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WELCOME TO PANZ NEWS
20 April issue
In this week's issue of PANZ News we recap our recent metadata workshop in Auckland, and reveal details of a similar workshop for Wellington members.
There are also photos from our recent drinks event in Wellington and a fresh update on the Creative Rights = Creative Reads campaign. We congratulate the New Zealand and Australian writers on the Commonwealth Prize shortlist and farewell Otago University Press' Rachel Scott.
Sadly we share two obituaries this week, remembering publishing stalwarts Gordon Ell and Bill Noble.
Online is the new normal in International News, with announcements from Bologna and London Book Fair that this year's programming will be virtual.
In Notices we share details of a drinks catch up before the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, a Diversity Works workshop, and reveal the APA BookUp conference line-up.
Finally in Meet the Members, we introduce you to another of this year's Whitireia interns.
Happy reading!
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 FEATURE
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Metadata workshop Auckland
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Around 20 publishers gathered at the National Library last Thursday for the first of PANZ’s in-person workshops for 2021. Metadata and Why it Matters was led by self-confessed ‘book and data nerd’ Nevena Nikolic (Nielsen Book’s Territory Manager, NZ) aided by Bookdata Editor Vimala Subramanian. The workshop examined the importance of good data in driving sales, and the complications that can arise with poor data practice. As Nevena explained metadata is currently having its time in the sun and with the pandemic increasingly driving consumers online good metadata is crucial for discoverability.
Aimed at all levels, the workshop covered the basics but also delved into the nitty gritty for those well versed in metadata already.
After plenty of time for questions the session rounded off with lunch and a chance to chat informally to Nevena and Vimala.
We are delighted to be bringing Nevena’s expertise to Wellington for a repeat workshop on Tuesday 22 June. See Notices below for more details and the registration link.
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NATIONAL NEWS
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PANZ members meet in Wellington
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L-R: Julia Marshall (Gecko Press), Ashleigh Young (Victoria University Press), Fergus Barrowman (Victoria University Press)
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After a COVID related postponement earlier in the year, we were delighted to be able to go ahead with the first of our 2021 member networking events last week. Victoria University Press hosted the evening in their delightful Kelburn offices and around 20 members come out to enjoy a glass of wine and have a natter about various industry issues including questions around supply chains (of course!), some conjecture on which books might be the lucky winners at this year’s Ockhams and much anticipation for forthcoming book festivals. It was a convivial and relaxed evening and our thanks go to the team at Victoria University Press for hosting us so beautifully.
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Top row L-R: Mary McCallum (Makāro Press), Bridget Williams (BWB), Laura Koziol (BWB), Emma McIlroy (Gecko Press). Bottom row: L-R: Peter Dowling (Oratia), Alex Collins (Lift Education), Claire Gibb (Te Papa Press)
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Creative Rights = Creative Reads
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What does copyright that respects and values the rights of creators, incentivises creativity and ensures New Zealanders get more of our own stories in homes, classrooms, bookshops and libraries look like?
Below is our vision for a fair Aotearoa New Zealand copyright regime.
Our vision for a fair copyright regime is a system that:
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- Sets the legal framework to incentivise Aotearoa New Zealand storytelling.
- Enables the creation of quality local content that forms the basis for our education system and underpins our culture, written for our diverse communities in te reo Māori, in English, and in Pasifika and other community languages.
- Ensures that authors are able to earn from their work and can decide how their work reaches readers — and at what price.
- Underpins the creative ecosystem — from authors and illustrators to publishers, from editors to designers, from printers to booksellers — to enable local storytellers to turn ideas into books that inspire and excite audiences to buy, read and read again.
- Protects mātauranga Māori and delivers on the Crown’s obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
- Fosters a flourishing intellectual property marketplace where ideas become books, and where those books inspire movies, games, plays, theatre and other creative works.
- Encourages multi-format storytelling, where print and ebooks, audio and broadcast, film and television scripts, adaptations and more, work alongside each other under the same set of rules.
- Supports licensing solutions that enable access in cases where individual producers and consumers are unlikely to establish a market.
- Limits copyright exceptions to special cases where there is robust evidence that the marketplace and/or licensing don’t work; and compensates authors and publishers for the value provided to Aotearoa New Zealand from any exceptions.
