Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Publishers and distributors that visit the Frankfurt Book Fair are again warned to beware of correspondence from Austrian-based company Construct Data Verlag AG and an associated company, Premium Recovery.WBN understands...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
The finalists in the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature have been announced, along with the finalists for the Best Writing Award. The winner of the prize will receive a $30,000...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Trade events coming up over the next week, as shown on our events calendar, include: The Advertiser's Big Book Club Literary Event, which finishes up on 20 September; the Scribe book launch of...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
The 2006 Brisbane Writers Festival wound up on Sunday, having run from 13 September. This was the 10th annual festival and the first for director Michael Campbell, who said he...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
This week it's all about the fairies: Rainbow Magic Funday Fairies. They've taken up all but the top spot in this week's highest new entries chart. The prize for most...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Novelists Julian Davies and Robin Wallace-Crabbe; illustrator-bookbinder Phil Day; and bookseller Ingeborg Hansen have formed the publishing house Finlay Lloyd, which last week published the collection of essays When Books Die....

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has announced it will be running an expanded mentorship program with funding of $150,000 from the Cultural Fund of the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL)....

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Unseen Footprints by Sheridan Voysey (Scripture Union) has been named the 2006 winner of the Australian Christian Book of the Year award. Also shortlisted for the award were A Spectator's...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Dymocks has announced it will open a new store in the Westfield Queensgate Centre at Lower Hutt in New Zealand in early November. The franchise owner will be Darren Gilchrist.

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
In news from our Around the World blog this week comes reports that Amazon is developing its own e-book reader; meanwhile Sony's e-Reader will be launched in the US next...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
German-born writer Sasha Soldatow has died in Sydney, aged 58. His book Private: Do Not Open (Penguin) was one of the first explicitly gay works published by a mainstream Australian...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Maori writer and popular young-adult author Kingi McKinnon has died at the age of 63. McKinnon wrote several award-winning novels about the experience of young Maori in the modern world.

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Anthropologist and author Margaret Orbell has died at the age of 72. Orbell dedicated her career to the promotion of Maori literature. Her books include the 2004 Montana New Zealand...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
German historian and author Joachim Fest, best known for his biographies of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, has died, aged 79. His book Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days...

Thursday, 14 September 2006
As first annnounced in a WBN Special Bulletin last Friday, Australian authors M J Hyland and Kate Grenville have made the shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize. Click here for...

Tuesday, 12 September 2006
The winners of the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were announced at an awards ceremony last night. The winners are as follows: Fiction Book Award The Garden Book (Brian Castro, Giramondo)Emerging...

Tuesday, 12 September 2006
In our Around the World blog this week Random agrees to refund readers of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, Penguin UK opts for serialisation to promote its next big...

Tuesday, 12 September 2006
This year's National Literacy and Numeracy Week (NLNW) ran from 28 August 3 September, with the associated Minister's Awards for outstanding contributions to improving literacy and/or numeracy, and the Excellence Awards fro...

Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Craig Scutella, owner of Unleash Books has told WBN that closure of the chain's Fox Studios store in Moore Park, Sydney, is a result of the poor performance of the...

Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Want to get the top 10 bestsellers and other charts faster? Now you don't have to wait until Wednesday's WBN.The�top 10�bestsellers, fastest movers and highest new entries charts, plus the...

Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Trade events coming up over the next week, as shown on our events calendar, include: the Brisbane Writers' Festival, which runs from Wednesday 13 to Sunday 17 September; the Man Booker Prize shortlist...

Tuesday, 12 September 2006
The Thunderbolt Kid is off like a shot from the blocks. Bill Bryon's memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid dominated the weekend media and is this week's...

Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Australian author and journalist Michael Keon died on 22 May this year, aged 87. In his younger years, Keon moved with the crowd of artists and intellectuals at Heide Park...

Tuesday, 12 September 2006
The 2006 Books Alive campaign finished on 31 August, and ‘initial Books Alive 2006 sales figures indicate strong double-digit growth on last year, in excess of 15 percent,' according to...