Green shoots in NZ publishing

Scoop announces that journalist and author Paul Little has set up his own publishing company:

After several years as a ghost writer of best-selling autobiographies – Willie Apiata VC, Ray Avery: Rebel with a Cause and Paul Henry: What Was I Thinking - he has launched his own imprint, Paul Little Books. [. . .] 

Little believes there are two key factors that will enable books to thrive. The first is a scaled-down, low-overhead approach that is made for the likes of electronic publishing and social media marketing. This also enables a much more generous writer’s royalty than traditional publishing. “Money should go to authors not office furniture and company cars,” says Little.

The second key factor is distribution. “Books have to be available as widely and in as many formats as possible,” says Little, whose books will be available as ebooks with bonus content. “Whether it’s in stores, on a publisher’s website or through ebook retailers – books need to be everywhere people buy them.

“Today’s publishers – and authors – have to accept the reality of innovation and make it work for them rather than ignoring or resisting it.”

Good. He is a very bright guy and should make this work. I know of one other new publishing company in the works – there will be a lot more of this. It’s called creative destruction – very hard on those like the people at Hachette and Pearson whose jobs have gone, but there is still a market for New Zealand books, whether print or digital. That means there are opportunities for those with ability and agility.

UPDATE
More information at Paul Little’s website.

Hachette to leave New Zealand

This release went out to the book trade earlier today:

Trade Announcement

22th July 2013

Malcolm Edwards, Chairman of Hachette Australia and New Zealand, today announced the following:

“It is with great sadness that today, we announce a restructuring of our New Zealand business, which will involve the immediate relocation of the finance, administration, and IT functions to Australia and the closure of Hachette's New Zealand publishing unit, after the 2013 programme has been published.

“Our long serving management team of Kevin Chapman, Managing Director; Warren Adler, Editorial Director; and Rick Groufsky, Financial Controller are to leave the company. Regrettably, we expect that approximately 12 other jobs will be lost. Kevin, Warren and Rick have made an enormous contribution to the company over many years, which will be marked in the appropriate way, at a later stage. I am grateful to them for agreeing to stay until the restructuring is completed to ensure that it goes seamlessly.

“Hachette New Zealand will become solely focused on the marketing, promotion and sales of our international titles and the New Zealand backlist. Mel Winder, as Sales & Marketing Director, will lead the company, reporting to Matt Richell, CEO of Hachette Australia, with immediate effect.

“These changes have been caused by the diminution of our business in New Zealand, caused largely by the increased sourcing of books from overseas, at the expense of the local trade, and the rapid growth of e-books.”

Ends

Bugger. Hachette has been a great publisher – as it was in its previous incarnations as Hodder & Stoughton, Hodder Headline and Hodder Moa Beckett – and was great to work with. I have never laughed so much in a publisher’s office as I did with Kevin and Warren. This is terrible news for them, but also for the rest of the staff – and also for their authors, editors and others.

So next time you are tempted to buy a book from the Book Depository, just say no.

Waikato Times letter of the week

Warning: this from the 23 July edition is NSFW (not safe for Wellington):

Divine retribution

In 2010, we saw the first earthquake in Christchurch, discerned as a warning shot by this writer.

The sanity of this writer, appearing at the time to be questionable, was vindicated later with another earthquake emphasising the warning and bringing a much more serious attack on that hapless city, killing many people, to make its point.

Now, we are witnessing yet another warning in the case of the earthquake swarms at the centre of New Zealand.

The capital of this country is about to be dealt a fierce destruction, through it being the home of our Parliament, cradle of the perverted legislation recently passed into law, whereby we have accepted this world’s immoral, gutter standards to our declared culture. 

In this, we have turned our collective face from God, who has now turned his face from us, the peoples of the Earth, as we identify with the evil ensuing from that action.

Because of our rebellion, all hell is about to fall on Earth.

May God have mercy on our souls.

GLWYN McINNES

Hamilton

Coming attractions

Am busy finishing the final draft of my next book which is due, thrillingly, from AUP next year. Once that is out of the way, which will be this week because people are starting to shout at me about it, there will be posts on how to spot a dodgy publisher, why Peter Bland’s Collected Poems 1956-2011 is a must read, a Sir Launchalot report on the launch of Kevin Ireland’s Selected and another Waikato Times letter of the month. Because you’re worth it.

