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About the Press

Te pae tawhiti, te pae tata – purpose and vision

Auckland University Press is a scholarly publisher rooted in Aotearoa New Zealand.

We seek out New Zealand’s best scholarly and creative work to develop award-winning books for readers across Aotearoa and around the world. Committed to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, we partner with Māori and the many peoples of Aotearoa so that together we can tell this country’s stories. By disseminating peer-reviewed research and creative work, Auckland University Press supports the mission of Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland, to advance knowledge and positively impact our communities.

Tā tātou mahi – what we do

‘Tōia mai, tōia mai, kumea mai, ā tāua mahi ē’ – nau mai ngā pukapuka!

Tōia mai – hauling in the nets – has been our job for sixty years: heading out across Aotearoa to fish up the most original new voices – Māori and Pākehā, poets and professors, in te reo Māori and English – and then turning their stories into books that change minds. From Ngā Mōteatea to Birds of New Zealand, from Tā Pou Temara winning his Ockham New Zealand Book Award to Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh performing for the Queen, we have seen some pretty big fish in our time.

‘E kitea ai ngā taonga o te moana, me mākū koe’ – nau mai ngā mahi!

As the saying goes, if you want to find the treasures of the sea, be prepared to get wet. Jumping in and collaborating with our communities to get the mahi done is what we love. We succeed through our long relationships – with designers and editors, with Kotahi Rau Pukapuka and Toitū Te Reo, with Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, and many more.

‘Whiua ki te ao, whiua ki te rangi, whiua ki ngā iwi katoa’ – nau mai ngā kaipānui!

As Ngoi Pēwhairangi wrote, you’ve got to get the knowledge out to the people if you don’t want it to be lost. For us that means making ebooks and audiobooks and paper books, it means working with booksellers and festivals and news media, it means taking our books to Te Matatini and the Frankfurt Book Fair, it means partnering with university presses such as Princeton and Chicago, Yale and Oxford to share New Zealand stories with the world.

‘Poipoia te kākano kia puāwai’ – nau mai ngā ringa raupā!

We are a small team of five committed to excellence in a publishing programme that is rooted in Te Tiriti o Waitangi and that gives voice to the peoples of Aotearoa. Doing that work effectively requires growing the talents and capabilities of our team – nurturing the seed so that it can flower. Through whakawhanaungatanga with authors and volunteering at writers festivals, in weekly reo Māori classes and meals at Matariki, we like growing together.

Partners

Publishing books requires a lot of people beyond authors and the team. We are assisted by a group of fantastic companies to get our books out there in the world:

Board

The Auckland University Press Board is a committee of Senate that meets six times a year. Visit their website.

Sustainability

Auckland University Press is committed to reducing our environmental impact through sustainable publishing practices. Working closely with our production partners, suppliers and designers, we have incorporated the following industry best practices into our production workflow to inform decision-making across all aspects of book production at the Press.

  • We use FSC or PEFC-certified paper stocks for all book components including text, covers, jackets and endpapers.

  • All our books are printed with vegetable or soy-based inks.

  • Where design allows, we choose uncoated paper stocks with water-based or machine varnishes over coated stocks with plastic lamination. Where lamination is required, we use recyclable BOPP film.

  • The UV coatings on our book covers are non-toxic and recyclable. We request that our printers recycle all foil waste and, where possible, use foils certified as ‘Zero Foil 2 Landfill’ or similar.

  • Our printers use water-based, non-toxic and biodegradable glues and adhesives such as PVA for both our notch-bound and our section-sewn books.

We continue to research and adopt emerging sustainable alternatives as they become available, while maintaining the unique character and quality of our pukapuka.