levels of junior novels and collections. These consisted of very special books, like The Girl Who Washed in Moonlight . . . a wonderful story that was illustrated by Robyn Belton. Another was a manuscript for which Margaret had turned down a big offer from an American publisher and given the story to me; she said, “With your books, they go to thousands of children in schools and libraries and you are able sell this to the world.”

Later came the special stories like The Tree Doctor, about a crazy doctor who goes from trees to trees, and Iris La Bonga and the Helpful Taxi Driver and more in the series. I named one of my best race horses after this series, and Iris La Bonga and later her family, become well known identities on the race track! She was the mother of the winner of the Wellington Cup that went on to run in the Melbourne Cup.

I feel one of the greatest series of her work that I published was a collection of books called My Wonderful Aunt . . . These were illustrated by the very talented Deidre Gardner and were a tribute to the Aunt that Margaret had loved. This special series was written for all children to enjoy and written with language in wonderful Mahy fashion.  The original art of one of the series hung in her apartment in Christchurch until the earthquake.

Her legacy will live on. Children all over the world in every school will benefit from her gift of writing and love of language.

In our publishing house today, many of my team have remembered the days when we began with Margaret; like me they also experienced the joy and pleasure of working with such talent.
We have lost a special person, but she will live on in our hearts forever.

Wendy Pye, Publisher.




Excerpted from PANZ News July 25 2012