We sat down with Kate Stephenson, the newly crowned Publisher of the Year 2024, and head of Moa Press, the local publishing division of Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand. After honing her skills in London with HarperCollins and Hachette, she returned to Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland post-pandemic to lead a 12-member team committed to amplifying local voices and stories.
In conversation with Kate Stephenson
I fell in love with reading at a young age and read quite obsessively. I didn’t know anything about publishing until I met an independent publisher in Wellington, and I started doing some work experience there. From the moment I walked into the office… I felt like it was where I was meant to be.
We began Moa Press with the objective to champion a diverse range of local voices and stories from Aotearoa New Zealand. The breadth of the list is vast — from a natural history memoir about the origins of the feijoa, a bilingual story collection in Te Reo Māori and English, and more. Our market is completely dominated by international fiction, especially by the big brand authors, and it’s a challenge to persuade New Zealand readers to take a chance on local writers.
We have an open submissions process — anyone can submit their manuscript to us, and at least half the list is made up of authors who have submitted this way. When I’m reading a manuscript on submission, the first thing it must do is hold my attention, to keep me turning the pages. If I can’t stop thinking about it, I’ll turn my mind to the more commercial questions of how I might pitch this — to my colleagues, to booksellers, to readers, to the media. The developmental or structural edit looks at the big picture and this is where you suggest the most major changes to the author. Then you have line editing and copy-editing, where you get into the nitty-gritty of grammar, style, formatting, and consistency. Once we have typeset page proofs, they will go through a proofread, and eventually become print-ready files. This process usually takes several months.
There are many other elements in play: cover design, marketing and publicity, campaign strategy, communicating with retailers, calculating print run and pricing, booking printer slots, printing advance reader copies and sending these out for endorsements.
BookTok has had a massive impact, disrupting the more traditional brands with a vibrant range of new voices. In New Zealand fiction, there is a growing appetite for stories like Shilo Kino’s All That We Know, which explores the complex relationship between Māori and Pākehā, and Saraid de Silva’s Amma, a stunning debut that navigates the migrant experience across three generations of women.
Quick-Fire Questions
Last book you read and loved: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley.
Favourite book by a New Zealand author: The upcoming release I’m most excited about is Olivia Spooner’s gorgeous The Songbirds of Florence, a novel set between Egypt and Italy in the 1940s, inspired by an incredible group of women from New Zealand — the Tuis — who served in the war.
Which books are next on your list: My upcoming fiction list includes Intermezzo, Blue Sisters, and Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros. A new addition to my non-fiction pile is The Lives of Lee Miller — having just seen the film (Lee), I’m now fascinated to read more about her