University of Virginia Library

The process of publishing

Publishing, most simply put, is the issuing, usually for sale, of printed matter. As Dennis McEldowney describes it, the publisher 'selects and edits the text before it is printed and sells or otherwise distributes it after'. The publisher does not write the book, nor print it nor bind it, nor sell it to the reader, who is the publisher's ultimate customer. Without the publisher's presence these other activities would, however, be pointless. Even after excluding all of these activities, publishing encompasses a number of complex tasks. The publisher carries out the roles of financier, organiser, and go-between as part of the process by which the written work gets from its author to its reader. These tasks can be divided up according to the relationships the publisher forms with others who perform various actions on or around the author's manuscript, and with those who bring the published work to its eventual market. Some of the activities excluded from the following discussion are covered elsewhere in this guide.

     In order to 'prepare and issue (a book . . . etc.) for public sale' (as the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines 'publish'), there must first be a text. Whatever the impetus behind its genesis, a commissioned work or independently created, it has an author (or authors). Once the publisher has decided to publish a text, it becomes the object of attention of a number of the publisher's agents. These include all those people who work on the text or on the book which is to contain it: editor, designer, typesetter and printer. Formerly many of these people were employed within the office of the publisher, but increasingly they work independently of the publishing house, and are contracted to perform specific tasks. The publisher organises all of these: the preparation of the manuscript for printing, the production of the item by printers and binders, the provision of illustrations and covers, advertising and promotion, and the sale of the product to distributors and booksellers.

     Central to any consideration of the process of publishing is the fact that publishing is a business. All of the operations described above are financed by the publisher's capital. The publisher must spend most of this money before any return is received. The capital is advanced against a perceived market and therefore a return on its outlay: without a market for the published work, the publisher could not contemplate this financial risk. However, this discussion will concentrate on the editorial processes of publishing rather than the financial side, which remains to be written about in the New Zealand context. Some inkling of the issues may be gained from overseas publishers' accounts (e.g. Stanley Unwin's The Truth about Publishing , 1926) or surveys such as John Feather's History of British Publishing (1988), which devotes considerable discussion to the topics of copyright ('the cornerstone of publishing in a free market economy') and the commercial imperatives of marketing.

     What defines the direction of a particular publisher's activity could be described as the result of the tensions between an individual publisher's personal inclinations and the forces of business reality. What makes New Zealand publishing distinctive in this context is probably the level of influence of individuals, and small and medium-sized firms which have often prevailed and had an effect disproportionate to their size as the multinational behemoths fragmented, disestablished, regrouped and refocused around and amongst them. This would not have happened to the same degree in a larger pond.

     Outlines from a New Zealand perspective of the process of publishing are to be found in some of the handbooks which have been produced for writers and editors, including:
     Arnold Wall, A Reed Deskbook for Writers (1973)
     Anna Rogers, Write and Be Published (1994)
      First Edition (1993, rev. ed. 1995)
      Write, Edit, Print (1997)

Publishers' accounts of the process are to be found mainly in the autobiographical writings of those involved, including:

     Charles Brasch, Indirections (1980)
     Denis Glover, Hot Water Sailor & Landlubber Ho! (1981)
     Phoebe Meikle, Accidental Life (1994)
     Dennis McEldowney, Then and There (1995)
     A.W. Reed, Books are My Business (1966)
     Ray Richards, 'The man in the middle' (1974)

Author and publisher

The first publishing in New Zealand represents a primitive sort of commissioning process. The Church Missionary Society trained the printer William Colenso and sent him to New Zealand; the missionary William Williams was charged with preparing the copy for the first publications, Mäori translations of Scripture. The few earlier publications created outside New Zealand but intended for circulation in New Zealand had similarly been generated or commissioned by their publishers. The New Zealand Company's propaganda exhorting settlement in the antipodean Brighter Britain was also a publishing programme entirely instigated by the publishing organisation.

     The pattern of publishing in the early years of European settlement was for an author to pay for the issue of a work, and most of these works were political and religious pamphlets. Despite the presence on the title page or elsewhere of a printer's or perhaps a bookseller's imprint, this was essentially self-publishing. McEldowney identifies the first memorable locally-published book as F.E. Maning's Old New Zealand (1863) issued in Auckland by Creighton and Scales, proprietors of the Southern Cross newspaper, who evidently already saw a New Zealand market for tales of the 'Good Old Times', as Maning's subtitle put it. A parallel edition was issued for another market by Smith, Elder in London.

     By the mid 19th century in Britain an author's contract with a publisher might involve the outright sale of the copyright, or a profit-sharing arrangement. The Copyright Act 1843 had strengthened authors' interests, and in 1887 the Berne Convention on Copyright gave both publishers and authors further protection. The author's contract determines the details of the commercial relationship between author and publisher, defines the responsibilities of both parties in particular areas, and is intended to protect both parties.

