Hamish Wright

Conference venue: The Langham Hotel, 83 Symonds Street, Royal Oak, Auckland

Farm tractors, hay, ceramic chickens, cows and mannequin farmers with straw in the hair replaced books in window displays in three Bookseller NZ member shops in the Waikato. Each shop won second prize in their respective towns in a competition run as part the New Zealand National Agricultural Fieldays BIG Little Town Festival this week.

New Zealand Book Month (NZBM) will take place each March from 2011 to better fit with the book industry’s annual calendar and to build a broader reach for the campaign. New Zealand Book Month has previously been held in October.

Horizontal rain and winter temperatures did not deter some 25 booksellers from turning out to the recent members' function at the George Hotel, Christchurch. 

Booksellers NZ Chairman Hamish Wright, Board Director, Mary Sangster and CEO Lincoln Gould hosted the function as part of a continuing programme of member events around the country.

“We were delighted with the turnout,” Hamish commented to The Read.

HarperCollins New Zealand MD Tony Fisk made it to the London Book Fair which finished yesterday, so did Annabel Langbein who had taken a stand to promote her cookbook and TV series.

Bookreps’ Susan Holmes and Jennie Brockie got as far as Los Angeles, but were back at their desks Tuesday morning. John Pittar and Kate Wallingford of Milly Molly Books were on the same flight back.

Have your travel plans been disrupted?

A delegation of New Zealanders to the London Book Fair next week have been scattered and stranded all over the globe with volcanic ash continuing to disrupt flights across Europe.

All airports in Britain were shut down and others in France, the Netherlands, Nordic countries and others closed in an unprecedented, massive no-fly zone imposed after a volcanic eruption in Iceland.

Entries are to be sought from the NZ book trade for ‘Book Bunnies’ to adorn the monthly pages of a fundraising calendar to be sold by Booksellers New Zealand in an effort to overcome a shortfall in revenue from recent membership changes.

Announcing the new venture, Booksellers NZ Chairman, Hamish Wright said the “Book Bunny of the month “ would be chosen from those members of the trade who dress in a pre-ordained book theme and attend a sausage sizzle to be held in Post Office square, Wellington on the first day of this month.

The inaugural meeting of the Book Trade Liaison Committee was held in Auckland this week.

The Committee comprises representatives from the Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ; Booksellers New Zealand (BSNZ) and has been established to pursue issues of common interest to the two organisations.

Chairman, Hamish Wright told The Read   the committee had established an initial work plan to consider joint industry promotions and common issues such as the effect of digitisation on the industry and uncompetitive tax evasion by offshore online retailers.

A new book industry action group, the New Zealand Book Trade Liaison Committee,  has been formed by New Zealand publishers and booksellers to co-ordinate book promotions and represent the trade on common issues.

The committee has been formed by the Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) and Booksellers New Zealand (BSNZ) as the latest step in a series of moves over the past twelve months designed to strengthen the New Zealand book trade’s focus on key issues.

Any increase in the GST rate in New Zealand will further disadvantage local  booksellers competing against international online booksellers such as Amazon who don’t pay tax to the local economy.

“Booksellers here are already facing an uneven contest against Amazon and other off-shore web based booksellers,” says Booksellers New Zealand Chairman, Hamish Wright. “Buyers in New Zealand are not required to pay GST on their online purchases from overseas, and no import duty if the order is below $400, which of course most book orders are.