Julia Marshall
“I’m always looking for the sense of satisfaction of a story well told; that ‘ahh’ feeling when you get to the end…
I look for character development, plot, drama, emotion, layers, a sense of fun and originality, a story or shape … and a good ending!
Gecko Press is a small, independent publisher. We translate and publish a carefully selected list of children’s books from some of the best authors and illustrators in the world, stories first published in other countries in languages other than English. We buy worldwide English language rights to these and alongside them we publish three or so original works a year by New Zealand authors and illustrators. We sell all our books here and overseas, and we also sell rights to translate our original New Zealand works to publishers in other countries. Every year we also publish one of our best-loved translated books into te reo Māori. There are lots of interconnections!
I’m proud that the books on our list have an indefinable something that unites them. They always make a good pile, and you can tell they belong together even though they are all different.
Once we buy rights to a book, we work with a translator to capture the spirit of the original, and edit twice so the reader doesn’t know they are reading a translation. After a final read-aloud to check that the story feels right on the page, we send it to the original publisher for sign-off, then off we go to print. After that it’s up to our sales teams here in Aotearoa and in Australia, the UK, and US, to continue the enormous job of getting Gecko Press books into children’s hands everywhere, via bookshops, schools, and libraries.
When it comes to finding new international books to publish, relationships are critical. We’ve built up a core group of publisher and agent friends over many years whose publishing personalities and values align with ours. Some of our best books come to us via word-of-mouth — a German publisher may recommend us a book from Peru, or Latvia, the same way you might recommend your favourite book to a friend. We also pore over awards lists and rights catalogues and keep up-to-date with authors and illustrators whose work we love.
No matter where we live, we can be open to others, to different ways of doing things and of seeing the world. I think the work we do, bringing stories from other countries to children here, can have a real and positive impact. It’s vital that our own writers and illustrators tell the stories of Aotearoa, and it can also be liberating and inspiring to have access to stories from other places, to engage with books like Peruvian illustrator Issa Watanabe’s Migrants or Swedish author Ulf Stark’s Can you Whistle Johanna?
Creative rights, like copyright, are at the heart of our business. We couldn’t exist without them. A publisher’s reputation is dependent on honouring the rights of copyright owners and the correct treatment of royalties to authors and illustrators is integral to that. When we buy world-wide English-language rights, part of the process is proving that we will do well by that book and that author in the English market – which is no small undertaking – and contributes, I believe, to a fair and robust system.”
Julia Marshall is Gecko Press founder and publisher