     If a work is commissioned, the publisher sets the parameters: the subject and its treatment, length, general style (in terms of the audience), inclusion of illustrations and other matter such as appendices, bibliography, and indexes. In any case author and publisher sign an agreement setting deadlines, the author's responsibilities (for instance, involvement in proofreading), the degree of editorial control to be exercised by the publisher, and the author's remuneration—royalty payments, advances against royalties, or a lump sum or other agreement. The contract also normally addresses the extent to which the author takes responsibility for defamation or breach of copyright, whether the author will offer an option on future work, and the conditions under which the contract may be terminated by either party.

     By the turn of the century Whitcombe & Tombs had a standard printed agreement along these lines which they asked their authors to sign, offering a royalty of 10% or more on the retail price, and giving themselves a free hand to make most of the editorial decisions. This contract was still being used six decades later, although some authors struck out the latter clause. Authors' contracts now include clauses to cover new technological and cultural developments, such as motion picture rights and electronic publication options. These days a publisher may claim a greater degree of control than previously, but is also likely to be making a significantly larger investment in the marketing of a book. Most publishers offer a standard contract but are usually willing to negotiate terms. Standard author contracts are described by Anna Rogers (1994) and in First Edition (1995). The New Zealand Society of Authors provides its members with a minimum terms agreement and an annotated model contract. See also A.W. Reed's address to PEN, The Author Publisher Relationship (1946) and his section on contracts in Stuart Perry's The New Zealand Writer's Handbook (1952a).

     An author may employ a literary agent to carry out contractual negotiations. The agent receives a percentage of the author's royalty. New Zealand's first formally constituted literary agency was Ray Richards, formerly of A.H. & A.W. Reed, who set up his agency in 1976. Although literary agents have not yet risen in New Zealand to the power and prominence they hold in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, a relatively small number of commercially successful and therefore sought-after authors have found it worth their while to employ the bargaining skills of a professional in their dealings with the larger New Zealand publishing houses, and an agent is a necessity for entrée to overseas publishing contracts. First Edition lists 11 of the New Zealand agencies of various kinds in 1995, including publishing consultants and book packaging services, mostly established during the mid 1980s.

     Book packagers solicit manuscripts to fit concepts that are marketable to a publisher, usually as all-inclusive packages—commissioned, edited, designed, illustrated and sometimes even printed. The packager takes care of all dealings with the publisher, and the author's agreement (including royalties) is with the packager. Publishing consultants provide another kind of agency for both authors and publishers, offering assessment of manuscripts to publishers, assessing authors' drafts and assisting in bringing manuscripts to a publishable standard before they are offered to a publisher. To a degree these agencies have made redundant the role of the publisher's reader, potentially a position of considerable influence with the power to shape a list and determine the progress of an author's career (though in New Zealand probably not a significant force). In non-fiction publishing, the reader is usually a specialist outside the world of publishing. The rise of literary agents in New Zealand and their effect on the industry are discussed in articles by Jandene Dyson and Lesley Hanes in Endnotes (1995).

     In order to deal more effectively with such issues as contracts and remuneration, authors have formed themselves into societies to promote their common interests. Writers' organisations are described briefly in E.C. Simpson's A Survey of the Arts in New Zealand (1961) and in Art Facts (N. Scotts et al., 1987).

     The short-lived Fellowship of New Zealand Writers, founded in 1929 by Pat Lawlor, Johannes Andersen, A.E. Currie and others is described by Rachel Barrowman in The Turnbull (1995). Some of the Fellowship's records are to be found in the papers of its founders at the Alexander Turnbull Library. Soon after, the New Zealand Centre of the international writers' organisation PEN was founded in 1934 by Lawlor, and was the organising force behind the first New Zealand Authors' Week in 1936. The Authors' Week Committee produced occasional bulletins and a publication, Annals of New Zealand Literature , commemorating the Week itself, which was held during March 1936. Subsequent PEN publications for New Zealand have been Alan Mulgan's Literature and Authorship in New Zealand (a lyrical overview which now smacks strongly of colonial cringe, published in London by Allen & Unwin for PEN in 1946) and Perry (1952a). Now the New Zealand Society of Authors, the organisation produces a regular bulletin (originally the PEN Gazette and now The New Zealand Author ). Through energetic lobbying it was instrumental in the setting up of the State Literary Fund in 1946 and the Authors' Fund in 1973, and continues to attempt to keep state agencies and other non-authors toeing the line.

     Other writers' societies include the New Zealand Women Writers' Society, formed in 1932 and initially chaired by the ubiquitous Pat (for Patrick) Lawlor, which produced a Bulletin from 1951 until its demise in 1991. It is described by Anne Else in Women Together (1993) and its records are in the Alexander Turnbull Library. Two publications were produced to celebrate the Society's 50th jubilee in 1982: Women Writers of NZ 1932-1982 (a history and anthology by Margaret Hayward and Joy Cowley), and History of the New Zealand Women Writers' Society (by Thelma France et al., 1984). Other organisations have been the Penwomen's Club, New Zealand (formed 1925) and Ngä Puna Waihenga, the New Zealand Mäori artists' and writers' society, founded in 1973. The New Zealand Writer's Guild, most of whose members are radio and television scriptwriters, is lively and active.