- Sets laws and rules that are clearly understood, thereby maintaining integrity and respect for the law, and provides affordable and timely access to justice in circumstances where authors and publishers’ rights are infringed
Follow the campaign, @CreativeReadsNZ, on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
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NZ and Aus Writers among those shortlisted in Commonwealth Prize
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The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from the Commonwealth. This year’s shortlist was chosen from a record 6423 entries from 50 Commonwealth countries, and includes, for the first time, stories from Lesotho and Namibia.
Included in this year's shortlist is one author from New Zealand and four from Australia.
- ‘Carved’, Tim Saunders (New Zealand)
- ‘The Woman; or Euryale’, A.N. King (Australia)
- ‘Rabbit’, Samantha Lane Murphy (Australia)
- ‘Downpour’, SJ Finn (Australia)
- ‘Fertile Soil’, Katerina Gibson (Australia)
Read more about the shortlist here.
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Farewell to Rachel Scott at OUP
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Otago University Press has farewelled publisher Rachel Scott after eight years and welcomed Dr Sue Wootton to the role.
Rachel came to Otago University Press in 2013 following a five-year stint as Publisher at Canterbury University Press. During her time at Otago, OU Press has published two Ockham New Zealand Book Award winners and David Elliot’s Snark won the 2017 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults Margaret Mahy Book of the Year.
In her time as Publisher, Rachel is also proud of having launched the Landfall Archive, digitising and indexing New Zealand’s foremost and longest-running arts and literary journal, so most issues are now available and preserved online.
Now that she is stepping back, she is looking forward to enjoying some gardening, getting back into freelance book editing and reading books for pleasure instead of work.
“I have just hit the retirement age. I have absolutely loved this job but it’s a demanding role and I feel it’s time to bring in someone with new, fresh energy.”
That fresh energy comes in the form of author and editor Dr Sue Wootton. Prior to taking up the role at the OU Press, Dr Wootton co-published the medical humanities site Corpus: Conversations about Medicine and Life and recently completed her PhD at Otago.
Read more here.
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New Otago University Press Publisher Dr Sue Wootton and retiring Publisher Rachel Scott.
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OBITUARIES
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Writer and publisher Gordon Ell has died in Auckland after a short illness, at the age of 81. Gordon founded the Bush Press Communications Ltd in the early 1970s, initially as an independent film production company, but soon moved into publishing books on New Zealand’s natural and historic heritage.
Many of the titles he wrote himself, including his popular series of field guides to native birds and plants, and his best-selling book Encouraging Birds in the New Zealand Garden. Other topics included gold mining and kauri days, Māori archaeology, culture and customs, and edited collections of first-hand accounts of New Zealand’s early days.
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He also worked with organisations such as museums wanting to produce their own books, and packaged cookbooks and other titles for Beckett Sterling.
In his own writing, he was a finalist in the AIM Children’s Book Awards in 1993 with a book for young people on Abel Tasman, and also found success in later years with the thriller The Ice Shroud, which was shortlisted for Best First Novel at the Ngaio Marsh crime-writing awards in 2017. Many of Ell’s books are still widely available in libraries around the country, and continued writing up to the time of his final illness. His love of the outdoors and passion for sharing stories of New Zealand’s heritage were evident to all those who knew or worked with him.
He is survived by his wife Ruth, a former teacher and avid reader; daughters Fiona, an associate professor at the University of Auckland, and Sarah, also a writer; and four grandchildren.
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From Booksellers NZ: Gillian Newman remembers Bill Noble, bookseller of Otago:
Sadly, I find myself in the unenviable position of needing to write some words to somehow encapsulate the complex and unforgettable character that was Bill Noble. I can only write from my own experience but there will be many in the book trade who knew any respected him, and I apologise in advance if I have missed some details they thought should have been included.
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Certainly he was one of the most significant figures in NZ bookselling and will be sorely missed.
To read the full obituary on the Booksellers NZ website click here.
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INTERNATIONAL NEWS
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Invitation to French Week
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The BIEF, which assists French book publishing company members by facilitating their international export development, rights sales and acquisitions, and partnership projects. is pleased to invite you to participate French Week, which runs from May 17 to 21, 2021.
