New Zealand Book Month Ends With A Reprint

Media Release: For immediate release
Date: 28 September 2007

New Zealand Book Month Ends With A Reprint

The second annual New Zealand Book Month ends this Sunday 30th September with a reprint, due to popular demand, of the Six Pack Two anthology; currently number one on the Booksellers New Zealand Bestsellers List for New Zealand Fiction.

30,000 copies of The Six Pack Two were published to celebrate NZ Book Month 2007. To ensure that it was accessible to all New Zealanders 14,000 copies were sold through bookshops for only $6, and 16,000 copies are being distributed free to all secondary schools, all public libraries and several other non-profit organisations such as Literacy Aotearoa.

Its sister publication, the 2006 Six Pack, has also returned to the Bestsellers List at number five. Last year it spent a total of fourteen weeks on the Bestsellers List.

Project Director of NZ Book Month, Phil Twyford says, “NZ Book Month is a celebration of New Zealand authors and writing. With the first print run of the Six Pack Two rocketing straight to number one on the Bestsellers List so quickly it's clear that the New Zealand public is joining the party We have to reprint because they just can't get enough.

We’re thrilled with the huge amount of interest and support the New Zealand public has shown for Book Month and New Zealand writing this year.”

Phil Twyford said that as well as the success of The Six Pack Two, NZ Book Month reached hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders through strong media coverage and a $340,000 advertising campaign. Posters and leaflets featured in over 300 bookshops and 700 libraries. Thousands of people attended more than 200 book-related events throughout the country over the course of the Month.

Both booksellers and libraries around the country reported exceptional public interest in the book and the six winners: scriptwriter and current Writer in Residence at Victoria University Dave Armstrong; one of New Zealand’s most successful and promising writers Charlotte Grimshaw; poet, novelist and former Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate Elizabeth Smither; emerging novelist and poet Tracey Slaughter; and new authors Faith Oxenbridge and Jennifer Lane.

Next year's Book Month is already in the planning stages and November will see the call for entries into the 2008 Six Pack Competition.

NZ Book Month, a month long celebration of NZ books and NZ writers every September, aims to encourage more New Zealanders to read New Zealand books and to inspire book lovers all over the country.

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