With a population of just over five million New Zealand has a relatively small reading public, and economies of scale mean it is difficult for a traditional publisher to make money on local books without funding support from the government arts body Creative New Zealand.

The larger established publishers in New Zealand – international companies, university presses, and one or two independents – all benefit from ongoing funding opportunities offered by Creative New Zealand. There has been money available for smaller independent publishers like The Cuba Press on application, but due to widespread reductions in arts funding there is little available currently.

If we don’t receive the funding we need from CNZ, then we have to look elsewhere. We have sought publishing partners for particular book projects – joining with local businesses, book industry organisations and academics to publish a range of books from fiction to poetry and non-fiction. For example we publish the annual winner of the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize, which is fully funded by the Laura Solomon Trust.  Where appropriate we make use of crowd funding platforms and pre-sales to fund some of our titles.

What makes us different as a hybrid press is that we can offer to publish a book with full or part funding by the author. Our most common arrangement is  a 50/50 share of costs, with the sales returns split the same way. It’s what author Cristina Sanders calls ‘having skin in the game’, something she enjoyed for her debut novel Jerningham and her recent novel Ōkiwi Brown. Cristina’s second novel, Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant – shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize – was funded by CNZ.

We continue to select the best manuscripts to publish whether the author is contributing or not and the publishing the process is the same as for a book published without author funding, with the final decisions made by The Cuba Press.  

Mākaro Press is a traditional press, an independent imprint of The Cuba Press. It is a small press with only one fiction title a year, but huge publishing successes like Auē by Becky Manawatu and the sequel Kataraina and a number of international rights sales for a range of fiction titles means it can be largely self-supporting.