News

As Frankfurt drew to a close last weekend, PANZ News emailed the publishers on the New Zealand stand as asked for feedback. Here are their candid, mostly brief, reports:

Julia Marshall, Gecko Press:

We are now on the last day of the fair and I am kind of exhausted which is as it should be. It has been good! Solid and steady is the report from the rights agents I meet and my own rights agent says the same.

My most fun meeting was bumping into one of the German illustrators we publish on the train on the way home at 1.30 in the morning (after being at the Frankfurter Hof with Sam Elworthy and he had some news that will change the line-up for our next year’s books!

Tracy Strudley, Global Education Systems:

Frankfurt still proves to be the leading book fair where new business opportunities are started. GES managed in excess of 20 solid appointments, with new business opportunities presenting themselves in Chile and Brazil.

We confirmed new product with existing distributors and partners and increased focus and interest in Marie Clay’s Professional Development titles.

The New Zealand stand continues to look smart and professional with its current design and branding. Sarah Ropata and her husband Ropes did a fine job! All the NZ publishers really appreciate their focus and passion for our country brand and our content.

Without a doubt the highlight for me was being presented with the German edition of our book Dealing Daily with Dementia. I met the publisher through a chance recommendation at last year’s fair and one year later the book is in my hand. You cannot match the thrill and satisfaction of that moment. The German publishers are delighted with the exceptional endorsements for the book they have received before publication in their market.

Frankfurt is also about making new contacts, so I was also pleased to be invited to the Russian publishers party held at the Frankfurter Hof, a beautiful nineteenth century hotel in the heart of the city. The lavish hospitality and networking was just amazing.

New to me was the emergence of Google Analytics in a publisher’s assessment process for a project or an author, especially among the Americans. They want authors with established online platforms. But I was struck by the number of new business models that are emerging in the current environment. The models have probably always been there, but there’s a greater openness to trying new things and being creative about how to work cooperatively together.

The channels to market have definitely become more challenging, but quality books will always find their readers.

I think I had a very good fair. The hall was slightly quiet but the appointments were high quality, and while it takes a fair time to know how many leads will eventuate, it feels very good at the moment.

Karen McKenzie, Little Green Frog Publishing:

Author Dr Libby met with 30 publishers from around the world on the company’s very first visit to Frankfurt. They now have significant interest from publishers in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Iceland and Taiwan.

In most cases there is interest from multiple publishers in these various markets, so I will be following up from now on to determine the best fit for Dr Libby in each market. Dr Libby was thrilled with the positive response.

This was my first Frankfurt and I was very apprehensive. I found the first day or so completely overwhelming but eventually I found my way and started enjoying myself. Some very useful meetings, chance encounters, and even a handful of good prospects. At the beginning I wanted to run away; by the end I was sad it was over!

Fantastic support for this newbie from all the veterans on the NZ stand. Sore feet, but!

I thought Frankfurt 2014 was enormously energising. A little shrinkage in Hall 8 and all of us will be off to Hall 6 next year, closer to the French and Italians which is a good thing. The Finns were country of honour (Finland. Cool) but many said that New Zealand was cooler. Actually, only one person said that, to the media, it was me, diplomatic incident.* Lively stand, one of my busiest fairs with a handshake sale for our anthology of Maori poetry Puna Wai Korero; a bidding fight lining up for Helen Sword’s Writers Diet and Birds of the Pacific, and lots more.

*Interviewed by Publishing Perspectives at the Fair and published in their daily bulletin here.

The fair kept me pretty busy, but the aisles were noticeably less busy than in previous years. Which gave me a bit more time than usual to talk with people and do follow-ups. We celebrated the launch of our co-edition of Christopher Pugsley’s revised Gallipoli with Frontline Books, and a promising start to our North American distribution with International Publishers Marketing.

‘Difficult’ is the most commonly used adjective for book markets everywhere; you need to be playing the long game.

The stand was well attended this year, and our people all reported good solid meetings. The floor seemed quieter in terms of foot-flow but that said, the walk up traffic seemed more focused and serious. New Zealand is still enjoying excellent PR off the back of Guest of Honour year, with a great centre page piece all about our presence setting a bench mark in one of the Fair Dailies. The big talk in Hall 8 was of the impending move to Hall 6 next year – which is being greeted with support from most. We will report back on that as the plans become clearer to us.