This free digital event will allow you to converse with other professionals and observe the French book market’s latest developments. Each day of French Week, the BIEF will share the latest trends in a specific editorial sector:
Monday, May 17: Fiction
Tuesday, May 18: Non-fiction, Humanities
Wednesday, May 19: Children’s Books
Thursday, May 20: Graphic novels
Friday, May 21: DIY, Art + Illustrated Books
An easy-to-use platform will enable you to schedule digital meetings with dozens of French publishers. In order to facilitate prospecting and scheduling, you will receive a catalogue featuring titles and participating French publishers before the event.
Registration opens on April 21, 2021. For more information, please contact: Claire Mauguière, Laurence Risson or Anne Lacorre.
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Bologna cancels physical book fair
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The Bologna Children's Book Fair (BCBF) has announced the cancellation of the “live” in-person 2021 edition of the fair, along with the Bologna Licensing Trade Fair and the brand new BolognaBookPlus. Unfortunately, despite postponing the event to June the pandemic situation has not improved as much as had been hoped.
Instead BCBF will focus its energies on a second online BCBF edition offering an even wider array of events and activities, along with the new BolognaBookPlus programme. In addition, the new Global Rights Exchange platform is about to be launched, offering a range functions for publishers and agents as well as a licensing section.
Events will run online from 14–17 June. Click here for more information.
2021 BolognaRagazzi Award entries open
Entries are open for the 2021 BolognaRagazzi Award. This year, participation in the Award is open to 2019 Exhibitors and all those who registered to attend in 2020 and 2021.
As well as the usual categories, his year’s special category is dedicated to poetry. In addition, the BolognaRagazzi Awards has added a new award for publishers: the BolognaRagazzi CrossMedia Award. The BRAW CrossMedia returns the printed book to centre stage, exploring how publishers have extended into diverse media, and awarding the best content-migration projects – from the page to the screen or from screen to book. Click here for entry details.
How to Sell Rights & Understand Licensing in Children’s Books
This BolognaBookPlus training course will cover all facets of copyright. It is scheduled for 15 June and features a lineup of international professionals: Belinda Rasmussen (Macmillan Children’s Books), Joanna Everard (Rights Consultant), LeeAnn Bortolussi (Giunti), Debbie Bibo (Debbie Bibo Agency) and Helen McAleer (Children’s Licensing Consultant). Register here.
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LBF to run as digital only with free online access
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The London Book Fair 2021 will go ahead as a digital-only event creating opportunities for the publishing industry to meet online following the impact of the global pandemic. The in-person format will return next year to its usual Spring dates of April 5-7, 2022.
The Online Book Fair will bookend the month of June, with conferences taking place the week of the 7th, and a further series of flagship digital events running at the end of June. The focus will be to shine a spotlight on key areas of the fair, creating the opportunity for a larger global audience than ever before to come together in a flexible way to do business, network, learn, and share ideas.
More information on the digital event will be released in coming weeks, including options for exhibitors and visitors, as well as details around the content programme, which will address themes relevant to publishers, booksellers, authors, the rights community and more.
Register interest to attend here.
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NOTICES
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Publishers in town for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards on Wednesday 12 May are invited to join PANZ for pre-awards ceremony drinks and conversation from 5.15pm.
The venue will be the Glass Goose Bar and Eatery just a short hop to the Aotea Centre where the Ockham Book Awards begin at 7pm.
Where: Glass Goose Bar & Eatery, 78 Federal Street, Auckland
When: Wednesday 12 May from 5.15-6.30pm
There will be a cash bar, a convivial setting and tasty nibbles!
More details soon but register here for catering purposes.
Why not make a night of it with your staff and bring a group to the awards? Tickets for the 90-minute ceremony are $16 each. You can book your ticket here.
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Metadata and Why It Matters - Wellington
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Please join us on Tuesday 22 June at Lift Education in Wellington for a workshop on metadata and why it matters. This is a similar workshop to the successful event recently held in Auckland.
Nevena Nikolic (Territory Manager) from the Nielsen Book data team will give an insider’s view on the Nielsen Book data systems, including how data is aggregated and shared with booksellers, the best way to present your information to maximise sales (especially for online) and what are some common errors they see.
Ideal for anyone that is responsible for their book data and/or wants some insider tips.
There’ll be plenty of time to ask all those burning data questions that you have and we’ll round off the morning with lunch and the chance to chat informally to Nevena.
Registrations open from 9.30am with tea and coffee available on arrival and the workshop will start promptly at 10am.