     New Zealand's high per capita output of books suggests it has a correspondingly high population of authors. An indication of the numbers might be gained from an analysis of New Zealand Authors' Fund returns. The Fund, which compensates authors for sales lost through library lending, is described in an article by J.P. Sage in New Zealand Libraries (1987). In 1984-85, according to a survey by Andrea Williamson, 850 authors were registered with the Fund (although only about 20% identified themselves as full-time writers). In 1995 the Fund made payments to 1,332 authors for 4,844 titles. Those afflicted with the need to be published may attend the evening classes and short courses in creative writing which are a feature of university extension programmes and other adult educational institutions, for example the WEA. Polytechnics offer journalism studies, and Victoria University of Wellington's creative writing course, founded in 1975, was the first of a number of tertiary courses and has produced some notably high profile writers. The effects of individual courses on writing styles, and the success or otherwise of their graduates in getting their work published, has yet to be studied. Bill Manhire's course at Victoria is documented in Mutes and Earthquakes (1997).

     Aside from the work of the authors' societies such as PEN, practical guides for writers who want their work published have appeared from time to time, covering topics from manuscript preparation to publishers' contracts and proofreading. Changing times and conditions might be examined by a comparison of these over the decades. Daphne Double's New Zealand Writers' and Publishers' Yearbook did not reappear after its 1969 debut. Others include the works by Arnold Wall (1973), Anna Rogers (1994) and John Parsons's New Zealand Writer's Handbook (first issued in 1990, most recent edition 1994). A more specialised guide is Gavin McLean's Local History (1992).

     Authors' papers and their accounts of their dealings with publishers are also a rich source of information. Noel Hilliard contributed his views on 'Authorship in New Zealand' to the 1973 Book Council seminar, The Changing Shape of Books (1974). Peter Gibbons notes in his chapter on non-fiction in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English that M.H. Holcroft's autobiographies offer much detail on the vicissitudes of authorship and its remuneration. Gibbons's thesis on J.C. Andersen (1992) offers a wealth of information relevant to scholarly publication in Andersen's era. Other biographical and autobiographical sources worth investigating for this topic are:

     Robin Dudding (ed.), Beginnings (1980)
     Frank Sargeson, Sargeson (1981)
     Denys Trussell, Fairburn (1984)
     Lynley Hood, Sylvia! (1988)
     Janet Frame, An Autobiography (1989)
     Ross Galbreath, Walter Buller (1989)
     Lauris Edmond, An Autobiography (1994)
     Michael King, Frank Sargeson (1995)
     Keith Ovenden, A Fighting Withdrawal [Dan Davin] (1996)
     Anthony Dreaver, An Eye for Country [Leslie Adkin] (1997)
     Ian Richards, To Bed at Noon [Maurice Duggan] (1997)

Encouragement to publish

Financial incentives to publishers to instigate the risky and expensive process involved in producing a book are sometimes difficult to separate from incentives to authors to produce a text in the first place. (Incentives and awards for writers are discussed in Chapter 5 in the section on 'Recognition and rewards of success'.) McEldowney asserts that—with some notable exceptions—until 1960 most publishing in New Zealand had not become fully independent, relying to some degree on assistance from other commercial activities or the sponsorship of booksellers, printers and institutions. For some types of publication, notably poetry and serious non-fiction, that remains the case, and the largest and most important source of financial assistance to publishing in New Zealand has always been government subsidy.

     A.G. Bagnall notes in his introduction to the New Zealand National Bibliography , vol.1 (1980), the existence of much government sponsored and supported publication in the records of the Colonial Secretary, a source he describes as 'frequently tapped but by no means exhausted'. He narrates in some detail one early instance of government assistance to publishing, involving the government as publisher as well as sponsor: John White's Ancient History of the Maori (1887-90) was a mixed experience for all parties. T.F. Cheeseman's Manual of the New Zealand Flora (1906), Robert McNab's Historical Records of New Zealand (1908-14), T.M. Hocken's Bibliography (1909), James Cowan's New Zealand Wars (1922-23) and, from the 1920s, a whole raft of Dominion Museum Bulletins by Elsdon Best are further large scale, government-assisted publications. Major initiatives came with the programme of the first Labour government which took office in 1935. These included a series of centennial surveys (published by the Department of Internal Affairs) and a small number of grants to other commemorative publishing projects. J.W. Heenan, Undersecretary for Internal Affairs, used a discretionary fund to assist some other publication projects. Discretion probably exacerbated the inevitable backbiting unleashed among the subsidised and unsubsidised, including those who disapproved in principle. These early efforts are described by Rachel Barrowman in 'Culture-organising' (1996). The centennial surveys are described in a research essay by A.J. Booker (1983) and in the autobiographical writings of their editor, E.H. McCormick ( An Absurd Ambition , 1996). Internal Affairs also set up a War History branch which embarked on a mammoth publication programme.

