Mary Egan

Mary and her husband the late Gerard Reid established Egan-Reid Limited in the early 1990s. Since then Mary has typeset, print-managed, edited and designed more than a thousand books for major publishers in New Zealand and overseas. Mary has always had a love of books. She started her working life as a librarian and developed a career in publishing with a focus on high-quality books, this has earned her the respect of the NZ publishing industry. In 2012 Mary joined the New Zealand Post Book Awards judging panel. Read more about Mary’s background here.

Mary is the mother of Anna and Sophia and has a son, Joshua, who lives in Perth. She is the proud grandmother of Clare, Louis, Elena and Cohen. Mary lives in Mangawhai Heads with her dogs Dottie and Ted.

Anna Egan-Reid

Anna is a graphic designer who has been in the book industry for over 20 years. She paid her way through university by illustrating for Australian publisher Elsevier and the Samoan Government. After completing her Bachelor of Arts in Art History and English at Otago University, she went travelling before coming back to start her career as a designer and typesetter. Originally taught by Mary at Egan-Reid Ltd and later Pindar, Anna spent two years as an inhouse designer at Penguin Books (NZ) before joining Mary and Sophia in the family venture, Mary Egan Publishing, in 2012.

Anna has been shortlisted for a number of PANZ Book Design Awards and is a previous winner of Best Non-Illustrated book, for Janet Frame: In Her Own Words in 2012.

Her skill in dealing with a wide range of texts, images and audiences and evident love and knowledge of typography won her the title of Allen & Unwin Young Designer of the Year in 2016. In 2017 Anna joined the PANZ Book Design Awards judging panel.

Anna lives in West Auckland with her partner Tom and their two sons, Louis and Cohen.

Sophia Egan-Reid

When Sophia’s father, Gerard Reid, was dying he wrote a business plan for Mary Egan Publishing – a company that he envisioned would be focused on doing the absolute best for a small group of clients, offering a publishing package from start to finish. Sophia started the business, with mother Mary and sister Anna coming on board full time after a couple of years.

Sophia is usually the first and last contact for clients. She does the initial pricing, spec-ing and once the job comes in, she passes it on to production and follows it through by managing the full project, print and delivery. She aims for her clients to have the best experience possible and to end up with the most beautiful book. Attention to detail and high quality books are always the end result.

Sophia was born into the publishing business. For as long as she could remember her parents had a home office and staff members were always coming and going. She started doing an admin role for their company, Egan-Reid Ltd, which morphed into an Office Manager role. When Egan-Reid Ltd was sold to Pindar NZ, she single-handedly ran the self-publishing department, before leaving to start up Mary Egan Publishing.

Sophia won Young Publisher of the Year at the 2018 Booksellers Industry Awards.

She lives in Northland with her husband James, and dogs Gus and Peaches.