Books editor Claire Mabey went to the 2024 Aotearoa Book Industry Awards for the first time over the weekend and reports back from the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
“You saved us. Covid, cancer and chemo took our careers away and you made us believe that we were artists again,” said Lynda Topp, who stood at the lectern alongside her twin sister Jools to collect the Nielsen BookData NZ Award for bestselling New Zealand title at the 2024 Aotearoa New Zealand Book Industry Awards.
Master of ceremonies Paddy Gower stood off to the side of stage in his crisp black and whites looking equal parts star struck and exhilarated as the iconic duo spoke about how Allen and Unwin NZ convinced them to write a book (“fuck off” was the initial response). When Lynda Topp described their 94-year-old mother’s reaction to the news that they were going to be authors (“Good. Will I be in it?”) she was visibly teary, which set off a chain reaction of high emotion through the crazily-carpeted function room deep in the Crowne Plaza hotel in Tāmaki Makaurau.
I’d never been to the book industry awards before. I’ve done Ockhams, I’ve done the book design awards, I’ve done the Voyagers. So I thought I knew what to expect: stuffed pimentos and a warm sort of formality that would quickly melt into sweaty-faced glee under the influence of the open bar and bottles of wine on the tables. And stamina. You need stamina for these nights because they’re long and there are speeches. But Paddy Gower got it right when he said: “something very special is happening in the room tonight.”
It’s not an easy gig, making and selling books. We’re in a post-Covid slump, a cost of living crisis, a catastrophic media environment, thousands of people have lost their jobs thanks to government cuts. Production costs have risen while the people’s pocket has a flaccid look about it. But as Mike Hill (who, with Susan Holmes, won the Lifetime Achievement Award for their epic work as founders of distribution agency BookReps, started in 1996) said: “The product never changes. People always want knowledge. There’s a downturn now but that will change.”
Hill and Holmes’ award was one of the more emotional moments of the night, which is saying something. While the duo are little known beyond the industry, within it they’re superstars: a pair of unlikely heroes (Holmes talked about coming from a Manawatū horse racing family and leaving school at 15) who have done extraordinary things with innovation and tenacity and lateral thinking: it’s their savvy that introduced Magic Eye books to our hitherto untapped illusion-greedy market.
When Lynda Topp declared from the stage that we were in a room full of leaders I was at once surprised and in agreement. Book people have always been leaders to book people but they’re quiet about it: sales reps and booksellers, designers and editors, advocates and commissioning publishers aren’t household names like many of the authors they support. But behind books and their writers, industry folk are doggedly carving pathways, crafting game-changing innovations (like the phenomenal BookHub which won the night’s innovation award) and hand-selling to the public.
Hand-selling was a theme of the night after some classic, mildly off-colour, big-media style joshing about it from Gower. The art of the hand-sell is what the room full of leaders knows best: how to connect people with books, with art and ideas, how to spread the love of stories as far and as personably as it’s possible to do. New Zealand authors rely on this intimate, personalised style of trade: it helps our books get into the hands of readers over other, sometimes flashier or more prestigious, overseas options.
“Conversations go deep fast, and that’s why I love it so much,” said Paula Pengelly from Penguin NZ, joint winner of Sales Professional of the Year along with Laura Jager from HaperCollinsNZ. And my word is that true. “Look, I’m intense,” laughed one passionate bookseller from Australia when we were at the pub afterward. We had plumbed the depths within a few minutes of meeting, talking books, hand-selling, the state of it all. Part of the art of being in books is a requisite level of passion: you can’t be in the industry without really loving books, and really wanting people to read.
When Jools and Lynda talked about how becoming authors made them feel like artists again I felt a minor flood of righteous anger. In my career in festivals I found it difficult to get the broader arts industry to truly see writing as an artform: a performance on the page. In my experience the writers elements of multi-arts festivals are flimsily kept compared to the dance, the music and the theatre; writers programmes have the smallest budgets and the thinnest allocated resource. So it was beautiful to hear the twin Dames elevate their literary experience to the same level as their live arts career.