     Heenan eventually gave way to pressure from PEN and others to set up the State Literary Fund in 1946. His reservations about the difficulty of creating an authority capable of keeping all parties happy in a world renowned for the number and vociferousness of what he described as its 'mutually intolerant cliques' were well founded and the Fund has a lively history. A rather desiccated summary of its early activities, including a useful list of grants, is The New Zealand Literary Fund, 1946-70 (1970), and statistical information on grants from 1973 to 1986 appears in Art Facts (Scotts et al., 1987). From the outset the Fund's primary purpose was to give 'grants towards publishing costs' and it restricted itself to publications judged to be of literary merit—largely fiction, poetry and literary periodicals—and excluding local histories, for which assistance was deemed to be available under the provisions of the Municipal Corporations and Counties Acts. Manuscripts were to be submitted to the Fund's Advisory Committee by publishers, not authors. O.St J. Vennell's Patronage and New Zealand Literature (1977) surveys attitudes to the Fund and makes some recommendations for its future resourcing and direction.

     By 1985, the proportion of its grants which the Fund gave to publishers had fallen from 60% to 20%, a matter on which Bridget Williams animadverts in 'Publishing and the Literary Fund' (1986). In 1988 the Fund and its Advisory Committee joined the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, becoming the Council's Literature Programme and Literature Committee. It further metamorphosed in 1995 with the rebranding of the Council's funding body as Creative New Zealand. The Literature Committee simply disappeared, without warning to its members. In 1993 the Council published a Research Report on the Literature Programme's Publishers' Survey , noting that 25% of its funding was in grants to publishers, and analysing 25 publishers' responses. In 1996 grants to book publishing fell to $18,000 from the previous year's $50,000 and Creative New Zealand set up a Task Force for Language and Literature to review its policies. Some recent events are described by Andrew Mason in Quote Unquote (1996).

     The government also assists publishers through annual grants made by the Historical Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs towards the publication of historical works, countering one of the biases of the Literary Fund. The Historical Branch also co-publishes many of the departmental and other organisational histories commissioned through its agency. Another example of this kind of indirect government subsidy is the publication of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography by the Department of Internal Affairs jointly with a commercial publisher (described in 1995 by Bridget Williams). The Mäori Purposes Fund Board (and its predecessors) has made substantial contributions to the Polynesian Society and other publishers; centennial grants in 1940 and the sesquicentennial contributions of the 1990 Commission are other government sources of funding to assist publication. Details are to be found in agencies' reports in the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives .

     Learned societies or institutions may also consider subsidising publication of books otherwise commercially unfeasible. Companies wanting to raise a monument to their history or to produce a gift for presentation may commission and fund publications to which they may offer a greater or lesser degree of editorial control. Substantial publications might appear in parts, in consecutive issues of journals such as the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute (later the Royal Society of New Zealand) or the Journal of the Polynesian Society , occasionally being reprinted as monographs. For many years this was the only way to get scholarly non-fiction published in New Zealand. Accounts are to be found in C.A. Fleming's Science, Settlers and Scholars (1987) and M.P.K. Sorrenson's Manifest Duty (1992). Mäori-language publications have relied heavily on subsidy, from H.W. Williams's Dictionary (1917) and Bibliography (1924) to the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography 's Mäori-language series, Ngä Tängata Taumata Rau (1990-). Funding options for small and independent publishers are discussed by Janet Pascoe in Endnotes (1996).

Restrictions to publishing

Aside from the topic of censorship, little focus has been devoted to forces—apart from the market—which restrict the publisher's freedom of action. Factors discouraging publication may include emergency legislation, such as restrictions on paper or other supplies in wartime. Nancy M. Taylor discusses censorship for reasons of national security and other World War II issues in The Home Front (1986). Some grades of paper were not unduly restricted: some British publishers, for example Penguin Books, found it convenient to print some of their titles for the local market in New Zealand during wartime.

     Legal restrictions, including libel and defamation laws, and, recently, privacy legislation, may restrict the publisher's actions. A controversial or sensitive text will be subjected to legal opinion and the author's contract will set out the parties' responsibilities. General guidance for authors and publishers to the libel, defamation and privacy legislation is found in some detail in Write, Edit, Print (1997).

     In Censored (1989), Paul Christoffel gives a brief historical treatment of the issue, noting that censorship in application to publishing in New Zealand has largely related to imported material. Most publishers have practised self-censorship. Perry's The Indecent Publications Tribunal (1965) notes the lack of any New Zealand legal text on the topic of 'literary censorship on moral grounds' and describes New Zealand's experimental 'expert tribunal', listing its decisions from 1963. There is no general study of the suppression of publications for political reasons. Taylor discusses wartime censorship in some detail, and Rachel Barrowman describes the case of the left-wing periodical Tomorrow in A Popular Vision (1991).

     The Copyright Act 1994 protects the holder's rights to the intellectual property contained in the creation of a literary work (in the broadest sense); the publisher's rights in the creation of an edition of a work are also protected. Plagiarism, if detected, may lead to legal proceedings and the destruction of the publication. The requirement that publishers must deposit three copies of each publication with the Legal Deposit Office of the National Library of New Zealand, although sometimes considered onerous, is unlikely in practice to affect the decision to publish. New Zealand is a signatory to the Berne Convention and is thus affected by any amendment to its provisions. Most recently the New Zealand book trade has been concerned about the effect of changes to the Convention allowing individual nations to determine their own policies on parallel importing. Australian legislation undermining publishers' traditional distribution monopolies was of particular concern. Submissions by book trade organisations on the Copyright Bill succeeded in having the status quo preserved for New Zealand in the 1994 Act. (A tacit agreement between publishers and booksellers enables a small number of books to evade restriction.)

