Tuesday, 12 December 2006
WBN's publisher Thorpe-Bowker has agreed to purchase Australian Library News (ALN), the popular weekly e-newsletter for Australian and New Zealand library professionals, from its current owners, Stevens and Dent Information...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The winners of the second annual John Marsden Prize for Young Australian Writers were announced by Marsden on 7 December at the Melbourne launch of Zero: Voiceworks magazine #67, in...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Author David Malouf launched the Centre for the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature at Macquarie University on Monday night. The centre has been established to ‘promote scholarship and research into...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
This bumper edition of WBN, incorporating our annual pre-Christmas survey, is the final WBN for 2006.The WBN team wish all of our readers a merry Christmas and a happy new...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Funtastic has announced that it has gone through a restructure that has ‘incorporated a major re-investment into the publishing business unit.'Belinda Payne, Funtastic's GM of marketing and creative services, told...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Allen & Unwin writes: ‘Neil Curtis died on Monday 11 December after a typically defiant battle with cancer. He was 56 years old. An exhibition of his artwork ‘My Bottom...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Pat Woolley, director of Wild & Woolley and Fast Books, writes: ‘Reverend Vernon Turner, OAM, the director of Sydney's Christian radio station FM103.2, died recently after several years of ill...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
American academic and author Jack Williamson, whose career as a pulp SF novelist spanned more than 75 years, has died at the age of 98. Williamson began writing in the...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The International Publishers Association (IPA) was awarded the Sloboda (Liberty) Prize for its ‘contribution to human rights and freedom in the world' by Ibrahim Spahic, president of the Sarajevo International...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Anti-smoking guru Allen Carr, author of the bestselling Easy Way to Stop Smoking, Easyweigh to Lose Weight (both Penguin), among other self-help titles, has died of lung cancer at the...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
American expat writer Curtis Cate, who lived in France for much of his life, has died at the age of 82. Cate was the author of several memorable biographies on...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The International Publishers Association (IPA), International PEN and human rights organisation ARTICLE 19 have written to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, urging him to lift the Procedural Guidelines for Publication issued...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The successful graduates selected to receive six months' paid work in the New Zealand book industry as part of the industry's Publishing Intern Programme, are Alex Collins at Learning Media,...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The administrators of remainder wholesaler Australian Book Centre (ABC*), which went into administration in April this year, have released a follow-up report, showing that all employee entitlements have now been...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The liquidators of library supplier Identic Books (which went into liquidation in November 2005) have released a report, showing that an outstanding ‘priority claim' made by former company director Greg...

Tuesday, 5 December 2006
Elisabeth Holdsworth is the winner of the inaugural Calibre Prize for an outstanding essay for her work titled ‘An die Nachgeborenen: For Those Who Come After', after Bertolt Brecht's poem...

Tuesday, 5 December 2006
Last week the Public Lending Right annual report revealed Bryce Courtenay's dominance in the library charts. This week he's topped the bestseller charts with Sylvia, the story of an eccentric...

Tuesday, 5 December 2006
Holger Ehling reports from the Guadalajra Book Fair:If you run a book fair and you manage to get three Nobel prize-winning writers to be part of a star-studded opening event,...

Tuesday, 5 December 2006
American writer, publisher and Dr Seuss-collaborator Phyllis Cerf Wagner has died at the age of 95. Wagner co-founded the Random House imprint Beginner Books with Dr Seuss and his wife,...

Tuesday, 5 December 2006
Journalist and author Malcolm Knox has been appointed to the board of directors for Australian copyright management company Copyright Agency Limited (CAL).  Knox said in a statement that he looked forward...

Tuesday, 5 December 2006
ABC Enterprises, the commercial division of the ABC, has appointmented Harcourt Education Australia as publisher of its educational products for distribution to the Australian education sector. 'We are very proud to...

Tuesday, 5 December 2006
Charts published by the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend alongside its book critics' ‘books of the year' selections offer an indication of 2006's bestselling titles.The BookScan charts, covering the period...

Monday, 4 December 2006
In news from our Around the World blog this week: Rosemary Neil explores the dearth of Australian literature courses; Amazon expands its print-on-demand function; jail for a vanity publisher; Rivergroup...

Monday, 4 December 2006
The Copyright Amendment Bill was passed in the Senate on Friday 1 December, with amendments. Due to the amendments the bill will go back to the House of Representatives this...

Monday, 4 December 2006
An e-book collection has won the prize for the best STM (science, technology and medicine) information product in the 2006 International Information Industry Awards held in London on 29 November....

Monday, 4 December 2006
New Zealand authors Judith Binney, Patricia Grace and Vincent O'Sullivan are the winners of this year's New Zealand Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement. The awards, worth $60,000 (A$49,800), recognise...

Monday, 4 December 2006
Oxford University Press has announced that Melinda O'Donnell, previously secondary publishing manager at Thomson Learning Australia, has joined the company as secondary director. O'Donnell is joined by Lee Walker, formerly...