And even more golden when they talked about going to the Adelaide Arts Festival at the same time as the celebrated Keri Hulme was invited to the Adelaide Writers Week (post-Booker Prize win). All of the artists were together in one of the famous Adelaide marquees when the Topps got an urgent call. “Keri has left Australia and we don’t know why,” said a frazzled festival organiser. “She’s left a cryptic note.”
The twinkle in Jools and Lynda’s eye when Lynda tells us the note said: “Had to leave urgently. The whitebait are running.”
The Topps reminded us all that we’re different in New Zealand. We’re passionate, and grounded, and unique and just as bloody good as anyone else. “We’re amazing,” they said. After that, all that was left for them to do was sing Untouchable Girls and if there was a dry eye in the room it was soaked before the end of that heart-swelling number. Fucking bliss to see them, their Johnny Cash chic, voices clear as bells.
Other than being serenaded by two of the country’s most beloved women, one of my favourite moments of the night was the award for Emerging Bookseller of the Year which went to Unity Book Wellington’s glittery Melissa Oliver (the theme of the night was litterati glitterati and the Unity crowd took to it with sparkle sticks) who was so emotional she cut her own speech short; but not before she joked that she’d been emerging for five years. Oliver is an example of a new generation of industry leaders coming through with passion and conviction: a community builder with heart and savvy.
The awards night brought together an Aotearoa of bookish brilliance: a constellation of movers and shakers representing intergenerational collegiality. The old wave and the new together riding the ebb and flow of the industry, and the world. There was Time Out’s Wendy with her famously bold eyewear; Unity Books’ Jo McColl with her ringmaster glow; The Women’s Bookshop’s Carole Beu with her famous, infectious energy; legendary Gecko Press publisher Rachel Lawson with the great hair who taught a whole new generation of publishers when she was running the Whitireia Diploma in Publishing. There was Alex Hedley from Harper Collins and Kate Stephenson from Moa Press (which won the night’s Nielsen BookData NZ Publisher of the Year, the first ever for the imprint and its parent), both pushing the potential of our commercial lists; and the charismatic Jenna Todd who could hand-sell The Bible to an atheist; and best-dressed on the ground Mandy from Bookety Book Books attending her first conference with the crackling energy of the truly committed; powerhouse new-gen publishers Tess Nichol and Michelle Hurley from Allen & Unwin NZ; and vivid, visionary leader of Booksellers NZ, Renee Rowlands, who orchestrated the night’s success.
There were many other magic moments: the open-hearted way that Scotty Morrison thanked his partner, Stacey Morrison, when he won the inaugural Libro.fm Audiobook of the Year Award for the phenomenally successful Māori Made Easy, and how he warmly challenged Paddy Gower (whose line of comedy turned frequently to himself and his painfully fresh status of unemployed) to learn te reo Māori and have a shot at working for Waatea; The Spinoff’s own Liv Sisson’s exquisite, Mary-Oliver spiked speech when she co-won the Booksellers choice award for her bestseller, Fungi; and the bright personage of beloved Giselle Clarkson (co-winner with Sisson, for her extraordinary The Observologist) who beamed down from the video screen and and thanked booksellers, endlessly, for welcoming her work and helping it find its readers.
One of the biggest awards on the night is to the Nielsen BookData NZ Bookshop of the Year of the year. In this difficult financial patch of 2024 the award was (potentially controversially: though the backlash hasn’t reached me yet) jointly awarded to Petronella’s Bookstore in Tekapo and The Booklover in Milford.
Olivia from The Booklover made the entire room laugh and sigh when she said, “Honestly it sounds mad but I didn’t do this for money. I did it because book people are the best people.”
The Aotearoa Book Industry Awards might not be as Oscar-esque in tone as the Ockhams, or as whizz-bang roving-camera-to-screen-assault as the Voyagers, but what I experienced at the Book Industry Awards was a room full of heart, and hope, as the people glittered in the light of everyone’s success.
The full list of Book Industry Award winners for 2024 are online here. The author was there as one of the award judges, along with Richard Pamatatau of AUT and Nick Johnson of Libro FM.