Le Quesnoy authority and author Christopher Pugsley features on TV3 this Anzac Day

The taking of Le Quesnoy by Kiwi troops in the dying days of the First World War will feature in a new documentary on TV3 on Anzac Day.

Author Christopher Pugsley features in the documentary, to screen at 7.30 a.m. this Saturday 25 April (and from 8.30 a.m. on TV3+1).

Pugsley's dynamic book on the taking of the French town, Le Quesnoy 1918, was published in an updated edition in March.

Anzac Day celebrations this year have been severely curtailed by restrictions in place to limit the spread of Covid-19.

Broadcast and online coverage will therefore be ever more vital. 

Christopher has offered his reflections on the Anzac Day in a time of pandemic in the Auckland Museum's Online Cenotaph. 

Christopher Pugsley

Fortunately, online book sales will resume from 28 April, so our distributors PDL can ship out orders made via your local bookseller; check here for a list of independent bookstores.

Oratia shortlisted for 2020 BOP Bologna Prize, Best Children's Publisher in Oceania

Covid-19 may have caused the cancellation of this year's Bologna Children's Book Fair but the show goes on, with a virtual fair and rights exchange starting online from 4 May — and a continuation of its prestigious prizes.

It's thus a thrill to see Oratia Books shortlisted in the Oceania section of the BOP – Bologna Prize for Best Children's Publishers of the Year.

The prize is described as “an extraordinary occasion to highlight publishers at the forefront of innovation in their activity for the creative nature of the editorial choices they have made during the previous year.”

Six prizes are awarded by geographical area. This year Wellington's Huia Publishers is shortlisted with Oratia in the Oceania section, alongside three Australian publishers. 

Click here to see all the regional shortlists.

Exhibitors who were to take part in the 2020 fair are able to vote for their favourites in the award in the next ten days. 

Winners will be announced online on 4 May. 

Books from shortlisted publishers including Oratia on display at Bologna in 2018

Congratulations to the team who make our children's book shine, led by Editorial Director Carolyn Lagahetau, with designers Cheryl Smith and Sarah Elworthy.

Thank you to the talented children's authors and illustrators whose new books we published in 2019: Trish Bowles, Melanie Drewery, Tracy Duncan, Gordon Ell, Sarah Ell, Darryn Joseph, Ross Kinnaird, Dawn McMillan and Munro Te Whata.

And a special note of appreciation to Elena Pasoli and her amazing team at the Bologna Children's Book Fair, who have worked incredibly hard during the terrible days of epidemic in Northern Italy to ensure the spirit of the fair lives online. Siamo con voi!

— Peter Dowling, Publisher, Oratia Books

Oratia Books Catalogue 2020 showcases 12 new titles

The Oratia Books Catalogue 2020 is out now in digital form. 

The catalogue presents the 12 new titles we will publish in this, the 20th year in business for Oratia Media. 

Because of restrictions in place during the present Covid-19 lockdown, sales and distribution of books are on hold and some of our planned release dates have shifted. 

We will wait to print the catalogue until the schedule is confirmed, and when we're actually allowed to print again!

But rest assured we will see all these books to publication, and continue to expand our overall list both in print and digitally this year and beyond. 

The catalogue introduction follows; click here to view the whole thing.

The year 2020 sees another milestone for Oratia Media — August marks 20 years since we set up the company to supply publishing and media services internationally. The nikau palm logo that our media director Alessandra Zecchini designed back in 2000 is reflected in the cover photo, taken outside our office in leafy Oratia.

Twenty years on, we’re still proudly assisting organisations and individuals to publish their books, while developing the list that we launched in 2009. This year will bring 12 additions to Oratia Books, along with renovation of our growing backlist.

Responding to the welcome upsurge in Māori-language learning, 2020 kicks off with David Kārena-Holmes’ handy guide, Te Reo Māori: The Basics Explained. Bilingual editions of 12 Huia Birds/12 Manu Huia, Tim Tipene’s newest ‘modern myth’ in Rona Moon, and Dawn McMillan’s charming There’s a Weta on My Sweater offer plenty of language enrichment for younger readers.

