Second IPPY Award to small New Zealand publisher

 Small Masterton publisher Fraser Books has just won its second award at the Independent Book Publisher Awards (IPPY). These awards, open to independent publishers in the United States, Canada and eight other countries including Australia and New Zealand since 1996, have given increased recognition to nearly 5,000 books over the last 18 years. 

The awards ceremony for what has been called the ‘world’s largest book awards contest’ will be held during BookExpo America in New York later this month.

Fraser Books’ Ian and Diane Grant will not be attending as they are too busy with publishing and writing projects.

This year they won a bronze medal in the Australia/New Zealand non-fiction category with On the Edge: Wairarapa’s Coastal Communities, published last November in conjunction with the Wairarapa Archive.

The book tells the story, from earliest times to the present day, of the remote and wild 220 kilometre Wairarapa coastal landscape. Some of New Zealand’s worst shipwrecks happened there and it is still a dangerous place to go to sea. However, the coast is a prolific fishery and Maori based themselves close to this resource well before Europeans arrived in the 1840s. Then the iconic sheep stations were established, ferry services appeared to deal with coastal traffic, and lighthouses were constructed. Eventually, the first hardy campers and commercial fishermen arrived. Coastal communities began to grow which, in 2014, are holiday venues with some luxurious homes.

The 296, full colour landscape book, written and photographed by retired history teacher Jim Graydon, has already sold about 1,200 copies, with its second printing nearly sold out.

“Over the years we’ve published about 150 books, for our imprint and other organisations, and even with full colour books have never printed any of them overseas,” says Ian Grant. “We think it important that the country retains the skills and people to print high quality books and it is one of the luxuries afforded a two-person business operating from our smallholding home on Masterton’s outskirts.”  Even more important is the determination to publish books of lasting value.

 “‘Cottage’ publishers like Fraser Books can break even on 500 copies,” says Grant, “while large publishers need to sell at least 4,000 copies to do so. Unfortunately, this increasingly means a surfeit of cook and food books and ghosted bios of rugby players! While we operate as quietly as possible, and without a website, we sometimes have people from large publishers asking if we’d take on very worthwhile books their accountants and marketing people say they can’t publish.”

It is not without significance, Ian Grant believes, that a number of the people who have set up as  boutique NZ publishers have decades of publishing experience and all the skills – or more – of the big ‘houses’.

In 2011 Fraser Books won the gold medal in Australia/New Zealand non-fiction category in the IPPY Awards with Tara Arctic: A New Zealander’s Epic Voyage, by Grant Redvers.

Photo: Editor Diane Grant, author Jim Graydon, Ian F. Grant, and Christine Miller, Fraser Books’ contract formatter. 

The Bookman extends his warmest congratulations to the team at Fraser Books.