Annelies Judson on becoming a published Writer. Kia ora koutou!Ko Annelies taku ingoaKo kaituhi au. Hello! I’m Annelies… and I am a writer. I have reviewed and written for The Sapling for seven years now. I’ve also written a Master’s thesis,…
Of the twenty nine books shortlisted in the 2025 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, five were self-published. Claudia Palmer spoke with the authors about their journey to self publishing. One thing I’ve noticed wandering through the…
Earlier this month, PANZ announced its withdrawal from the Bologna Guest of Honour programme. Peter Dowling and Julia Marshall, co-leaders of PANZ’s Bologna Guest of Honour Steering Group, provide insight into that decision. The Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ)/Te…
Hannah Marshall speaks with Jenny Hellen about her role as Publisher at Large at Allen & Unwin New Zealand and the state of children’s publishing in Aotearoa right now. If you’ve ever heard of Allen & Unwin New Zealand, then…
Selling children’s book rights into new territories, languages, and formats is the business of the Bologna Book Fair in Italy. The 61st year of the fair took place last week and attracted over 1,500 exhibitors and a total of 31,735…
Writing is hard. Writing and editing, designing, publishing, marketing and distributing your manuscript is even more difficult. Annelies Judson looks at self-published books in Aotearoa and offers some pearls of wisdom to authors looking to take on all those roles…
Achieving international rights is the ultimate dream for any writer. However, in New Zealand, achieving that dream is almost impossible. Author Melinda Szymanik looks at why international rights are so elusive in Aotearoa, and what opportunities our authors miss out…
Creating a picture book—whether it’s story or illustration or both—is a massive undertaking in its own right. Doing all that and taking the self-publishing route to bring it to fruition is a whole other quest. Hayley Elliott-Kernot takes us through…
The Sapling’s own co-editor Thalia Kehoe Rowden has just had her first picture book published by Scholastic – Rugby 1 2 3 / Whutupōro Tahi Rua Toru, a rollicking rhyming and counting tale set in and around a classic kiwi…
Margaret Mahy’s The Christmas Tree Tangle was originally published in 1994, and a newly illustrated edition was released by Puffin in November 2017. We asked illustrator Sarah Davis to talk about the process of re-illustrating an existing book, to which…