Also for the kids is the rollicking yarn The Longdrop (familiar to anyone who’s had a Kiwi family holiday), a stunning take on the universe in Space Maps, and a delightful new character from bestselling duo Dawn McMillan and Ross Kinnaird in Sir Singlet. For slightly older readers there’s the third in The NZ Series: Rush to Riches is a lively illustrated account of the colonial rushes for kauri and gold.

Our adult non-fiction is strongly told and illustrated, ranging from the nostalgic photo-led Life with Cars to the classic paintings of women bearing chin and lip tattoos in Te Kuia Moko. Ron Crosby has condensed his seminal The Musket Wars into a brilliant new history, while Matthew Wright gets to the heart of a New Zealand legend in Freyberg.

Publishing has changed a lot over the past 20 years, yet today books remain as vital as ever to our understanding of the world around us. Read on to discover more about books from Oratia.

Staying afloat during the COVID-19 lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended our accustomed way of living and working, and caused death and suffering in many countries. 

In February we were in close contact with our agent, printers and colleagues in China as the first wave of the coronavirus spread there. Happily everyone has made it through well and normal life is resuming.

Flying the Italian Tricolore in Oratia

Now we are feeling saddened and worried for our family and friends in Italy, and extend our amore and solidarietà to all, especially in Alessandra’s home areas of Emilia-Romagna, Lombardia and Veneto, who have been hit so hard by the virus. Il nostro cuore è con voi!

Our most sincere condolences to Paola della Valle, author of the Oratia book From Silence to Voice, who has lost of her mother to the epidemic in Turin. Our heart goes out to you, Paola. 

The spread of the disease to other parts of Europe and North America is gravely concerning, and we wish our family, friends and business partners there all the best for this challenging period. 

We applaud the New Zealand government’s move to a Level 4 alert here, which is confining New Zealanders to their homes for four weeks minimum and closing all but essential work and services. 

The latest title in The NZ Series will now publish on 8 May

Oratia is lucky to be a home-based business so there was no need for a transition to remote work. We feel for our publishing colleagues and bookstores who had to reconfigure rapidly as the lockdown closed in on us. 

We are all having to adapt to not being able to sell or ship physical books while these are considered non-essential services.

The first consequence is rescheduling our next two books. Rush to Riches: Kauri and Gold moves from April to an 8 May publication date — the books are printed and ready now, but we have no way to distribute them.

Harry Sangl’s beautiful painting collection Te Kuia Moko: The Last Tattooed Maori Women, which is printing in New Zealand, will now publish on 9 June. 

Te Kuia Moko will now be available in June

The Oratia Books 2020 Catalogue will be out later this week, as planned. All the books are on schedule for completion this year, and we’ll just have to adapt timing and print options depending on how the fight against COVID-19 proceeds. 

Our New Zealand booksellers are the key to keeping New Zealand authors are print, so while shops are closed we recommend readers to bide their time and then get back to their local bookseller (be it bricks-and-mortar or online) once it's safe to do so.

The 2020 catalogue is ready

In the interim now we’re looking into expanding our Ebook range, to ensure more of our books continue to be available to readers. 

Among the industry initiatives underway — virtual launches, online reading and sharing of favourite reads – some of our authors are taking the lead also. Click here for Tim Tipene’s reading of Māui – Sun Catcher. 

Meanwhile useful advice from the Publishers Association of New Zealand, some of which is of general interest, is available here.

We wish everyone a safe and healthy period at home, and we’ll keep in contact. 

Stay Home New Zealand, and read books :-)

As we move into lockdown in Aotearoa to combat the COVID-19 epidemic, our thoughts are with our many friends and colleagues in Italy who have endured weeks of terrible news during their time at home. The Italian campaign Io Resto a Casa (which has its equivalent in #StayHomeNZ) recommended reading as an essential activity while staying at home, and we agree. Oratia will remain open from our home offices during the Level 4 lockdown, and will do whatever we can to help Kiwis have books to read, whether in print or electronic form.

