Literary world at our feet

Nicola Legat

There is a delicious, furtive thrill about spying a New Zealand book in the hands of a traveller in a foreign airport, say publishing industry executives - or better yet, propped on the shelf of some overseas bookshop.

It's a feeling which two newcomers to the book trade, former magazine editors Finlay Macdonald and Nicola Legat, would both like to create more often.

Their arrival in senior commissioning jobs at two of the biggest publishing houses - Penguin and Random House - is the buzz of the bookshops, as retailers, writers and rivals speculate on how they will influence the Kiwi canon, and whether they can improve the hard scrabble life of authors.

That hope coincides with local readers' new-found fascination with indigenous stories, reflected in the success of titles ranging from Michael King's Penguin History of New Zealand to the sheepdog training guide I am a Working Dog.

"I think we are finding ourselves a really interesting little country at the moment; why are we here, where are we going, how's it all going to end up?" says ex-Metro editor Legat, who became publishing director at Random House two months ago.

She wants to entice Pacific and Asian New Zealanders into reading, as well as 20-somethings just a shade too old for the Harry Potter-led reading revival, and says "the ultimate goal" is to push New Zealand books on the overseas market.

"It's enormously competitive but we are interested in hearing new voices and there's an interesting dynamic to New Zealand fiction that means other countries, especially elsewhere in the Commonwealth, ought to be interested," she says.

"This is a really complicated little country, complicated in ways that just don't exist for other nations and I think we're stumbling sometimes towards something that's going to be fantastically interesting."

Macdonald became commissioning editor at Penguin Books in February last year after five years as editor of the New Zealand Listener and was responsible for one of this year's huge successes, the memoir of late Prime Minister David Lange, which has sold 45,000 copies since its August release.

Macdonald would love to see more local books sell well overseas, and that means having the confidence to present them to the world. "Without wishing to sound culturally cringey, some New Zealand writers are world class," he says, listing Maurice Gee, Patricia Grace and Jenny Patrick.

"They and many more are better at what they do than a lot more commercially successful overseas authors, but they operate in a much smaller market. There is no reason New Zealand can't produce relevant books with international appeal, but as ever, selling and marketing out of here is easier said than done."

The retailers hope Macdonald and Legat will bring a journalistic ear for the trends and a more open mind about supporting "popular fiction" by New Zealand writers, genres such as crime which are not highbrow, but hugely lucrative.

Whitcoulls' book promotions manager Dorothy Vinicombe says Macdonald's Lange book was "a really great example of great publishing; timely and relevant - and someone like Finlay had the contacts and authority to get David Lange's confidence".

As ex-journalists Macdonald and Legat "are in touch with what New Zealanders are thinking about - and that's invaluable in publishing," Vinicombe says.

Creative New Zealand provides support, including an annual Berlin Writers' Residency worth $65,000, domestic grants for local writers, travel grants for writers and publishers to attend foreign festivals, and a widely distributed CD-rom of publicity material profiling local writers for international buyers.

But publishers must profit to survive - and many players throughout the industry say little has changed since an October 2003 report from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage found many publishers believed New Zealand literature too "risky" to venture without help from a Government grant or cross-subsidy from a commercial hit.

Legat says part of the problem is the inevitably small size of the New Zealand market and "a little bit of indifference" - particularly in Australia - to New Zealand fiction.

It's not uncommon to find Katherine Mansfield or glossy Kiwi cookbooks in Australian or British bookshops but new and young New Zealand fiction authors do it hard.

Random House NZ has sold six local novels to overseas buyers in recent years, managing director Michael Moynahan says, but the company's most successful exports have been gardening and other non-fiction works, and a new edition of the 1927 American poet Max Ehrmann's Desiderata.

Random House novelist Sarah-Kate Lynch did the global thing herself. She engaged a British agent to sell her books to publishers around the world. Among them is Blessed Are the Cheesemakers, now a British bestseller which has been optioned by Working Title films, makers of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Whitcoulls senior category manager (books) Catherine Raynes says there is "no equivalent in New Zealand of [Australian sweeping-saga novelist] Bryce Courtenay, for example, but I'm sure there's one out there waiting to be found".

Given the chance, foreign readers love New Zealand writing when it is exotic and when it is universal, say the organisers of the biennial Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, Jill Rawnsley and Shona Gow.

"Sarah-Kate Lynch's books are enormously successful in Britain and elsewhere, and although she is a New Zealander, that's not always obvious from looking at the covers," says Rawnsley.

Gow adds Alan Duff's work is popular overseas for the opposite reason; "It's particularly New Zealand, and that has a real exotic appeal," Gow says.

At the 2007 festival, local authors will again share stages with international writers "just to reinforce that message that our own authors are absolutely up there", Rawnsley says, adding that this year's festival attracted a record 11,000 bookworms.

Rawnsley would like publishers to foster second-generation immigrant writers to reflect the changing ethnic flavour of New Zealand.

Legat will next year launch a new crime thriller set in Christchurch by local author Paul Cleave, a project which she hopes can harness the global fascination with the macabre. A passionate gardener, she would also like to see someone reinvent the gardening book.

Macdonald is working on the second book from euthanasia activist Lesley Martin and a new title on "the concept of happiness in a historical and cultural context" - a perfect example of the global potential.

"It is highly accessible and very relevant in today's consumerist frenzy, and is not specifically a New Zealand book. It just happens to be published here and is easily as good as, if not better than, a lot of what comes from the States or Europe."

New Zealanders buy $250-$300 million worth of books every year, and independent retailers have boomed in recent years, accounting for about one-third of sales.

The remaining two-thirds is split between Paper Plus and the once-dominant Whitcoulls, says Booksellers New Zealand chairwoman Doris Mousdale.

"I think New Zealand publishing has grown tremendously over the past 10 or 20 years. Presentation has improved hugely and some wonderful ideas are coming through," says Mousdale, book manager at music-based chain Real Groovy, which sells books in store and on its growing website.

"Twenty years ago, New Zealand fiction tended to be quite depressed. There was a trend for authors to write about themselves, living on farms or in isolation, but the new generation of writers is bringing in overseas experiences like Paula Morris' Hibiscus Coast, which talks about Auckland and Shanghai in intimate ways. That broader outlook is enormously appealing on the international scene."

Mousdale has a firm philosophy on enhancing the standing of local authors: "Why separate New Zealand writers on the bookshelves? Why not put them in the general fiction sections?

"New Zealand writing is of equal stature to anything overseas. [At Real Groovy] I mix them all in together, so you find Maurice Gee just a little further on from [Japanese author] Haruki Murakami."