Interview: Peter Dowling talks about Oratia’s 25th anniversary and its new imprint, Five Oceans

Oratia Media is one of New Zealand’s most active independent book publishers. Founded in 2000 as a publishing services company by Kiwi-Italian couple Alessandra Zecchini and Peter Dowling, it has grown to issue at least 15 new books of its own each year, and has marked its 25^th anniversary by officially launching its new translations imprint, Five Oceans. We asked Peter about Oratia’s journey.

You’ve just marked 25 years of Oratia Media. What’s different now from when the company started life in 2000?

Back then we were mainly contracting to other publishers — Reed Publishing in Auckland, Kodansha and Kozo in Tokyo, Reed Business Information and Wilmington in London. These days, we’re the publisher contracting others.

What’s the connection to Oratia?

Oratia is the part of the Waitakere Ranges that we’ve called home ever since returning to New Zealand from Japan. It’s a beautiful forested area that sits at a remove from the Auckland bustle, with a creative and colourful community. So we’re adopted Westies and committed to working with and for the West.

How has Oratia Books developed since you started your own publishing?

Oratia started publishing in 2009 with a handful of books each year and tried some different branding while still publishing for clients and authors. Over the years that has solidified into a list that’s known for its multicultural outlook, Māori books, engaging children’s publishing and strong international presence. We’ve developed a reference series for te reo and recently the Moana Oceania series of Pasifika books. There are new faces at Oratia but with many of our key team, like editorial director Carolyn Lagahetau, sales and marketing consultant Belinda Cooke, designer Cheryl Smith and distributors Bookreps NZ, we go way back.

To mark 25 years, you’re launching a new imprint of translated works, Five Oceans. Where did that idea come from?

From attending international book fairs, meeting many publishers from non-English-speaking countries and realising that all they do is buy in American and British books for translation while hardly ever getting their own books into English. It’s one-way traffic, and it means readers in English are missing out on some superb books. My whole career has been in bilingual or multilingual publishing, so this felt like it was time to commit to a programme with Five Oceans.

Tell us about the first Five Oceans books?

The first books bearing the Five Oceans logo are English-language translations of the bestselling Turkish junior novel The Ant Rebellion and the Finnish picture book Thank you, Forest. Both are superb works for children that fit with themes of cultural understanding and the natural world that the imprint embodies. Also we’re grouping under Five Oceans other books that we’ve brought in from overseas previously, such as Philippa Werry’s collaboration with Burak Akbay (also a Turkish story, incidentally), The Water Bottle.

How are you managing to publish international books just for Oceania?

While we have distribution in Europe and North America, our main markets are in New Zealand and Australia, and it’s more manageable to acquire rights just for this part of the world. Readers in Oceania deserve more varied international content, and the rights we’re buying are for all Pacific languages as well as English, so in future we’d hope to be publishing in Māori and other languages too. National translation grants help make the numbers work — both Turkey and Finland have lent support to the first two books, for example.

How do you see the Five Oceans list evolving?

Next year will bring the first of our literary non-fiction books (a classic from India), and there will be more books to come for adults alongside those for younger readers. Geographically, it will take in more of the Global South. Maria Leonardi, our Rome-based agent for Five Oceans, is prospecting titles in Latin America and East Asia at the moment, and Africa beckons. 

What is the favourite book you have read so far this year and why?

I loved Andrew Leigh’s The Shortest History of Economics for its concision and ability to link economic theory with real life. It turns the notion of ‘the dismal science’ on its head.

What’s next on the agenda for you?

I’ve crossed the fence and written a book in my own area of research, the study of place names (toponymy).  New Zealand Place Names gives the history, origin and meaning for over 850 of our most common, controversial and curious place names. It builds on the foundational work done by the late A.W. Reed and was helped by the New Zealand Geographic Board as well as experts up and down the country. It’s been a lot of fun and also a good reminder for a publisher of how much blood, sweat and tears an author puts into a book. New Zealand Place Names publishes on 5 November.