Keeping the history of Le Quesnoy up to date

Since its publication in October 2018, Christopher Pugsley's Le Quesnoy 1918 has shared with thousands of readers the gripping story of how The New Zealand Division broke through German defensive lines to capture the French town of Le Quesnoy in its last and most successful action in the First World War. 

Among those readers have been many descendants of soldiers involved in the action, some of whom contacted the author to provide further commentary about their family members. 

With the information that has come to light, Christopher has been able to update a number of details — notably   the addition of two names to the list of casualties in the period 1–7 November 1918 or who died after from wounds sustained. 

They were Lance-Corporate David MacKay of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade and Private Roy Walker of the New Zealand Cyclist Battalion, both young men in their twenties who were killed on 1 November 1918.

The new entries for those who lost their lives during the Le Quesnoy ation

That takes the total of the New Zealanders who died liberating Le Quesnoy to 191, and the book is dedicated to ensuring they are not forgotten.

Le Quesnoy 1918 now has a new red colour to its cover, marking this updated edition that is out today, just over a month ahead of Anzac Day commemorations.

Dr Christopher Pugsley is one of New Zealand’s leading historians. A retired Lieutenant-Colonel in the New Zealand Army, he was a lecturer in military studies in New Zealand, Australia and UK until his retirement in 2012. His other books with Oratia include The Camera in the Crowd and Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story. 

Updated edition publishing today, 18 March 2020  |  ISBN: 978-0-947506-49-0  |  RRP $39.99

Paperback, 297 x 210 mm portrait, 168 pages (8 pages colour)

The Bum team does lunch

Author Dawn McMillan and illustrator Ross Kinnaird got together with the Oratia team behind their books for a celebratory lunch this past Thursday. 

Lunch at White + Wong's in Auckland's Viaduct offered the chance to toast last October's publication I've Broken My Bum!. 

The 'Bum' team, from left: designer Cheryl Smith, publisher Peter Dowling, marketing guru Belinda Cooke, illustrator Ross Kinnaird, author Dawn McMillan and editor Carolyn Lagahetau

This sequel to the international bestseller I Need a New Bum! is already in US and UK editions, with rights sold to Brazil and China. 

Dawn's tasty Broken Bum Glue

Dawn prepared jars of Broken Bum Glue to distribute for the occasion (actually a very tasty fruit jelly!).

We were also able to toast the recent publication of the Italian edition of New Bum! Milanese publisher Adriano Salani Editore issued Voglio un nuovo sederino under its Nord-Sud Edizioni imprint (see more at this website).

Ross and Dawn with their favourite new Italian book

Cheers to Dawn, Ross and our talented team who make working together such a load of fun. 

Dawn and Carolyn, exemplifying the author-editor relationship

Starting the year off in te reo — a new guide to the basics of the language

The welcome upsurge in learning and speaking of the Māori language continues to gather pace across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Along with the growing use of te reo in daily life, demand is such that places in night classes are hard to secure and there’s a shortfall in resources to make learning the language efficient and enjoyable. 

In Te Reo Māori: The Basics Explained, seasoned author and language teacher David Kārena-Holmes helps answer that demand.

With his simple and methodical approach, David explains in simple terms the building blocks of grammar in te reo, showing how to create phrases, sentences and paragraphs. 

After an introductory chapter on pronunciation and written forms of the language, 17 chapters introduce the main base words, particles and determiners that guide their use. 

The book employs real-life examples to illustrate how Māori grammar works day to day.

Te Reo Māori: The Basics Explained draws on David’s previous books and decades of experience teaching and writing about Māori language to provide an essential companion for speakers at any level.

Nelson Public Libraries will be hosting a presentation by David about the book this Saturday 8 February; click here to find out more.

The author

David Karena-Holmes has been a tutor of Māori grammar at schools and institutions in New Zealand since the 1980s. This is his third book on the subject. He contributes a fortnightly newspaper column on te reo, and his poetry and other writings have been widely published. David lives in Whakatū/Nelson.

