Independent Children’s Publishers in the bright new world
By Sarah Forster
Despite doomsday predictions for the publishing industry as a whole, every year several new publishers open their cottage doors in New Zealand. Many of these are children’s publishers, generating print books or, seeing the opportunities presented by e-books in a market that isn’t up to speed, books in digital format.
Dreamboat Books and Hinterlands publish only the work of the author behind the publishing name. Others, like Pear Jam Books, challenge the big guys on their own turf by publishing works by popular New Zealand authors in different formats.
What most of these publishers have in common is that they were formed by writers.
Jill Marshall is a highly successful published author, best known for her Jane Blonde: Spylet and Dogshead series’, published by Pan Macmillan in the UK. She is British, but now lives in Auckland. She began Pear Jam Publishing in 2011 with the publication of a picture book that helped to fundraise for relief funding for the Christchurch earthquake. ‘My own publishing company has been something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while,’ she says, ‘particularly with the advance of digital story-telling in the form of ebooks and apps, and my feelings as an author that I didn’t have as much control as I should.’
Read the full article here.
Five Easy Questions with Kelly Link
Kelly Link is an American short story writer and publisher. She will appear at the New Zealand International Arts Festival Writers and Readers Week in Wellington, from 9 - 14 March 2012.
1. Your work is difficult to pigeonhole. Did this lead you to set up your own publishing house, most excellently called ‘Small Beer Press’?
When someone asks what I write, I usually say I write short fiction with zombies and ghosts in it. When someone asks me what we publish at Small Beer Press, I say we publish short story collections and novels that don't quite fit into either literary or genre fiction categories. So yes, I guess there's some overlap. They say that you should write what you know, but it's more true to say that you should write what you love. The same goes for publishing. You should publish the kind of books that you love to read. I'm incredibly lucky that I get to do both kinds of work.
2. How has Small Beer Press been adapting to the e-book revolution?
Small Beer Press has been selling e-books for five or six years and recently launched www.weightlessbooks.com, an online platform for e-book distribution. Our books are up there, and we also distribute other small press books, like Blind Eye Books and Twelfth Planet and Subterranean Books, and magazines like Lightspeed and The Fairy Tale Review. All of our e-books are DRM free. In fact some of them are free, period, under the Creative Commons Copyright. It's a weird time to be in publishing. But it's an amazing time to be a reader. I got a Nook for Christmas, and I already have over a hundred books on it, most of them from Project Gutenberg. It's going to make packing for Australia and New Zealand a lot easier.
3. You sound like you lead a very busy life! Can you tell us how you organise your day as a writer/publisher/mum?
I would say that they're all part-time jobs, but that's not really true of parenting, is it? Our daughter Ursula was born in 2009 at 24 weeks, and we spent the next two years in three different hospitals. It was an excruciating period, but it would have been a lot worse if our work wasn't portable. We read and worked on various manuscripts and book projects in her hospital rooms. Now we're back home again with her, and getting used to something like normal life again. I can't work at home because if I'm on my computer she wants to be on it as well. So I go out and work in cafes for a few hours every day. In fact, I'm sitting in one right now with the writers Holly Black and Cassandra Clare. I try to get in to the Small Beer office once or twice a week. I try to keep the Small Beer work separate from the writing work. And because Ursula loves picture books so much, I've begun to think of picture books that I'd like to write.
4. You write some amazing stories, but they don't seem to have traditionally-defined endings. Have you written anything yet that has made you think, ‘hold on, I want to keep on with this,’ and made you consider a longer novel?
I really don't like endings to be too tidy. I want the reader to go on thinking about the characters and the world and what happens next. Having said that, I haven't written anything yet that felt like it ought to be something longer. I do want to write a novel, though. I'm hoping to start one while I'm in your part of the world. Not really sure what it will be, except that I'd like it to have ghost stories in it, and maybe a love story. That's another thing: I'd love to write a romance novel.
5. What is on your reading pile?
I'm devouring a mystery series by Asa Larsson, and a manga series, Twin Spica, which is about candidates in an astronaut school. Two of my favorite books from last year were Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi, and an apocalyptic YA novel, Ashes by Ilsa J. Blick. I'm rereading Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy, and as soon as I'm done I'm going to read The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson.
Book Council news
True Stories Told Live Fundraiser
Join our new year fundraising event for Writers in Schools and help us create happy young readers.
Featuring writers Barbara Else, Fleur Beale and Catherine Robertson, as well as record reviewer Colin Morris and politician Ray Ahipene-Mercer. There will also be two other artistic Wellingtonians.
The Family Games Night – a wonderful line-up share personal tales of family holidays.
Live storytelling. Totally unscripted, completely unfiltered. Anything can happen.
The New Zealand Book Council and Writers in Schools – bringing books and children together since 1973
True Stories Told Live: Monday 13th February, 6.15pm at Meow Café, 9 Edward Street, Wellington.
Ticketing: Book your tickets online now or purchase on the door: $20 or $15 for members.
What's new on bookcouncil.org.nz
We launch into 2012 with a short Q&A on Open Book with award-winning author Eleanor Catton. We pry into the progress of her new novel and ask her to talk about its debt to astrology, the gold rushes of 1860s New Zealand, and murder mysteries.
There's also a new addition to our Review of Reviews section.
And don't miss our weekly very short story competition called '#fridayshorts' on Twitter @nzbookcouncil. Each Friday a lively bunch of competitors flex their imaginations and submit a story in one tweet using six compulsory words provided by the Book Council. At around 4.30pm that day, judging begins, and we announce the #fridayshorts winner. No prizes, but liberal kudos. Click here to find out more.
Competition opportunities
Please note this is only a sample of literary opportunities from the news page on our website:
Seresin Landfall Residency
This is a six-week writing residency to be taken at any time of the year. A cottage (accommodation for writer and partner only) at Waterfall Bay in the Marlborough Sounds is made available for the successful applicant to work on a writing project – timing to be agreed between the successful candidate and Seresin Estate.
The residency is open to early to mid-career writers, aged twenty-one or over, working in any genre, who have previously published at least one book. Candidates should be New Zealand citizens or permanent residents. Applications are due by 31 January.
For more information visit the Landfall/Otago University Press website.
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funding partners, who enable us to deliver our programmes. We also value your membership, which supports our work in schools and communities throughout New Zealand.
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This month we are giving away two copies of Kelly Link's series of tales Pretty Monsters, courtesy of Text Publishing.
The following book choices were certainly the stand out ones for me. Women in my Rose Garden (Hardie Grant) by Ann Chapman explores the lives and stories behind the evocative names of our best-loved heritage roses, many of which are named after women. It will interest readers with a passion for roses, gardening, history, romance and adventure. 
The Soldier’s Wife (Random House) by bestselling author Joanna Trollope focuses on the struggles faced by a soldier’s wife when her husband returns from six months away in Afghanistan.
