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her inspiration By the Book Do you DreaM aBouT working for yourself, or starting a small business and watching it grow? That's the dream Auckland-based publishers, Frances McBeath and Sandy Roydhouse had back in 2005, and now their educational publishing business, Clean Slate Press is a huge global success. When Frances and Sandy established their 100 percent New Zealand owned and operated publishing company there were just three people on the team. Now they employ 20 full time and contract staff, have a 'skite sheet' of prestigious North American customers, including Scholastic Inc (U.S.), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (U.S.) and Nelson Education (Canada), and between 2007 and 2011 quadrupled their turnover. How did they do it? Frances and Sandy say that passion, determination and self- belief were what fuelled them. "We wanted to take control of our professional lives so that we were in a position to reap the benefits from our knowledge and hard work, and we were confident that we had the skills, experience and contacts to make it happen." "We could see gaps in the market for products we were interested in publishing. Neither of us are afraid of a challenge, and we knew that together we would be a winning combination. Happily, time has proved us right!" Juggling a successful global business and family commitments takes energy, passion and tenacity – qualities Frances and Sandy have in spades. As Frances says, "Our client base is largely in the northern hemisphere, so I view every day as a 24-hour slot. Family, a long working day and sleep all need to fit in, it's just a case of when. I'm very flexible on the 'when'." Their fresh and innovative approach saw Frances and Sandy create three unique book series within a year of starting out and then go on to secure some of the biggest names in children's writing. In 2007, they approached world-renowned children's author, Joy Cowley with a 'cold call' email, in the hope of becoming her new educational publisher. Joy had already been approached 50 | February/March 2012 | HER MAGAZINE Two Kiwi publishers take on the world by a number of other publishers, but several months after Frances and Sandy first emailed her she chose to give Clean Slate Press her educational publishing business. Signing Joy to their list was a master-stroke – her most famous character, Mrs Wishy-Washy has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide – and paved the way for Frances and Sandy to sign up other big names. Clean Slate Press now provides high-quality educational resources for New Zealand schools, and Frances and Sandy now publish the work of many of New Zealand's best-loved and acclaimed names, including writers such as Justin Brown, Frances Adlam, Tanya Batt, and illustrators Philip Webb, Elizabeth Fuller-Fulton, Jenny Cooper and Richard Hoit. Frances graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1994 then she gave birth to her first daughter and began her publishing career as an editor at Shortland Publications. While there she quickly decided that educational publishing was the career for her, and she went about learning as much about the business as possible, including how to work with acclaimed authors such as Margaret Mahy. At this time, Frances also began writing children's books in earnest and has now authored more than 100 titles. Sandy had worked in book and magazine publishing for many years before she met Frances. Although she started out in advertising, working in copywriting and production, she soon moved into publishing. In 1995, Sandy bought prestigious education magazine, Education Today, which she owned for five years. During this time, she also set up a small packaging and publishing company with two colleagues, working on behalf of large publishers such as Penguin. In 2001, international publisher Weldon Owen set up an educational arm of its business in New Zealand, with Frances as the company's Managing Editor. Sandy joined the company three months later. They developed and worked on some dynamic and exciting projects, including developing multi-genre series for 8–12