Publication: 5 February 2020 |  ISBN: 978-0-947506-69-8 |  RRP $34.99

Paperback, 210 x 148 mm portrait, 168 pages b&w

Taking pride in our publishing services

While it is Oratia's successful trade publishing programme that has built the company's profile and reputation in recent years, custom publishing and communications services have always been at the core of its business. 

Peter Dowling and Alessandra Zecchini founded Oratia Media in August 2000 to help organisations and individuals create the best possible books and communications. 

From a small base of clients in Japan, Europe and New Zealand, the company has expanded over almost 20 years to provide companies and authors around the world with a wide range of services. 

Recent book projects undertaken for public policy advocate Owen Gill and Archetype Book Agents 

Book projects have spanned full-colour, hardback company histories to short-run, black & white paperbacks for self-publishing authors.

Books for individuals, charitable societies, clubs and companies

We now advise widely on best options for production and marketing domestically and internationally, drawing on our decades of collective experience in the book business. 

That includes representing books from other publishers and authors at international book fairs, brokering the best print or digital options, and advising on rights and distribution. 

Our own and clients' books at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019

Annual reports, magazine supplements and articles, special editions and media planning form a further arm of the Oratia Media portfolio.

Having a multicultural staff and network of contributors enables work across cultures in a range of languages, with particular demand for Māori, Italian and Spanish work.

An English-Spanish supplement produced by Oratia in 2016

As a small team we work closely and collaboratively to create the optimal outcome for our partners, making the often complex business of publishing easy to manage. 

So while it is the Oratia Books list that is more visible these days, it is services work that underpins our business. 

Oratia provided all editorial services for The Tindall Foundation's Annual Report in recent year, including 2018/19 (pictured above)

Indeed, we are just as proud of products finished to the requirements of clients as we are of our own books. 

Please get in touch with Peter (peter@oratia.co.nz, 027 614 8993) to find out how we can help you achieve your publishing and communication goals.

Here's what Owen Gill, author of Turning Point Auckland (published February 2019) had to say about working with us:

"Peter Dowling and the team at Oratia made what could have been a dry policy book into a creative tour de force, mostly by bringing outstanding design and editing to the book. The book was published on-budget and on-time, and to a good reception in the media, which was also arranged by Oratia. I strongly recommend Peter and Oratia for private publishing projects like mine."

Remembering the irrepressible Dick Scott

Dick Scott, who passed away on 1 January, was a courageous voice for justice and righting historical wrongs throughout a long and original writing career. 

It was Dick who first brought to light the appalling treatment of the Parihaka community led by Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, in The Parihaka Story in 1954. 

That book was later published as Ask That Mountain, widely regarded as among the most important New Zealand books of the twentieth century. 

Dick on the Kaipara Harbour during the Seven Lives on Salt River project

It was in working on a revision of that book in 1998 for Reed Publishing that I came to meet Dick, and we formed a strong friendship through two other new editions (his seminal works 151 Days and Seven Lives on Salt River) and his autobiography Dick Scott: A Radical Writer's Life. 

The latter was his last book, and Dick happily retired in this eighties to pursue his varied interests and spend time with his wife Sue. 

Not only an historian, Dick was also a publisher of note, having a hand in his own books through his Southern Cross Books and founding the country's first wine journal, Wine Review. 

A collection of his writings with photography by Marti Friedlander, whom Dick had employed early in her career, made up another Reed book, Pioneers of New Zealand Wine.

Dick recalled that winemakers on occasion paid for ads in early editions of the Review in kind, with crates of wine delivered to his home office. 

Consuming what was often not the highest-quality vintage had its hazards, but Dick survived and thrived. 

He lived to be 96 and received honours including the Prime Ministers Award for Literary Achievement and an honorary doctorate from Massey University. 

- Peter Dowling

Click here for the New Zealand Herald's item about Dick.

Publishing Perspectives reports on New Zealand's presence at the Guadalajara Book Fair

 

Publishing Perspectives, one of the major news sources for the international publishing industry, has featured New Zealand strongly in its coverage of the recently concluded Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL). 

Journalist Adam Critchley interviewed Peter Dowling at the fair in his role as Publishers Association of New Zealand international councillor, and as publisher at Oratia Books. 