     In 1988 the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand set up Copyright Licensing Ltd to negotiate licences for reprographic rights with educational institutions on behalf of publishers and authors, to collect fees locally and distribute income from overseas rights organisations to New Zealand rights holders. In 1996 the company collected over $700,000 and received over $100,000 from overseas reproduction rights organisations for distribution to local rights holders.

     Until the better-selling New Zealand authors could be persuaded that they might be equally well served by a local publisher as by their traditional London imprints, territorial rights were an issue affecting New Zealand writers rather than publishers. Publishers certainly did not expect their books to attain significant sales in other territories. For works for which an overseas market was conceivable, they might enter into a joint publishing arrangement with a British firm. Australasian or colonial rights might or might not be included, but from 1947 until the demise of the British Commonwealth Market Agreement in 1976, the carving up of the global trade in English language books between Britain and North America meant that a book by a New Zealand author published by an American publisher might never appear in bookshops in this country, and the opening up of the market has in effect made little difference to book distribution. The key effect of the closed market on New Zealand publishing is probably overall a positive one: multinational publishers operating in New Zealand who were taking advantage of their territorial monopolies may have felt philanthropic inclinations—or more likely discerned a marketing opportunity—and set up local publishing operations which have been critical to the development of the industry, and to New Zealand literature.

The publisher's tasks

Following delivery of the manuscript, the publisher goes about the business of getting it into print. Costings are prepared and marketing decisions are also made at this point. Some of the steps in this process are briefly described in handbooks such as Rogers (1994) and in more detail in Write, Edit, Print (1997). Most of these activities are now contracted out to agents beyond the publishing house, although the editor is often on the publisher's permanent staff.

Editorial tasks

Publishers generally have a critical input into the shaping of drafts before and after they agree to publish a manuscript. A reader or an editor will often, in consultation with an author, suggest and guide the recasting of a work and seek to find a mutually acceptable solution. The title 'editor' covers a range of activities, and a book will often have several editors. At the top of the pecking order is the commissioning editor, often designated Publisher, the one with the power to accept or decline. An important part of the role of this editor is to represent the publisher's interests to the author, and the author's interests to the publisher. There is an inevitable tension here, especially with small firms where the editor is in fact the publisher (though publishers may go to great lengths to nurture their stable of authors, in the small world of New Zealand publishing occasional allegations of unprofessionalism and broken, formerly warm friendships attest to the difficulties). In larger companies, the editor is often cast in the role of author's champion. The commissioning editor may 'structurally' edit the work, a time-consuming process which should ideally be carried out in close collaboration with the author; or may entrust the task to a more junior in-house, or increasingly a freelance, editor. ('Face to face—Ray Richards on Barry Crump' (1996) spills the beans on one of New Zealand's popular publishing successes.) Finally, every book requires the attention of a copy-editor.

     At the very least, the editor is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript which goes to typesetting is as correct in terms of factual detail (if that is appropriate), spelling and grammar as it is possible to make it within the constraints of time and budget allocated to the project; and ensuring consistency, or adapting the author's conventions to follow the publisher's house style, where the publisher considers this to be necessary or appropriate. A.H. & A.W. Reed's house style takes up three pages of the Reed Deskbook for Writers (1973), compiled by Reed's editor Group Captain Arnold Wall (not to be confused with his father, Professor Arnold Wall), specifying styles for punctuation, abbreviations, dates, numbers, capitalisation, quotations, and so on. Many publishers consider that internal consistency of a manuscript is usually sufficient, but may invoke the conventions of a particular style manual for certain features or elements of a work, such as bibliographies or proper names. In the case of multi-author works (such as the present one), a style manual becomes a more central issue.

     Apart from in-house style sheets—often unpublished or semi-published, such as Auckland University Press's The Preparation and Style of Manuscripts (4th ed. 1985)—publishers make use of a variety of more or less well-known manuals to ensure consistency within or between publications. Most of these derive from large overseas publishing firms, for example Hart's Rules (Oxford University Press), Judith Butcher's Copy-editing (Cambridge University Press), or the Chicago Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press). G.R. Hutcheson gives 'Some hints on copy and layout' in H.B. & J.'s Handbook (1938), although as a printer he is most concerned with clarity of instructions and design considerations. The only substantial New Zealand-published style manual was until recently The New Zealand Government Printing Office Style Book , first issued in 1958 and revised several times. A third edition appeared in 1981. It resurfaced in 1991 as The New Zealand Style Book and in its most recent incarnation is simply The Style Book (revised and expanded by D. Wallace and J. Hughes, 1995). Earlier issues carried an 'Official Section' devoted to the details of legislative publishing, and particular attention was given to the correct names of statutory bodies. A study of the various editions of this manual would also reveal interesting trends in the treatment of things characteristically New Zealand. Its current contents include guidance on punctuation, spelling, capitals, italics, abbreviations and symbols, measurement, nonsexist language and common confusions. Write, Edit, Print (1997), the most substantial style manual to be issued in New Zealand, is based on the conventions of the Australian Government Publishing Service Style Manual (5th ed. 1994), with substantial New Zealand input. Non-discriminatory language is one of its features, and it includes considerable practical detail on the making of books, from copy preparation to typesetting and printing.