Lift’s offices are at Level 7, 234 Wakefield Street, Wellington.
To register click here.
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APA BookUp conference line up announced
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BookUp, the Australian Book Industry Conference, takes place at the ICC Sydney on 27 April 2021 (or online, wherever you are).
This industry-facing, one-day conference is a must for all book publishing people. Against a background of dramatic changes to the book industry, workplaces and consumer behaviour from the Coronavirus pandemic, speakers will examine new ideas for publishing, and look to a future for books and their readers beyond the immediate challenges of COVID-19.
The line-up includes:
- Generational change: where is Australia going, and what’s been the impact of Covid-19? Speaker: Claire Madden
- The Future for Publishing Workplaces. Speaker: David Shelley, CEO, Hachette UK
- Future Growth in Publishing. Speaker: Kate Wilson, Managing Director, Nosy Crow
There area also sessions on:
- What’s the story? The changing nature of content consumption.
- Cancel Culture and Freedom to Publish
- Implementing Inclusivity in Publishing
Click here for the programme.
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Diversity Works announces Inclusive Leadership workshop
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In the constant search for inclusiveness, leaders are required to learn how to benefit from motivated followers who feel safe to bring their whole selves to the workplace. Inclusive leadership helps current and future leaders to manage different viewpoints and transform dissent and disagreement into value for organisational growth. This three-hour workshop, will cover:
- The role of leaders in diversity and inclusion
- The psychological foundations of inclusive leadership
- Differences between inclusive leadership and other leadership styles
- Inclusive leadership skills and traits
Event Details:
Date: Wednesday 19 May 2021
Time: 9.30am-12.30pm
Venue: Yellow, City Works Depot, Shed 4, 90 Wellesley Street West, Auckland Central
Investment: Member $225+GST; Non-member $350+GST
Click here to book.
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Meet the Members
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We've brought back our Meet the Members section and are kicking things off by highlighting some fresh faces in the industry, starting with this year's crop of Whitireia interns.
Name: Lauren Donald
Company: Auckland University Press
Since starting your internship... I’ve sustained three paper cuts, become best friends with our local courier and found myself interested in all sorts of new topics.
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What has been a highlight so far? AUP’s mahi around the Kotahi Rau Pukapuka titles and weekly te reo lessons have really helped build my confidence in using Māori every day. It’s definitely a highlight to be more at ease with the language and to be genuinely excited about learning more.
What has been a challenge? There’s no avoiding Excel. I’ve come to terms with the fact that it's about time I learned what a pivot table is.
How have you found "real world" publishing different from the expectations you had while on your course? ‘Real world’ publishing is the more complex older sibling to the work we did at Whitireia. I’ve been really interested to see how far into the future the team is working, and how many different books are on the go at once. There are so many overlaps in timelines and projects that it really makes you appreciate the people who are holding on to all the strings!
What are you reading at the moment? I’ve just finished Where We Swim by Ingrid Horrocks, and now I’m picking up Circe by Madeline Miller.
You can read through previous Meet the Member interviews here. If there's someone you think we should feature, please email admin@publishers.org.nz.
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PANZ Publishing Calendar 2021
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Make sure these key dates are in your diary and let us know if there's anything we should add.
APRIL 2021
12 April: PANZ Wellington drinks
15 April: Metadata and Why it Matters Workshop (Auckland)
MAY 2021
4 May: PANZ Book Design Awards entries open
6 - 9 May: Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival
6 - 9 May: Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival
11 - 16 May: Auckland Writers Festival
12 May: PANZ Pre-Ockham drinks
12 May: Ockham NZ Book Awards ceremony at Auckland Writers Festival
JUNE 2021
10 June: Shortlist announced for 2021 NZ Book Awards for Children & Young Adults
14 - 17 June: Bologna Children's Book Fair online edition
22 June: Metadata and Why it Matters Workshop (Wellington)
AUGUST 2021
11 August: NZ Book Awards for Children & Young Adults ceremony in Wellington
21-22 August: Booksellers NZ Conference
21 August: Industry Awards Dinner
27 August: Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day
25 – 29 August: WORD Christchurch Festival
OCTOBER 2021
9 October: Bookshop Day
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If you have an announcement, a job or any news please let us know so we can share it.
Email admin@publishers.org.nz
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