Peter pictured on the PANZ stand in Guadalajara

Click here for the full article, which also features publishers and agents from Egypt, France and the UK. 

Publishing Perspectives shared a photo of this yoga session conducted as part of India's guest of honour programme at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in early December

Toitoi Media publisher Charlotte Gibbs and Huia Publishers executive director Brian Morris also attended the FIL, both for the first time. 

You can read Charlotte's account of the experience here. 

Gavin McLean's final word on New Zealand's heavy toll of shipwrecks

Shipwrecked

New Zealand maritime disasters

Gavin McLean, edited by Kynan Gentry

Gripping stories of New Zealand’s major shipwrecks with extensive illustrations and colour paintings 

Before his untimely death in April, maritime history expert Gavin McLean was creating this definitive edition of his works on the tragedies that have plagued New Zealand shipping since the first waka reached our shores from Polynesia. 

Brought to completion by his colleague and friend Kynan Gentry, Shipwrecked is a gripping, richly illustrated account of the hazards and heroism that distinguish our maritime history.  

In the last 200 years, in fact over 2500 ships have been fatally wrecked on our shores, sometimes with horrific loss of life. Many more have been salvaged only after epic struggle.

Disasters at sea are no longer the regular occurrence that led to drowning being known as ‘the New Zealand death’, yet recent wrecks like the Rena show that perils persist in the age of GPS and satellites.

Shipwrecked  is a story of terrifying storms, inhospitable coastlines, human error, the malicious hand of fate, and courtroom dramas. It is also testimony to courage, endurance and self-sacrifice. 

In addition to more than 150 photos and ephemera, Shipwrecked reproduces 16 superb colour paintings of notable ships lost to the sea, by renowned artist Eric Heath. 

The author

Gavin McLean wrote or contributed to over 50 books in a distinguished career as an historian. He was an authority on New Zealand shipping, and published widely on the topic while working as a senior historian at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Gavin passed away in April 2019; this work has been prepared for publication by his colleague Kynan Gentry, research fellow in history at the University of Western Australia.

Gavin McLean (1957–2019)

Publication: 11 November 2019  |  ISBN: 978-0-947506-66-7 |  RRP $59.99

Jacketed hardback, 280 x 215 mm portrait, 264 pages (16 pages colour)

Māori business: community origins explored in new book

Whāriki

The growth of Māori community entrepreneurship

Merata Kawharu and Paul Tapsell

What do a mānuka-honey cooperative in Northland, a ginseng exporter in the King Country and a prison services provider in Dunedin have in common? All are examples of Māori-owned business forging a distinctive identity in New Zealand’s economic and social future.

Based on a five-year research project that blended on-the-ground interviews with scholarly analysis, Whāriki reveals how kin-based business ventures created by Māori are driving social, economic and environmental wellbeing from the whenua (land) up.

The core of the book is eight case studies of Māori businesses. From iwi-driven ideas to whānau enterprises, from Te Hiku o Te Ika in the Far North to Otākou in the Far South, these chapters unpick the business models of primary producers, service providers and social enterprises as they seek to grow their own solutions to economic opportunities and threats.

As Merata and Paul write in the introduction:“Whatever the particular trajectories of each, Whāriki is a binding of threads, revealing the entrepreneurial spirit that still burns despite the ongoing impacts of colonisation; a spirit persistently emerging time and again from within the Māori kin community world.”

The book is available from all good booksellers and there's more on our website by following this link.

The authors

Merata Kawharu (Ngāti Whātua, Ngāpuhi) is Research Professor at the Centre of Sustainability, University of Otago. Her most recent book was Maranga Mai! Te Reo and Marae in Crisis? In 2012 she was made MNZM for services to Māori education. 

Paul Tapsell (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Raukawa) is Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. His other books with Oratia are Te Ara, with Krzysztof Pfeiffer and Pūkaki, translated by Scotty Morrison.

Publication: 5 November 2019  |  ISBN: 978-0-947506-63-6 |  RRP $39.99

Paperback with flaps, 234 x 153 mm portrait, 200 pages