Name: Craig Gamble
Role: Publishing Manager
Company: Victoria University Press
My first job in publishing was: I started in the book trade at Whitcoulls, before moving to the Publisher’s Agents Samuels Brown, begun by Margaret Samuels and Neil Brown. Not long after that Neil, his brother David, and I formed Archetype Book Agents. After a few years in Australia working for Borders and others, I came back to NZ, working for Booksellers NZ for a year before coming to VUP. I’ve been here ever since.
I’m currently reading: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry (a novel that can barely contain the life within it), Michael Pollen’s history of psychedelic drugs How to Change Your Mind and a Text non-fiction work by Carolin Emcke called How We Desire. Also, a large array of forthcoming VUP titles (there’s a new book by Elizabeth Knox coming that completely blew me away).
My biggest career highlight in publishing has been: There are two, hard to choose between them. The first was selling the third Harry Potter book into New Zealand with Archetype. It was the first Harry to really hit in big in NZ and what I remember most is the chaos of publication day and the photos of all the Harry parties around the county, especially at The Children’s Bookshop in Wellington. The second was the morning we watched Eleanor Catton win the Booker Prize for The Luminaries. The VUP office sort of erupted and didn’t calm down for about a year. The months afterwards were a blur of excitement and work. At one stage we were booking entire aircraft to bring stock over from Australia. But it was huge fun too, and so wonderful to see one of our own get so much well deserved praise and attention.
