Our condolences
We wish to acknowledge the passing of Paul Greenberg, Sunday 17th December and our sincere sympathy goes to his partner Joan Roulston, family and friends. Among his enormous breadth of experience in the booktrade in Aotearoa, Paul was the distributor for Cloud Ink Press' books.
When Cloud Ink Press was newly established it was difficult to find a distributor willing to contemplate small runs of New Zealand fiction. Cooking and sports biographies sold so much better – and still do. Paul was an exception. He had tailored his business to cope with small runs, his knowledge was admired by every bookseller in the country and his long involvement in the industry meant he could give us excellent advice. He was willing to take a risk on a publishing company without a track record, believing in the importance of the role of indie boutique publishers helping local authors to flourish in New Zealand.
Paul’s incredible enthusiasm lasted until the very end. Only weeks before passing away from cancer, when planning retirement, he was busy recommending other distributors we could use. ‘I won’t leave any customers without a plan’ he told us - and he didn’t.
Our new distributor - recommended by Paul - is BooksRUs and they will handle our upcoming publication, Tane's War. BooksRUs have been on the scene for twenty years and have a team of people who have worked for notable international publishers. The physical distribution will be handled by Batemans. BooksRUs will be selling all Cloud Ink titles including those already published.
Here is an article and interview with Paul from Steve Braunias of The Spinoff from 2016, saluting this this man's life and achievements.