Being FBF’s featured market provides exposure but it is a sizeable investment was the tag line on Roger Tagholm’s story for The Bookseller daily at Frankfurt. The journalist interviewed Kevin Chapman and Iceland’s Halldor Gudmundsson about their countries’ respective Guest of Honour campaigns.

“When New Zealand swept into the Frankfurt Book Fair as Guest of Honour in 2012 with its haka, its musicians, its dancers, some 50 publishers, 80 authors and a pavilion whose dark, magical, starlight-and-water installation took people’s breath away, the excitement and sense of discovery was palpable.

This was FBF’s Guest of Honour programme at its very best…” wrote Tagholm.
Interviewing Kevin Chapman, he asked about anything tangible in a business sense that was achieved.

Chapman listed the positives: smashing the target to get 100 titles translated into German, cultural programme acts being invited back to Europe, Food and Wine set targets they achieved and a change in the way Germans saw New Zealand culture and a subsequent rise in tourism.  Read the full article here.

Developments in digital technology are helping to change this for some VIP readers and Copyright Licensing (CLNZ) has been working with the Royal NZ Foundation of the Blind (RNZFB) for the past two years on a project known as TIGAR* that is also a step in the right direction towards improving access. However the most recent and brightest news in the provision of access to published works for VIPs came in June this year when a new World Intellectual Property Office Treaty was agreed in Marrakesh. This quickly became known as the Marrakesh Treaty and is an agreement between the member states of WIPO that each country will implement the requirements of the Treaty into its legislative framework.
 
There’s lots of tedious international treaty and law specifics I could go into at this point, but that’s not what you want to, or need to, know. What you need to know is “what does this mean to me as a publisher?” Given that New Zealand already has a copyright exception for the creation of accessible format copies of copyright works for VIPs (in Section 69 of the Copyright Act), we’re already well down the track towards complying with the terms of the Treaty. Our current Copyright Act however doesn’t define the position on importing and exporting accessible copies and this may need to be changed.
 
Importing and exporting accessible files is what’s happening in the TIGAR project, but that’s with a signed agreement between WIPO, RNZFB and CLNZ and with title-by-title clearance by publishers.
 
So what does happen in New Zealand at the moment? RNZFB provides an invaluable service for its members in creating and distributing accessible copies of books and other text-based materials. A large number of these are produced as narrated audio – an audio file where someone with a voice that’s easy to listen to reads the entire book out loud and this is recorded into a digital format. These files are copied to a CD and distributed to RNZFB members by the team in the RNZFB library in Parnell, Auckland. Each member can receive a number of books at a time and, on returning the CD, access more files/books for their reading pleasure – just like any other library service. This work is funded by donations the RNZFB receives each year.
 
When it comes to education texts RNZFB has other formats and means by which it distributes content. Some of these are made possible by the publisher being able to provide a digital file to assist with the creation of the required format. Others are created from a hard copy of the text.

Section 69 of the Copyright Act includes a condition that an accessible copy can only be made if a book is not already commercially available in the format in which the VIP needs it. Where the required format is braille, it is unlikely that the publisher will have that format available. But if the required format is audio or large print then, in the world of digital formats, the publisher may already have the book commercially available in that format. For example, the company Read How You Want provides commercial editions in large print, braille and daisy editions for some publishers.
 
As a publisher, you may be contacted by someone at RNZFB to ask for a file or in regard to permission for a particular work. The information above is provided as a short story (with all the important bits) on how Section 69 works in practice between publishers and the RNZFB. If you need to know more about the workings of this particular area of copyright, please contact me –  paula@copyright.co.nz
 
*TIGAR stands for Trusted Intermediary Global Accessible Resources. Launched in November 2010 by the WIPO Stakeholders’ Platform, TIGAR is a three-year pilot project that seeks to facilitate cross-border transfer of copyrighted works in accessible formats among various national institutions or Trusted Intermediaries (TIs), notably national libraries serving those with print disabilities.

