Rural publisher explores e-book world

Neil Hyndman operates a small publishing house from his rural lifestyle retreat at Waipara, north of Christchurch.

Like many thousands of us, he can operate just about anywhere, thanks to the advances of electronic media.

He devotes most of his time to Hyndman Publishing but also assists his wife Gillian in running Dry Paddocks, a self-catering five-star accommodation business on their property located in the middle of a boutique wine growing region.

Hyndman titles are distributed via Random House to the three main retailers – Whitcoulls, The Warehouse and Paper Plus – along with independent booksellers throughout the country.

Mr Hyndman has just launched his first e-cook book, Gluten Free Baking.

“Last year we published this title in paper format by Simon and Alison Holst and it sold more than 17,000 copies in just under 12 months,” he told NBR ONLINE.

He is building on that success with Gluten Free Desserts and Baking as a printed book but also saw an opportunity to capture the tide of electronic media in response to challenging paper book sales.

The benefits include being able to reach a far wider international market than New Zealand and Australia and he hopes this is the first of many e-books to come.

One of the unusual aspects of the Gluten Free Desserts and Baking e-book venture is that it is a joint venture with the book’s co-author, Simon Holst.

Hyndman Publishing, which started as a bookselling business in Invercargill in 1906, focuses on cooking and gardening books that generally have large amounts of colour – a more challenging process to convert to an e-book.

“It’s mostly about moving with the times. Amazon is one of a number of book wholesalers of e-books and is right up there in terms of sales.

“Kindle is one of the most widely used platforms and it can operate through the use of a free download app, plus PCs, I-Phones and I-Pads."

He says there can be issues for publishers with regard to marketing and copyright rights on the world market. Hyndman Publishing owns world rights to its books so that doesn’t affect it. It’s about choosing titles from a range that will appeal to an international audience.

“Most of our books are sold in New Zealand and some in Australia. With Amazon you’re marketing to such a diverse audience – it’s a huge selling opportunity.

“All of the technical work has been done by my designer Rob DiLeva.

“When it comes to pricing, if you price between $US2.99 and $US10 you get 70% return from sales in most countries – outside of these price point perimeters the return is 35%. 

"There is also an electronic distribution fee which varies according to the file size of the publication. But this kind of information is available on the Amazon web site. You don’t need to negotiate anything – the rules are set out and you just load up.”

Hyndman has priced its e-book at $US3.99 or roughly $NZ5, which compares with $NZ12.99 in paper format.