Words from Geoff Walker about his mentor Ray Richards - first published in February 2011 on the occasion of Ray's 90th birthday

Thursday, February 10, 2011

"My Friend Ray Richards"

A few words from Geoff Walker about his mentor Ray Richards, to commemorate the New Zealand publishing icon’s 90th birthday. 

This article was first published in New Zealand Author, Journal of the New Zealand Society of Authors, February/March 2011 issue and later on this blog.

The day I first met Ray Richards I was a scruffy, long-haired gardener looking for a job as a book editor at A H & A W Reed, New Zealand’s foremost publishing house. That was 35 years ago, and Ray was publisher and managing director at Reed and already a publishing legend. Ray remembers me having dirty hands, but I’m sure he’s mistaken. My jeans, yes, but surely I’d have washed my hands before a job interview with the country’s leading publisher? With Ray Richards?

The interview took place at the old Reed building in Taranaki Street, Wellington, since gentrified by Ian Athfield. Down below at ground level was the legendary Green Parrot restaurant, beloved then by every taxi driver in town and later famously by Winston Peters and parliamentary hangers-on.

In the upper floors were whole teams of in-house editors and designers, dozens of them, including at one stage a design and production department of seventeen across trade and education. There were editors everywhere. That’s how publishing was in those days.

After an hour’s discussion with Ray and David Elworthy I got the job. I remember Ray that day as an urbane, courteous man who exuded quiet authority. Later I realised he had a penetrating and intensely commercial strategic eye – as you’d expect. He was also the first person I’d ever seen use a dictaphone, which he’d pick up in the middle of meetings and dictate a memo to his secretary on the run.

Now Ray Richards is celebrating a 90th birthday. He’s also – and this is hard to believe – celebrating 75 years in book publishing (including four years in the Fleet Air Arm). Has there ever been an equalling of this by anyone, anywhere, ever?

It’s indeed 75 years since the youthful Ray Richards joined the publishers AH & AW Reed as an office boy. He saw war service as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm (pic left) in the Second World War, earning a DSC and a captain’s Commendation, and in 1946 returned to Wellington as Reed’s editor.

He was serving two unusual and very gifted men. The eccentric AH Reed was a national figure, a Methodist of the old school, who walked the roads and tracks of New Zealand and wrote books about his travels. His nephew AW Reed, also a strict Christian, was also of course a writer, with a prodigious output of books on Maori culture. Years later many of his books are still in print.

From the mid-1960s Reed, led by their publisher Ray Richards, created a new kind of New Zealand book and set up New Zealand’s first commercial publishing culture. It’s not stretching things too far to claim that Ray essentially invented New Zealand publishing as we now know it.

The novels of Barry Crump, the first big tourist colour books, Peter McIntyre the painter, the T P McLean rugby tour books, several big natural history series, major works in New Zealand history as well as local histories, a big Maori publishing programme which continues to this day, hunting and fishing... Crump’s A Good Keen Man sold over 100,000 copies in hardback and is still selling steadily 50 years after publication.

No one had ever published books in these quantities in New Zealand before. These were New Zealand books, by our writers, for us – and we bought them in their thousands. It was the flowering of a genuinely indigenous publishing industry, and it was led by Ray Richards.

In this present day of powerful bookselling chains and reduced print runs it’s easy to forget just how successful Reed’s publishing was. A minimum print run was 5000 copies, well in excess of today’s. Whole genres blossomed for the first time, often on unlikely subjects such as hunting and railways. The ubiquitous Kiwi railway book flowered, then faded away.

There was little fiction or literary writing or sharp politics – but there were some adventurous ventures, such as Dennis Knight-Turner’s controversial Tangi and major books by Bill Sutch.

Guiding the revolution was Ray Richards, passionate about the New Zealand culture he was publishing within but also displaying a sound commercial eye for what would work in the marketplace. He was a hands-on publisher, building with his wife Barbara strong personal relationships with many of his authors. It was his life and his world.

Ray taught his editors to treasure the authors, to never forget they were the ones doing the work and ‘owning’ the book. This might seem obvious, but in fact it’s not always so. He also taught us to think broadly and creatively about the book prospect in front of us. How could the book be improved? Did it need to be longer, or shorter? Another format? Or another book altogether? And, always, what of the author’s next book?

But unfortunately the end was near. In the 1970s Reed over-extended itself and ran into financial strife. Later a third of the staff would be made redundant. Outsiders were brought in to steer the ship in new directions and ended up in bitter conflict with Ray. A beloved daughter died while overseas, bringing him to his knees. I recall attending at least one meeting at which Ray sat preoccupied and miserable at the head of the table while the business of the meeting went on around him. Ownership of the company was to pass into overseas hands. Finally, Ray and Barbara decided to move on.

In 1976 Ray was appointed the first executive director of the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand and moved to Auckland, at the same time setting up on his own as a book publisher. In the same year he established in partnership with Barbara the Richards Literary Agency, which of course continues to this day. In fact Barbara has supported Ray in everything he has done for 61 years now, and she has been a member of the agency since its beginning 34 years ago. Daughters Bron and Nicki were involved in the agency, Nicki working as an agent for five years.

And now Ray Richards is celebrating a 90th birthday – and still running the literary agency (if on slightly fewer days per week). He is now an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit and is venerated throughout publishing.

In a market not well served by literary agents, Richards Literary Agency still represents heavyweight writers such as Witi Ihimaera, Maurice Gee, Joy Cowley, Dorothy Butler and Tessa Duder. He has specialised in children’s books and achieved considerable success in selling foreign rights, particularly to the US. At any given moment he’s juggling a dozen film rights options, again with much success, adding to his writers’ incomes.

And my own relationship with Ray has come a long way since those master/pupil days seven floors up in Taranaki Street. Until just recently, when I stepped down from Penguin, we’ve been publisher and agent, working together to produce the work of Gee, Ihimaera and Cowley, among many others. To this process Ray has brought a publisher’s appreciation of how far an agent can go in negotiating a contract. He appreciates the limits and what will realistically work. At the same time he’s a strong advocate for his writers’ interests.

Ray, old friend, all of us in New Zealand writing and publishing owe you a very great deal. We wish you well on your 90th birthday after 75 years in the business.

Footnote from The Bookman:
Very well put Geoff, all in the NZ book world, and some far beyond it, will endorse your warm acknowlgement of Ray's lifetime of service and contribution to writing and publishing in New Zealand.
I first met Ray back in 1969 when I was a bookseller in Napier and he was running AH & AW Reed who were far and away the major NZ book publishers at that time.
Later when I became a book publisher, first with Penguin and later with Scholastic, I had a great deal to do with Ray in his role as NZ's leading literary agent. He was tough in his negotiations but also always fair and as you correctly say in your piece because he had been a publisher in his previous worklife he knew what was possible and how much he could reasonably hang out for.