bookpublishers.co.nz has an 09-phone number and claims it’s one of the top publishers in New Zealand, but its digital trail leads to the UK and Pakistan.

It has the hallmarks of a New Zealand business. It uses a .co.nz website url, lists an 09-phone number and, until The Spinoff began making enquiries, displayed an inner-city Wellington address. The website bookpublishers.co.nz, however, has no staff in New Zealand.

Four Aotearoa writers said they felt fooled by the site, believing they were paying a New Zealand-based company to help self-publish their books.

Auckland writer Catia Batalha saved hard to self-publish a novel and, having previously struggled working with a UK company, only wanted to work with locals. “I looked for a book publisher in New Zealand – that was really my main thing.”

She said after viewing the website, she believed she would be dealing with a New Zealand company. The site displays a banner reading “Publish Your Next Masterpiece With Book Publisher [sic] in New Zealand!” In the “About Us” section, it claims it is “one of the top book publishing companies in New Zealand”. 

Batalha felt deeply disappointed in the work delivered by bookpublishers.co.nz and regretted paying the business $8,107 for packages that included e-book and audiobook publication, book cover and book trailer creation, a website build and a three-month marketing campaign. Batalha received an email, seen by The Spinoff, with details of a bank account described as “JP Morgan Chase Bank New Zealand Branch,” which she paid into. 

The Spinoff visited the Wellington address listed on bookpublishers.co.nz. It belonged to Yogallery, an art gallery and yoga studio owned by Tim Christie. Christie told The Spinoff his business had been at the address for five years and had nothing to do with bookpublishers.co.nz. “Once, maybe a couple of years back, someone did come knocking asking about publishing. I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

After The Spinoff made inquiries, bookpublishers.co.nz changed the address listed on its website twice in the space of three weeks. It no longer displays an address.

When asked why the website used Yogallery’s address, bookpublishers.co.nz gave a perplexing answer, saying it was “an administrative listing used during the early remote set-up phase”. It said it had changed its address to reflect its “current registered address”, and supplied The Spinoff documents for a company recently registered in New Zealand, with a different name to bookpublishers.co.nz. The site, which has changed continuously since The Spinoff began investigating, now bears new information – that it’s “powered by Brilliant Minds”. The company registration documents supplied to The Spinoff show a business with a similar name.  

bookpublishers.co.nz confirmed it had no staff in New Zealand currently, but did not answer a question as to whether it had ever had any staff in the country. 

“Our model is that of a UK-registered publishing company with regional registered details in each territory rather than physical storefronts in every location,” it said. It also said it had clearly communicated to clients it was a UK-based company and that it had never claimed to have had employees in New Zealand.

The Spinoff has viewed an email from info@bookpublishers.co.nz sent to Batalha. Signed off from Sophie, the email reads: “I’m currently based in Auckland, New Zealand”.  

Three authors, other than Batalha, told The Spinoff they also used bookpublishers.co.nz believing they were dealing with a New Zealand-based company. They all said they had no idea it was UK-based.

“The amount of evidence that it was genuine was massive … They have a New Zealand address and phone number,” one said.

That writer, who The Spinoff has agreed not to name, said the first inkling they had that they were dealing with an offshore business was when an invoice arrived with no GST number or New Zealand address.

At around the time The Spinoff began making inquiries, the writer, spooked after finding the business was not in New Zealand, asked for a refund. He told bookpublishers.co.nz he was unwell and needed to delay the project. bookpublishers.co.nz had not started work on the client’s book and refunded the money.

The Spinoff found 12 other .co.nz websites that use the same 09-phone number that is displayed on bookpublishers.co.nz. These include writemyessay.co.nz, irononpatches.co.nz and webdesignpros.co.nz. The 12 urls, along with bookpublishers.co.nz, are all managed by the same website company in Pakistan. bookpublishers.co.nz was registered in 2023 by the CEO of a website company in Pakistan, who supplied a London address.

Batalha felt the quality of the work bookpublishers.co.nz delivered to her was so poor she would have been embarrassed to use it. She said the book cover designs didn’t meet her expectations, and when she asked for alternative designs, she received back the same, or very similar, designs but with the photo changed out. 

A mock-up for the homepage of her website came through including a badge saying: “Best-selling book: over’s [sic] million of copies sold”, and the headline “Discover all my book collection you were looking for”. It was Batalha’s first book. She said she thought the book trailer she received was “extremely weird”: the voice over had a robotic tone, and the captions didn’t match the images. She suspected the work was created using AI. She did not use the trailer.

The trailer bookpublishers.co.nz made for Catia Batalha.  

Two other writers who used bookpublishers.co.nz told The Spinoff they also suspected the work delivered to them was AI generated. 

bookpublishers.co.nz denied it used AI. It said that all work undertaken on manuscripts, design, marketing and publicity materials were undertaken by editors, designers and illustrators. The business also said team members had been instructed not to use any automated or misleading content in the course of delivering work for clients or for any platforms. 

Batalha went down multiple routes to try to secure a refund, but has yet to receive any of her money back. bookpublishers.co.nz disputed the details of Batalha’s complaints and said it considered the matter closed.

A reviews page on bookpublishers.co.nz displays a raft of names, five-star feedback and glowing statements. The website told The Spinoff the reviews were genuine… now. “Reviews displayed on our website were originally drawn from genuine client feedback messages of appreciation sent directly by authors after receiving their final work.” It admitted: “In earlier design phases, a small number of placeholder names or visuals may have appeared temporarily, but we have since conducted a full review to ensure no non-authentic material remains online.”

The site claims it will “bring all the attention to your title” and that its “portfolio is oozing with some of the greatest gems of the literary sphere”. On its “Reviews” page, the site says, “Authors can’t hold back their emotions about BookPublishers.co.nz. Scroll to see what they think about us.” Next to the text is a cover for a book that bears the name of famous novelist Frances Hodgson Burnett and her equally famous book title The Secret Garden, which was published in 1911. Hodgson Burnett died in 1924.

The site displays numerous other book covers, including Batalha’s, even though bookpublishers.co.nz never ended up publishing it. The site describes the books displayed as a “Glimpse Of Our Recent Masterpieces That Are Smashing Hit Of All Seasons!”  

This success was news to Sophia Egan-Reid of long-running New Zealand publishing service Mary Egan Publishing. “I have not heard of a single one of their authors or books,” she said.

Egan-Reid said the general advice she always gave to new writers was to be wary when looking to be published. “I always tell authors that if it sounds too good to be true, it is.”

The following websites share a phone number with bookpublishers.co.nz: embroideredpatches.co.nz, cvwriting.co.nz, childrensillustrators.co.nz, essaywriter.co.nz, ghostwriter.co.nz, cvauckland.co.nz, logodesignnz.co.nz, writemyessay.co.nz, irononpatches.co.nz, custompins.nz, webdesignpros.co.nz, assignmentmaster.co.nz.