Design and typography

Design includes format, choice of typeface, page layout, illustrations, and the design of the book jacket. One designer may be responsible for all parts of a book, but more frequently the cover will be designed separately (at a notably higher rate). The designer, whether freelance or in-house, is briefed by the editor chiefly responsible for the book. To a certain extent design decisions may be based on a house 'look'. Marketing considerations are also relevant here. Any discussion of the design aspects of publications is difficult to separate from considerations of typography relating to printing and production (see Chapter 2). Many amateurs and enthusiasts have taken an interest in this side of publication, and anyone who has ever dabbled in self-or desktop publishing appears to swiftly form firm opinions on typographical topics, particularly regarding legibility. Printers and designers notable for their influence in New Zealand include R. Coupland Harding; Denis Glover—whose correspondence with Oxford printer John Johnson is reproduced by D.F. McKenzie (1987)—Bob Lowry and others at the Caxton Press; and the historian J.C. Beaglehole. Many books are designed in-house and little study has been devoted to any development of a specifically New Zealand style. Dennis McEldowney attempted a survey of New Zealand trends in 'The typographical obsession' (1980). The recently instituted GP Print Book Design Awards (replacing the New Zealand Book Awards Production category—introduced to focus on design, but too broad in its criteria to accomplish this very successfully) offer its judge an opportunity to air opinions on design in book production. The thoughts of the first judge of the awards (Lindsay Missen) were published in 1997.

     In the days of hot lead, typesetting was an integral part of the printer's establishment (and a printer's house style was often as influential as a publisher's). With the shift to photosetting after World War II, a number of independent firms were established, and to get the best prices publishers often contracted typesetting and printing separately. The general availability of cheap professional-standard 'desktop' typesetting systems since the late 1980s, and the provision of manuscripts on computer disk, has seen much typesetting work carried out in-house.

     Proofing is usually a joint responsibility of author and publisher, defined in the author's contract. The careful reader may suspect that in many mass-market titles these days both parties have abdicated their responsibility and dispensed with this step altogether—or left it to the computer spell-check. The publisher's production editor will be responsible for checking the technical details of proofs—the grid, margins, folios, widows, orphans and the other arcana of page design. Instructions on proofreading are included in the style manuals cited earlier, and a rare and interesting historical glimpse into one house's practices is to be found in W.A. Glue's History of the Government Printing Office (1966).

     The relationship between publisher and printer is crucial to the quality of the finished product. A number of New Zealand publishers have also been printers (for example Caxton, Whitcombe & Tombs, and the Government Printer). Since the 1970s much printing of New Zealand titles has taken place overseas, particularly in Southeast Asia, for reasons of economics (especially in colour printing), quality assurance and the capacity to produce large casebound books or perform complex printing jobs. The arm's length nature of the relationship with an overseas printer obviously restricts communication and control and usually the delivery of Ozalids or dyelines provides the last opportunity for the publisher to rectify errors. The Industries Development Commission reported in 1978 on an appeal by the New Zealand Printing Industry Federation which wished to manufacture a greater proportion of New Zealand-published books ( Book Production Inquiry , 1978), finding that restrictive tariffs on overseas printing would be unlikely to help, and would also contravene the Unesco Florence Agreement on the importation of educational, scientific and cultural materials (1952) to which New Zealand was a signatory. The Commission suggested that printers and publishers should cooperate to develop a small group of specialist manufacturers. Publishers' submissions to the Commission suggested they were not unhappy with the status quo. Recently local printers have been able to offer more competitive terms and the advantage of proximity is clearly appreciated by many publishers, whether or not the quality of the printed product has any bearing on a book's sales.

Education and training

Most skills in book production came directly to New Zealand from Europe, especially from the United Kingdom. Later immigration of skilled tradespeople from Australia also had an influence, and the nature and extent of these importations and their effect on the development of a local publishing practice requires more extensive study. Training for publishers has traditionally been 'on the job', as tyro editorial staff worked their way up to positions of greater influence and responsibility. New Zealand publishers have come from a variety of backgrounds, including bookselling, printing, journalism, librarianship and accountancy, and have imported relevant skills and training. The arrival of the multinational publishing firms brought with it some trained and experienced staff, and occasional opportunities for reciprocal exchanges with other offices, often ground for the fertilisation of new ideas. More recently, formal training has been available from the Australian Book Publishers' Association, and since 1993 a one-year full-time course has been offered at Whitireia Community Polytechnic in Porirua. The scope of this course is indicated in its publication First Edition (1993, rev. ed. 1995) and its success may be gauged by the fact that a high proportion of its graduates have quickly found employment in the publishing industry. The Book Publishers Association of New Zealand also runs occasional seminars through its Local Publishing Forums.