1. online somewhere and
2. you have not provided permission for it to be uploaded and
3. the website offers a takedown facility

Paula Browning used the presentation of Copyright Grants to authors last week to make a spirited speech for fair payment by universities and others. Here’s what the CEO of Copyright Licensing NZ said on the issues:

There were 68 applications for the awards this year which is right on the average number of applications that we’ve had every year for the past 10 years. I would like to personally thank our selection panel for the wonderful job they did with this year’s applications. Each applicant receives equal and robust consideration to ensure that the aims of the awards are met by those who are successful. To Paul Diamond, Gillian Candler, Geoff Walker and Rae McGregor – my thanks.

The New Zealand Society of Authors Research Grants had a huge increase in applications this year over the number received in 2012 and we are delighted that the new President of NZSA, Kyle Mewburn, is able to be with us this evening to present these grants.

I’m always very conscious of my choice of words when I’m either speaking to or writing for a literary audience. Without any form of literary pedigree it’s more than a little intimidating to be the focus of attention in a room full of our top writers and publishers. It’s been especially challenging this year to find the words to describe the past 12 months at CLNZ. This time last year we were looking forward to finalising the next term of our licenses with the New Zealand tertiary sector – but this was not to be. We now find ourselves at the Copyright Tribunal arguing for fair payment for the use of your publications in our universities. This is a stand we must take because Copyright – your right to earn a living from your writing – is under attack. Governments throughout the world are being swayed by the well-funded lobbying of the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple into changing copyright law in ways that benefit these corporate giants’ business models. We’ve already seen this happen in Canada and the UK and legislative reviews are underway in the United States and Australia.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recently published a list of 6 business sectors in New Zealand for which it is commissioning reports into their economic value. The first report has been released – it was on ICT or Information and Communications Technology. The other 5 are tourism, petroleum & minerals, construction, high tech manufacturing and something called knowledge-intensive-industries (which is mainly the scientific and technical services sector). No sign of the New Zealand creative sector in that list is there? So if the government doesn’t know what our creative economy is worth, how does it know what it’s potentially trading away in agreements like the TPP?

In the absence of this type of data from the government, the creative industries are busy preparing their own. Film and Television released a report earlier this year that puts its value at close to 3 billion dollars and employment in the industry at over 20,000 people. The New Zealand music industry has a similar report – figures from this are due out soon.

And what does the New Zealand book sector look like? Well hopefully we will have a general idea by the end of this year when the report we have commissioned from PWC is completed. We’ve given the team at PWC a huge challenge however, as the data that’s needed for these economic value reports just isn’t available from the New Zealand book sector. Something else we need to actively work on in the short term.

I’m sure none of us need to be reminded of the dire news that has hit the local publishing sector this year with the withdrawal of multi-national publishers from the New Zealand market and yesterday’s shock announcement of the closure of Learning Media . At an Asia Pacific copyright meeting in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago I joked that soon New Zealand children would be reading about Kangaroos instead of Kiwis. But it’s really not funny. As New Zealanders we’re used to a rich creative culture. We’re used to having access to our own stories in our own books and our own TV programmes; through our own music and our own movies. It’s something we’re inherently proud of as we were able to unequivocally demonstrate at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year.

All of this is at risk if we do not have effective copyright law. Without it, the business model that is the foundation of the creative economy will be worthless.

So what can you do? Do what you do well – write. Whether it’s a blog, twitter, opinion pieces, articles – anything that stimulates informed debate that shows the value of copyright and local publishing to our economy. The time is right to do this now. The government has announced that it has deferred the review of our Copyright Act pending the conclusion of the TPP. This gives us time for a robust discussion. Talk to your friends and family about what copyright means – especially the younger ones. The ones who think it’s OK to post a question on Facebook asking their mates for a copy of their digital movie collection or the ones who share copies of digital textbooks on USB sticks. They want to be able to copy and share, and technology lets them do it easily, but they’re completely removed from the impact that very copying has on our creative economy – they need YOU to tell them!

This year our selection panel commented that the finalists for tonight’s awards are those applications where the passionfor their subject is evident. Well New Zealand needs you to get passionate about copyright and your rights as owners of intellectual property. I know it’s not sexy and it’s not an easy dinner party conversation but it is critical to the future of New Zealand writers and New Zealand writing. If we all sit back and think someone else will fight the fight for us, we risk losing the rights we currently have. Now I’m not generally regarded as a drama queen so when I say to you that getting noisy about copyright is critical – I really mean it!!

