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What's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?

Aileen Davis of Appleby’s Bookshop in Morpeth couldn't choose between two sights which she felt were the most beautiful she'd seen: the orchids in Singapore (the walkways across the roads, she says, are ‘festooned’ with them)  and the aerial view of New Zealand as you approach Auckland Airport.

‘I was on holiday in NZ three years ago and as the plane came into land, I looked out of the window and on this clear day glimpsed the entire coastline, including the volcano at the other end of the island. I haven’t seen anything more beautiful.’

Singaporean Orchids

But before you decide to jump on a plane to the Far East, Stephanie Ellison would argue that you should to take a trip to the North East and visit Seven Stories Bookshop in Newcastle:

‘In the attic on level 7 of our shop is an art installation by illustrator/author Oliver Jeffers. It’s very beautiful. I’m sure that everyone in the shop would agree that it’s the most beautiful thing they’ve seen. There are books hanging from the ceiling, and books at all different levels - it’s a sight to behold.’

To help promote our new title The King Who Wanted More, We're finding out what is the most beautiful thing people have ever seen. It could be a landscape, a painting, a building, or maybe something altogether different...it’s completely up to you. Please email [email protected] if you'd like to take part.

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Continued from Leg #1 (Melbourne) and Leg #2 Part 1 (Auckland).

Friday:
Friday in Auckland began with a Publisher's Forum. About 50 people from the New Zealand publishing industry were on hand for the discussion. The session opened with a panel on rights selling in the international market. I think the main takeaway of the session is how important the face-to-face meeting is, how important relationships are. As Stephen Maat (Bruna Netherlands) said, he could meet with a publisher every year for ten years and never buy anything, but there will be that day that they call him up, or send him that email and say, "This is the perfect book for you" and it will be.

Then, I was on a panel along with Tom Mayer (Norton) and Fergus Barrowman (Victoria University Press). Hal Wake (Vancouver Writers' Festival) moderated. A lot of what we talked about was how eBooks were changing the publishing industry--in NZ and Australia, eBooks have yet to hit the level that they have in the States, because they don't have the Kindle, Nook, or iBookstore. Tom talked about the opportunities and potential changes that eBooks and the market of Kindle Singles could have on the industry, particularly with nonfiction--eBooks may make it more acceptable to publish a 25 or 50 page book, as opposed to having to expand a nonfiction subject into longer, book-length work. Other advantages include being able to update nonfiction more frequently. We talked about the shift of making paper books more gifty, more objects to keep, vs the type of books that may eventually become e-only.

After a networking lunch we had one-on-one meetings with New Zealand publishers and agents--some just wanted to talk business/pick my brain about publishing in the US, some pitched books.

I finished up with meetings early enough to go for a run before dinner--unlike the rainy Wednesday, the weather was perfect for a run in the Auckland Domain.

I had a delicious sushi dinner with Cassandra Clare and her husband Josh--I had run into them in the lobby earlier--and then I was off to a cocktail party hosted by the Fesivals' board of trustees. Then back to the hotel where once again Karen Healey, Garth Nix, Sean Williams, Margo Lanagan, and others were convened in the hotel lobby for wine and sea breezes.

Saturday:
In the morning I met up with Alexis Warsham (Crown) in the lobby and we walked over to the Aotea Center where our Publishing Panel (this one open to the public) was housed. We found our way through back passages to the Green Room where Tom, Nikki Christer (Random House Australia) and our moderator publishing consultant Geoff Walker were already convened. We covered much of the same ground as our Industry Publishing Panel--talked a lot about eBooks, Amanda Hocking, Barry Eisler, etc etc. But of course when the Q&A portion began, we got a bunch of the expected "how do I get published" questions, and even one woman who was bold enough to actually pitch her book--luckily, it wasn't a children's or YA book, so I didn't have to turn her down in public, OR invite her to send it. One audience member asked us what we thought of the recent news that an agent was becoming an eBook publisher--to be honest, because I hadn't been able to check email and read the news as regularly while in NZ, I hadn't yet read about the news. Some of the others had heard the recent news of agent Ed Victor exploring eBook publish

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I try to keep up with the Bieber-stream media. You see what I did there? Rather than writing “mainstream” or even “lamestream,” I went with “Bieber-stream.” It’s something I do here. Keep folks on their toes. Comment on culture in clever ways. Thank me by buying a book.

In any case, the Justin Bieber-slanting CBS News has asked the kids of New Zealand (The Kiwiettes, if you will) to chill the hell out. Bieber Fever has reached George Romero-like levels, resulting in a frightening mob scene at the Auckland Airport, and Justin’s “mama” has suffered as a result. I want to think the best of our very distant neighbors to the southwest (or southeast should you decide to fly Air Emirates), so I’m a skeptic. I smell a PR person behind this. And if not that, then I smell Germans. Because as anyone who has set their watch to NZST will tell you, if you want meet someone from Munich, go to the Auckland Airport. I swear, it’s like Paris in 1942.

Of course, this is from a tourist’s perspective. I spent 3 months in New Zealand a couple years back. My wife and I bought a cheap car, and filled the trunk with camping equipment and drove down every road and hiked in as many corners of that lovely little country as we could and slept in huts and yards and hostels and on beaches. We met plenty of locals, very few Americans, and a shocking number of Klauses and Ilsas. We ran into one intrepid young Bavarian on two separate occasions: once while doing a jigsaw puzzle in a headlamp-lit hut along the Milford Track; once along the steaming, sulfurous moonscape of the Tongariro Circuit. He (and every other German we met) spoke flawless English and was a perfectly lovely fellow, so I don’t mean to disparage an entire people. I’m just intrigued by the disproportion. The French and Spanish and English and Italian combined didn’t even have half the representation.

I’m sure if I actually lived and worked in New Zealand, I’d shrug this German infiltration off as some backpacker urban legend. But I assure you it’s true, and I think it has resulted in a Bieber bumrush. Germans get a bad rap for their taste in music. So perhaps a band of backpackers were trying to regain some cred. Perhaps they weren’t fans at all, but musical freedom fighters trying to rid the world of a devastating future filled with soulless bubble-gum pop. Perhaps Bieber is lucky to have gotten out with his reputation intact. Have you ever read The Dead Zone?

It seems far-fetched until you watch the following clip. It’s taken from an interview in New Zealand shortly after the airport fiasco. Cunning as ever, Bieber strikes back by denying that the German language even exists. “I don’t know that means. We don’t say that in America,” he quips. It’s a brassy move, and will spark numerous conspiracy theories. I expect Glenn Beck to break it d

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