News | Books+Publishing

Updated: Trade Christmas closing dates 2024

Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Books+Publishing has collated company closing dates for the Christmas and New Year holiday period. (See table below.) The Books+Publishing office will close on Friday 13 December and reopen Monday 13 January. The...

New year 2025 preview: Nonfiction

Wednesday, 4 December 2024
As we head towards 2025, publishers are preparing to send a wide array of new nonfiction titles out onto our bookshelves. Among the titles publishers are keen to highlight, booksellers...

‘I do, in fact, belong here’: Looking back and forward with the 2024 Open Book interns

Wednesday, 4 December 2024
First run as a pilot program offering two internships in 2022, the Open Book paid internship program is a joint sector initiative that aims to foster cultural and linguistic diversity...

‘There is nothing else quite like it’: Terri-ann White on Sharjah

Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Publishers and literary agents from 108 countries participated in this year’s Sharjah Publishers Conference, and Upswell publisher Terri-ann White was an Australian representative to the conference. She writes on the...

Polari Prizes 2024 winners announced

Wednesday, 4 December 2024
In the UK, the winners of the 2024 Polari Prizes have been announced. The winners in each category are: Polari Book Prize (£2000; A$3908) The Gallopers (Jon Ransom, Muswell Press),...

Ampersand Prize 2024 shortlist announced

Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing (HGCP) has announced the shortlist for the 2024 Ampersand Prize. The shortlisted titles are: ‘I Love a Good Murder’ by Rahnia Collins, a YA crime novel...

Pung awarded 2024 Alice Literary Award

Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Alice Pung has won the Alice Literary Award, presented by the Society of Women Writers in Australia. In Pung’s acceptance speech, the author said: ‘What an honour it is, to...

Inaugural Australian Fiction Prize shortlist announced

Wednesday, 4 December 2024
The shortlist for the inaugural Australian Fiction Prize, presented by HarperCollins and the Australian, has been announced. The shortlisted manuscripts, chosen from almost 500 entries, are: ‘Blackswansong’ by Michael Burrows...

Affirm acquires Valentish self-help book

Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Affirm Press has acquired world rights to self-help book The Introvert’s Guide to Leaving the House by Jenny Valentish. A Melbourne-based journalist and author, Valentish wrote the addiction memoir Woman...

Ang appointed as Hachette x MDA Trainee

Tuesday, 3 December 2024
Wen Yee Ang has been appointed as the inaugural Hachette x Media Diversity Australia (MDA) Trainee. Launched in August, the traineeship was created ‘to promote diversity and inclusivity within the...

Phillips wins 2024 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize

Tuesday, 3 December 2024
The Queensland Writers Centre (QWC) has announced that Eva Phillips has won the 2024 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for the manuscript Borrow-or-rob. Phillips receives $2250 and a publishing contract with UQP,...

A&U acquires ‘History’s Strangest Deaths’

Tuesday, 3 December 2024
Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to History’s Strangest Deaths by Riley Knight, in a deal brokered by Florence Dodd at WME Agency, UK. ‘[History’s Strangest Deaths] highlights the...

Wright wins 2024 Voss Literary Prize

Tuesday, 3 December 2024
Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy (Giramondo) was announced as the winner of the 2024 Voss Literary Prize by the Australian University Heads of English (AUHE). The prize judges said: ‘Praiseworthy is a work...

HarperCollins acquires Guthrie debut novel

Tuesday, 3 December 2024
HarperCollins has acquired ANZ rights to Sam Guthrie’s debut novel, The Compromised. HarperCollins Australia head of fiction Catherine Milne acquired the book from Tom Gilliatt at a4 Literary. UK rights...

Comic Arts Awards of Australia winners announced

Monday, 2 December 2024
The winners of the 2024 Comic Arts Awards of Australia have been announced. The recipients in each category are: Gold Ledger Deadsheet (Benji Bajorek, self published) Eventually Everything Connects (Sarah Firth, A&U)...

Funder wins Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger

Monday, 2 December 2024
Anna Funder has won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in the nonfiction category for the French translation of Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life (Hamish Hamilton). The book was translated to French...

Transit Lounge acquires Colley’s second novel

Monday, 2 December 2024
Transit Lounge has acquired world rights to Brendan Colley’s second novel, The Season for Flying Saucers, via Martin Shaw at Shaw Literary. ‘I love the way Brendan Colley captures the strange in...

Number of publishing start-ups using AI explodes

Thursday, 28 November 2024
Spines, a startup technology company founded in 2021 that published its first titles this year, is ‘offering the use of AI to proofread, produce, publish and distribute books’, reports the...

Blake-Beckett Trust Scholarship 2024 shortlist announced

Thursday, 28 November 2024
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has announced the shortlist for the 2024 Blake-Beckett Trust Scholarship. The shortlisted authors and their works are: Meg Caddy for ‘Dross Magic’, which ‘reimagines...

Copyright Agency, ASA, APA welcome Parliamentary report AI recommendations

Thursday, 28 November 2024
The Federal Government’s Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) has released its final report. The Committee was established to ‘inquire into and report on the opportunities and impacts for Australia arising out...