Case Studies
Issue No. 7 - October/November 2002
Era Publications
Start of an Era
Era was created by former primary school teacher, Rod Martin, who founded the imprimatur in 1971 with his wife Sandra. They became full-time publishers in 1979 and have won a several Australian and overseas awards for their books.
Naturally, given the in-house expertise, Era focuses on primary school literacy books. Sales occur overseas as well as within Australia, with export playing a significant but erratic role in the company’s recent history.
Most recently the company won an export award from the Australian-British Chamber of Commerce for its influence on the education market in England, plus the Wilderness Society Environment Award for Children’s Literature 2002 for its picture book Yellow-eye.
Today, Era works with 150 Australian authors and illustrators, and has a network of school consultants to keep it up-to-date with educational requirements.
The company’s international profile received a major lift in the mid-90s when it introduced an innovation in shared reading, producing large 500mm by 363mm books that enabled teachers to interact more effectively with older primary students.
The approach was adopted by the British Government as part of a new curriculum initiative, giving Era unchallenged access to primary schools throughout the UK.
“Since then, other publishers have caught up and we’ve had to rethink our strategy to keep ahead,” Rod says.
“We’ve achieved this with our Wings series, which resulted from extensive research with teachers and educators to find out what they need, and to expose any holes in existing materials.
”We found that too often school literature for young children is dull. It can be quite difficult writing early-reading materials containing just 40 words that are engaging to a young reader.
”We’ve had to counsel our authors to be creative and to bring more humour and personality into their books.”
The Wings series is aimed at c...