     Training for editors is also available in a variety of night school, continuing education and WEA contexts; and the journalism courses offered by the University of Canterbury, Wellington Polytechnic and elsewhere include training in many of the skills of book publishing. A number of courses are listed in First Edition .

Publishers' organisations

Publishers have always worked together to a certain degree, to protect their common interests and those of other branches of the book trade, and to ensure their survival to compete against each other. The earliest formal publishers' organisation to be established in New Zealand was the British Book Publishers Representatives Association (BPRA), formed in the 1950s. In 1962 the New Zealand Book Publishers Association was created at a meeting in Wellington attended by 15 representatives of the commercial and university publishing houses, and a delegate from the Mäori Purposes Fund Board. Albion Wright of the Pegasus Press, Christchurch, was elected first president. A small council employed a Wellington accountant part-time as secretary.

     The BPRA and the NZBPA combined in 1977 to become the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand (BPANZ). The organisation moved to Auckland and Ray Richards, who had recently left Reeds, became its secretary. Gerard Reid was appointed the full-time director of the expanding association from 1979. However, in the later 1980s the economic downturn caused publishers to re-examine their expenditure on Association membership, for some members a hefty sum, as subscription levels rose with turn-over.

     For a number of years booksellers' and publishers' organisations had worked closely together, and by the mid-1980s were holding conferences at the same time, although separately. The preference of a number of publishers for the booksellers' organisation as a marketing body, rather than the BPANZ, was one of the factors, along with a reduction in membership charges, which led to the latter's retrenchment and the closure of its office in 1990. The BPANZ now operates from the office of Copyright Licensing Ltd (jointly owned by the BPANZ and the New Zealand Society of Authors). Combined book trade conferences have been held since the 1980s and Booksellers New Zealand, the flourishing booksellers' trade organisation, began to include publisher members in 1991.

     Other organisations include the New Zealand Book Trade Organisation, set up in 1968 by representatives of the NZBPA and the Booksellers' Association to promote their general interests, and now defunct. It issued The Booksell Report , a marketing, sales and promotions newsletter, from 1983 to 1986. The New Zealand Book Council was established in 1972 with a more general membership of those who have an interest in books. Brief notes on the trade organisations are to be found in Gordon Tait's summary of the New Zealand industry in The Book Trade of the World (1976) and in Scotts (1987).

     A brief history of the BPANZ appears in its newsletter The Publisher (no.12, 1995). The draft objects of the original NZBPA and the minutes of its first meeting are held at the Alexander Turnbull Library, and notes on its formation appear in Double (1969). The Association publishes a newsletter, entitled The Publisher since March 1994, formerly New Zealand Publishing News (1977-93). A useful discussion of the issues relating to booksellers' and publishers' organisations is in Part 4 of Anna and Max Rogers's Turning the Pages (1993).

     Three groups of the BPANZ's records, covering the years from 1970 to 1991, are held in the Turnbull Library's manuscripts collections. Current records are held by the Association. Data on the history of publishing, its economics and the issues it faces are to be found there. The records include minutes of council meetings, market research (especially of the educational market), statistical surveys of the industry, turnover information, annual conference records, material on major issues such as discounting, copyright, GST, censorship, and labour relations, as well as membership lists, and information on the size of the industry, personnel, and sales. They are a vital—and almost untapped—source for any serious study of the recent history of the New Zealand publishing industry. Lists of members (currently numbering about 70) appear from time to time in The Publisher .

Trade publications

Many trade publications are essentially ephemeral in nature. This makes them hard to find, but they are a central documentary source for any study of the publishing business. Substantial exceptions are the annual volumes of New Zealand Books in Print , issued under varying imprints from 1957. Catalogues issued by publishers, usually annually and usually midway through the publishing year, include announcements of recent titles, advance notices of new publications, and often a comprehensive backlist. Intended to be circulated to the trade, and in limited quantities for public consumption, their obsolescent character means that they are often discarded, even by their publishers. Some of those that have survived may have been conserved for extraneous reasons: the Turnbull Library catalogue lists a few, including A Caxton Catalogue (1938), and some Reed and Whitcombe & Tombs catalogues, but the best collections are probably to be found in library acquisition departments. Government organisations are more likely than commercial publishers to issue consolidated lists or bibliographies of their publications (for example Elaine Marland and Keith Pickens's NZCER, 1934-84 , 1985), although Reeds proudly included a comprehensive listing of their output in their two house histories. Whitcombes and Reeds also issued regular newsletters, Whitcombes from the 1930s until about 1970 under the title Books of Today . A trade journal, the Book Trade Monthly , appeared between 1979 and 1983 under various titles, latterly as the New Zealand Bookseller and Publisher . Some larger publishers have regularly or occasionally produced in-house newsletters: Longman Paul's Scuttle Butt is an example. Even more evanescent are publishers' advertisements, fliers, book promotions, and press releases, but any of these which can be found will provide evidence of value to the study of publishing.