So here are the Easybeats with “Friday on My Mind”. The rhythm guitarist, George Young, is the older brother of Angus and Malcolm Young of AC/DC, but you knew that:

Breakfast in England

In the May issue of the Literary Review, the best books magazine in the world, the Spectator’s Low Life columnist Jeremy Clarke reviews The Breakfast Book by Andrew Dalby and The Breakfast Bible by Seb Emma and Malcolm Eggs. He begins with an account of a recent breakfast he had while hungover in London, behind Paddington Station to be precise:

I eat anything. Wipe its bum and chop the horns off, ho ho. I’m not fussy. The average number of taste buds in the average gob is between two and eight thousand. I have about twenty. But when my full English arrived, the mere sight of it turned my stomach. I prodded the bacon rasher with my fork. The factory-bred sow, raised in China in conditions only slightly more cramped, I guessed, than those in which she was served up, tasted, rejected, then thrown in the bin, had lived and died in vain. The flesh was bright pink, barely cooked, barely even tepid, and had a fleshy nakedness about it that was faintly obscene. The anaemic egg was a tragic poem. The themes of the poem were artificiality, incompetence, waste and quite possibly blasphemy. The tomato was a product of that strange impulse of the Spanish to ex port scarce water from the Costa del Sol to northern Europe in spherical, thick-skinned packages force-grown in sterile conditions under polythene. The triangle of fried bread was a saturated sponge sweating cold grease. The sausage was budget bag of (at a guess) snouts, intestines, eyelids and hepatitis C.

Thou shalt not link to Buddle Findlay

 Buddle Findlay is my favourite law firm because for 17 years it has sponsored the Sargeson fellowship.  That sponsorship is drawing to a close, sadly, but Buddle Findlay is managing its exit in exemplary fashion. The people I know there are admirable – but whoever is in charge of its website is not. Talk about over-lawyering. The Terms of Use conditions have been changed to read:

You must not link to this website without the express written permission of Buddle Findlay.

Not how the Internet works, is it. I don’t know who spotted this first,  probably Sam P, but there has been a Twitterstorm of derision. I have been linking to Buddle Findlay for years in posts about various Sargeson fellowship things, and here’s another one. So sue me.

Wilco and Richard Thompson perform “Sloth”

Just for guitar nerds here is Richard Thompson with Wilco a few days ago performing “Sloth” (Full House, 1970). Nels Cline duettling with Thompson – is that a word?: they are not duelling but it’s more than duetting – is just a must. 

Crap sound and vision – why do people at concerts talk so much? – but you get the idea.  There will be something professional on YouTube before long. Full concert review from the tour is behind a paywall – content providers who expect us to pay for stuff are swine – but here’s a par to give you the flavour:

The highlight of the entire evening became witnessing Thompson matched against Wilco guitarist Nels Cline during “Sloth,” a song from Fairport Convention, the British band that launched the folk-rock movement in their country. During several interludes, Thompson’s restraint and precision was set against Cline’s more feisty inclinations. Both players flung flinty arpeggio runs against each other, the sum of which became a lengthy interplay of contrasting improvisation.

Altogether now,  “Just a roll, just a roll on your drum, and the war has begun…”

Waikato Times letter of the week

Thank you for your patience since the previous instalment way back in March. It has all been fluoridation in the WaikTimes since then, so uninterestingly crazy. Until this, from the 12 July edition:

Master plan

Creation of gender-specific political electoral situations (female-only candidates) could well be in the master plan for the human race. God serves us in sometimes complex ways. He decides on earthquakes, tsunami, tornadoes, famines, starvation diseases etc . He allowed Napoleon, Churchill, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the Bushes, Obama, Gandhi and Mandela.

He had his son crucified and has all confirmed members of his churches become cannibals each communion. Perhaps a few more Eves would balance the canoe? There would be no more false notions that man was/is the hunter? Perhaps society would be improved with all mothers creating male monsters that no other woman could live with. Man in charge? You must be kidding!

BARRY ASHBY

Raglan

Some questions I am frequently asked #2

What is “The Danyl Song” in Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley?

That’s easy. It is the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. She gets two arias, but there is only one that is famous.  In the novel Danyl – the character, not the author – sings the aria on the rare occasion that he has a win, using his name (which, sadly, is not a dactyl – that would have been too awesome) as vocalise on the high notes, which are very high indeed. From memory the aria is in D minor. D for Danyl, obviously. It goes like this. All together now, with Natalie Dessay, “The vengeance of hell rages in my heart”:

The midwife’s tale

The latest Nielsen bestseller list is out and on the New Zealand fiction top 10 are three novels I edited – Danyl McLauchlan zooms into #2 with Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley, Paddy Richardson rises from #7 last week to #3 with Cross Fingers, and Grame Lay’s The Secret Life of James Cook, is #5 in its ninth week on the list.

Wonderful for Danyl, Paddy and Graeme – but quite nice for me too. This must be how a midwife feels when one of “her” babies does well.

Photos from Friday’s book launch here, starring three characters from the novel, and Toby Manhire interviews Danyl for the Listener here.

UPDATE

My wife points out that with Danyl at #2, Paddy at #3 and Graeme at #5, I edited 60 per cent of  the top five this week. Just boastin’.