Tuesday, 14 April 2009
The BBC has been asked to ‘reign in’ its commercial operations by a British Parliamentary Committee, reports The Bookseller, after its controversial purchase of a majority share in Lonely Planet....

Tuesday, 14 April 2009
A new service for the self-publishing community called Published Now will commence operations in Australia from 1 May, followed by launches in New Zealand and the UK.The company will offer...

Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Natalie Costa Bir has been announced as the recipient of the 2009 Unwin Trust UK-Australian Fellowship, for her proposal to study how online communities, blogs, and social networking can help...

Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Hobart’s Ellison Hawker Bookshop is celebrating its 60th birthday. The shop began as the Bijoux Newsagency in on Collins St in the Hobart CBD, in 1949. Ellison Hawker was the...

Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Be prepared to rub your eyes in disbelief when you peruse the charts this week. In a combined assault, Jodi Picoult and Wilbur Smith have finally knocked Stephenie Meyer off...

Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Trade events coming up over the next week, as shown on our events calendar, include: 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist announcement, 16 AprilClosing date for the Australian Educational Publishing...

Tuesday, 14 April 2009
American literary theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has died. She wrote Epistemology of the Closet and Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction.

Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Derek Weiler, the editor of the Canadian publishing magazine, Quill & Quire has died, aged 40.

Wednesday, 8 April 2009
'Dymocks believes that the Australian book industry should be driven by the Australian book buyer and not the local subsidiaries and agents of overseas publishers'--Dymocks CEO Don Grover in a...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Among the stories added to our Around the World blog in the past week:Random UK cuts 33 jobsUS book sales down by 2.8% in 2008Consumers boycott Kindle over pricing'Nibbies' --...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
As the Productivity Commission's inquiry into parallel importation regulations comes to a close, Dymocks has taken the extraordinary step of using its Booklovers loyalty scheme to urge its customers to...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
After the 80% takeover by Dymocks of 30-strong sandwich chain Healthy Habits, founder and managing director Katherine Sampson is relocating to Sydney to establish a new head office within Dymocks...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
'Random House Australia had a solid year in 2008,' MD Margie Seale told WBN, as Random released its annual global results. ‘We grew our overall sales by almost 4% in...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Scholastic Australia has announced that 'in a major new initiative' it has 'combined and expanded its Trade and Sales Teams into one "Mega" Sales Force to enable even greater coverage of independent...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
McGraw-Hill Education saw a 2.5% decline in total revenue in 2008, according to Publisher's Weekly. A 5.4% decline in its school education group contributed to the overall decline. Total revenue...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
The Tasmania Book Prize was announced during Tasmania's Ten Days on the Island Festival, held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The $25,000 award went to James Boyce for...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
The Castlemaine State Festival in country Victoria concluded on 5 April, having run from 27 March. Ross Donlon, curator of the Literature Program, told WBN it was a ‘very successful'...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Jillian Ewart of NZ's Bookseller's News reports:Martin Taylor's presentation on The Rise and Fall and Rise of E-books kick-started New Zealand's Digital Publishing Seminars last week. Digital Publishing Seminars were...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Random House Australia made 11 positions redundant as of 5 March. WBN understands that many of those made redundant were in sales, particularly reps, but that other departments have also...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
WA shopping centres pushed to extend trading hours The Shopping Centre Council of Australia has suggested extended weeknight trading hours and Sunday trading in Western Australia would be beneficial to...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Women's Bookshop celebrates 20 years Auckland's Women's Bookshop has celebrated 20 years with a night of literary celebration. More than 700 people attended the party, with ‘grandeur, comedy, pathos and...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
The sixth Williamstown Literary Festival will be held from 1 to 3 May 2009 with the theme of ‘Hidden Life of Suburbs'. The Williamstown Literary Festival looks at the rich...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
An accreditation system has been introduced by the Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd) in Australia, in order to assure employers that quality of work and industry standards are met...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Tracy Ryan is the winner of the Australian Book Review Poetry Prize, worth $4000, for her poem ‘Lost Property'.Ryan told WBN the last year-and-a-half have been ‘big' for her ‘with...

Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Well known chart-busting author Jodi Picoult comes first in the Highest New Entries this week with Handle with Care, which also comes at number five in the Bestsellers. Picoult has...