Economics of publishing

'Publishing is a paradoxical business', remarked the author of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research's report on the printing and publishing industry, H.M. Oliver, in 1976. Publishers saw themselves as a profession rather than merely a business enterprise, she noted, and the principal criterion of success might not necessarily be profitability. However there is no doubt that at a time of skyrocketing paper prices and other costs Stanley Unwin's apophthegm—that a publisher's first duty is to remain solvent—was foremost in their minds. The average salary of someone working in publishing was something like $3,000, Oliver remarked; the desirable print run for general books was probably close to 5,000 copies. The average output of established publishing houses was between 10 and 50 titles per annum, but four publishers of the 18 surveyed produced 600 titles between them, Reeds accounting for about half of these. Publishers expected to make a profit on the sale of the final 25% of an edition—an optimistic estimate compared with Ray Richards's in 1973, when he said that only the last 15% of the run would provide any return on the publisher's investment.

     Ten years later, according to the New Zealand Official Yearbook , the average print run of a general book was much the same, having peaked somewhere in the early 1980s, and was declining. Three hundred publishers were now thought to be active, but only about 100 were specialist book importers or publishers. By 1995 the average print run was down to 3,000 copies and by 1996 it was thought to be approaching 2,000. The Yearbook repeated the same statistics for the number of active publishers, although First Edition in 1995 noted a Statistics Department return of 165 (but was able to identify only 64 by name).

     These snapshots of some of the data relating to economic factors in publishing are notable for how much remains outside the frame. The Yearbook noted in 1990 that 'no thorough studies have been conducted of the book industry' and collected most of its information from the BPANZ. Official statistics on book production are buried in the Census of Manufacturing in conflated returns for Printing and Publishing. Apart from figures collected by the BPANZ and its predecessors and other professional bodies and published in trade newsletters, there is a lack of available data. BPANZ representations to the Statistics Department over a period of years for more meaningful categorisation of returns appear to have been unavailing. The book trade itself has generally been too busy to spend much time computing or compiling the figures of interest to the student of the economics of New Zealand publishing. Nevertheless publishers in unguarded moments have occasionally let slip useful and revealing details.

     Ray Richards's frank analysis of the New Zealand publishing situation in 1973 ('The man in the middle', 1974) identifies many of the issues central to a study of the New Zealand publishing industry in the era before the advent of the multinational enterprises had really made itself felt. He identifies a number of causes of publishing failure, not neglecting the crucial luck factor, sometimes called Publisher's Flair (or Nose). In the 'small-market, restricted-interest situation' that is the New Zealand book world, he stresses the importance of a strong backlist, and notes the inflation of the economic edition of a book from 1,000 copies in the 1930s to 4,000 in the 1970s. Summaries of statistics from 13 BPANZ members are appended. Any similar picture for later years must be pieced together from fragmentary sources.

     Publishing in New Zealand has sprung from a variety of structures. In earlier years family firms predominated, although they might go elsewhere for additional capital to facilitate expansion. Reeds, for instance, expanded by offering shares to a limited number of directors, staff, booksellers and authors in 1961. Sources of capital for firms may be private investors, a parent institution, a parent company or business group. In recent years the ownership of companies may have changed several times, through takeovers and mergers. The desire of a business conglomerate to divest itself of units not considered to be part of its 'core business' is a current trend which has already had some repercussions in New Zealand. Company structure will depend largely on its funding base and type.

     Information on book sales analysis, the relative turnover of titles from a publisher's backlist and frontlist, comparative sales of overseas and New Zealand titles, overseas sales of books and rights, trade and specialist sales, and analyses of market segments are to be found in publishers' files. Overall statistics for the trade appear intermittently in a variety of sources. Some of these are identified in the section on book buying in Chapter 4 of this guide. W.B. Sutch contributed 'An economic survey' to R.A. McKay's History of Printing in New Zealand (1940), and Alan Mulgan expressed his opinions in his 1946 survey. The only comprehensive census of book publishers, distributors and sellers was conducted in 1987. Some of its results are summarised in the Official Yearbook for 1990.

     A Unesco survey from 1982, An International Survey of Book Production During the Last Decades , records New Zealand book production statistics from 1949 to 1978, during which period New Zealand's annual book production rose from 277 to 2,079 titles. It appears to be unique as a comparative study. Oliver (1976) includes BPANZ statistics for 1970-74. Average edition size in 1973-74 was 7,430 copies, but no analysis enables this to be broken down into educational and other titles, backlist or new publications. Publishers' cost structures are, however, discussed, a rarer event. Trends in the demand for skilled labour were examined by the Labour Department in a brief survey, Printing and Publishing Industry , in 1984. Examination of Journalists' Union and Editors' Union awards and activities would make an interesting study. First Edition (1995) contains a section on book trade statistics which includes a publisher's cost breakdown (sourced to the Book Trade Conference), and a book costing—the formula by which a publisher checks the economic feasibility of issuing a title at a planned retail price (the example given would not see publication).

     The economic history of individual firms may be found in their records. Studies of individual companies (see the section following) provide some financial data but are unlikely to include balance sheets. In the case of active businesses, information on costing, discount structures, profit margins and financial management remains commercially sensitive and is likely to be kept confidential.