Right – I hope I’ve reached all of you in some way on the need to get loud about copyright. Now on to the real reason why we’re all here tonight – to celebrate and invest in New Zealand non fiction.  At last week’s New Zealand Post Book Awards one of our previous winners took out the General Non Fiction category. We were absolutely delighted for both Steve and for the team at Awa Press on their success withCivilisation – Twenty Places on the Edge of the World.  For a girl from Mt Roskill it was a thrill to venture into Place Number 10 in the book and enjoy Steve’s take on how the suburb I grew up in differs now from its earlier times. If there’s anyone in the room who hasn’t lost themselves in Civilisationyet, then it’s time you did!

It was a cold and chilly night… but inside the warmth of the Sapphire Room at Ponsonby Central last Thursday night, book designers, book production teams and publishers came together to applaud the PANZ Book Design Awards nominees and winners for 2014.

 Most agreed the stunning shortlist meant all categories would be hard fought, and no one envied the judging task of industry professionals Gideon Keith, Cameron Gibb, Alan Deare and broadcaster Noelle McCarthy. 

The first Award of the night was that for Young Designer of the Year with portfolios from finalists Sam Bunny – “Awonderful range of striking design, enlightening and transcending often challenging categories,” said the judges; Kalee Jackson whose “book designs display restraint and a poetic lightness of touch,” and Jenny Haslimeier “(her) work is bright and playful, showing an obvious delight in her subject matter and her pleasure in working with wonderful content.” Kalee Jackson (right) was the winner, but after viewing all portfolio entries, the audience had no doubt the future of book design is in talented hands.
 
Also ready for collection were stunning glass paperweight trophies designed and made by Peter Raos for the Best Designed Books in seven categories…
 
Random House New Zealand Award for Best Illustrated Book to Arch MacDonnell of Inhouse Design for Modern: New Zealand Homes from 1938-1977 “Bold decision-making makes this book stand out in a crowded genre.”
 
Scholastic New Zealand Award for Best Children’s Book, to Rowan Sommerset (pictured right with husband Mark) for The Boy and the Cherry Tree, “wonderfully illustrated and a great example of less being so much more.”
 
Edify Award for Best Educational Book to Sam Bunny for Living by the Moon – Te Maramataka o Te Whanau-a-Apanui “Evocative cover design of this title makes it a strong contender in this category, and the interior of the book lives up to the cover by delivering the bilingual text in a spacious and elegant manner.”
 
Mary Egan Publishing Award for Best Typography to Modern: New Zealand Homes from 1938-1977, designer Arch MacDonnell (pictured below). “Dig below the surface of the perfectly balanced jacket to discover the stunning case design and connecting endpaper.”
 
PANZ Award for Best Non-Illustrated Book to Book of New Zealand Words, designer Pieta Brenton “The jacket, case cover and endpapers are brilliant, reminding us that language can indeed be colourful.”
 
1010 Printing Award for Best Cookbook to Alan Deare, Area Design, for Cut, Josh Emett’s latest cookbook. “Cut is distinguished by great photography that lets the food shots be the heroes.”
 
HarperCollins Publishers Award for Best Cover was also presented to Alan Deare, this time for Peter McLeavey: The life and times of a New Zealand art dealer.
“They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but the cover makes it very hard to walk past this one. A single image of a young Peter McLeavey, set against a black backdrop, with orange type, the cover of this biography manages to be visually arresting and utterly delightful at the same time.”
 
The best of the best receives the Gerard Reid Award for Best Book sponsored by Nielsen Book Services… no surprises here … it was once againModern: New Zealand Homes from 1938-1977. “The only title in the entire competition to set text in a colour. The typefaces are period, but set in a contemporary way that makes them seem new and fresh, just as the design of the book itself causes us to reappraise the modernist houses in a contemporary setting.” 

While two of the judges had entries in the Design Awards, PANZ has a strict conflict of interest policy, and throughout the judging process no judge is permitted to comment on or vote for their own work, an obligation strictly upheld by PANZ and the panel.
 
PANZ congratulates all the finalists for the exceptional quality and calibre of their design.

For the full list of winners and book images visit the Book Design Awards Website here.