The Duke’s Secret (Sue Williams, A&U)
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
In The Duke’s Secret, the latest historical fiction by Sue Williams (The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress), journalist Ava Washington sets out to verify a family legend. According to...
In a Common Hour (Sita Walker, Ultimo)
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
Dedicated to the Queensland state school teachers she works alongside, Sita Walker’s debut novel, In a Common Hour, offers readers a story with universal school politics. Over the course of...
UK Translation Prizes shortlists announced
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
In the UK, the Society of Authors has released shortlists for its 2025 Translation Prizes, which recognise outstanding translations of prose, poetry and nonfiction from any language. Among the finalists...
Bundyi acquires Sawyer’s debut
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
Bundyi has acquired world rights to Luca Sawyer’s novel Nightcrawlers. Written from a First Nations perspective, Sawyer’s debut explores leaving Country, the experience of urban isolation, and the challenges posed...
MUP acquires Stafford nonfiction
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) has acquired world rights to The Wanted and Unwanted by Annabel Stafford, in a deal brokered by Jeanne Ryckmans at Key People Creative Management. According to the publisher,...
Waterstones names 2025 books of the year
Monday, 1 December 2025
In the UK, the Waterstones bookselling group has named Lucy Steeds’s The Artist (John Murray) as its Book of the Year, with Mikey Please’s The Café at the Edge of...
Vale Graeme Turner
Monday, 1 December 2025
Cultural studies academic Graeme Turner, author of books including The Shrinking Nation (UQP, 2023), has died. His most recent publisher, Monash University Publishing, pays tribute: With great sadness we share that...
MidnightSun Publishing launches picture book prize
Monday, 1 December 2025
MidnightSun Publishing has announced the MidnightSun Picture Book Prize, a new manuscript prize for emerging or established picture book writers across Australia. Entries are open until 25 December, with the...
Magabala acquires Pascoe & Norris’s “Big Sky”
Monday, 1 December 2025
Magabala Books has acquired Big Sky: When the Emu Left the Earth by First Nations author Bruce Pascoe and astrophysicist Ray Norris. A Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man, Pascoe is...
Morton wins Walkley for “Mean Streak”
Monday, 1 December 2025
Mean Streak (Fourth Estate), Rick Morton’s account of the robodebt scandal, has won this year’s Walkley Book Award. Judges said, “Mean Streak is a riveting and detailed exposition of government...
IPA expands membership, firms up 2026 congress
Thursday, 27 November 2025
The International Publishing Association this week named two provisional new national members, released the results of its online elections, and confirmed details of the 2026 International Publishers Congress, to take...
Majumdar named RMIT’s non/fictionLab Graphic Storyteller Fellow
Thursday, 27 November 2025
RMIT has announced Soolagna Majumdar as the winner of the inaugural non/fictionLab Graphic Storyteller Fellowship for her graphic novel “Food Bird”. Chosen from 48 applicants, Majumdar receives $15,000 in prize...
Woollahra Digital Literary Award 2025 winners announced
Thursday, 27 November 2025
The winners of the 2025 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards have been announced. The winning works in each category are: Fiction ($2500) Nadia Mahjouri for The Miracle (published in Island Magazine) Nonfiction ($2500)...
A&U acquires Hardy’s memoir and novel
Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to Emma Hardy’s memoir Periodic Bitch and a planned novel, in a two-book deal brokered by Michaela McGuire at a4 Literary. According...
Ticket sales double at Readings’s A Day In Carlton
Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Readings Bookshop’s annual A Day in Carlton festival (“actually a day and a bit,” said the organisers) was held in Melbourne from 13 to 15 November. Attracting 2800 attendees —...
Macdonald appointed IPEd chair; Thom-Jones wins Scarlet Stiletto Award; SLV proposed cuts
Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Local news In local news this week, the Institute of Professional Editors appointed Catherine Macdonald as chair of the board following the 2025 AGM on 10 November. Awards Author Sandra...
Rights round-up
Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Sales Fiction Jane Novak Literary Agency has sold Romanian rights to Prima Facie (Suzie Miller) to Niculescu; and Turkish rights to 3 titles by Patrick White (Voss, The Eye of the...
A&U acquires accessible picture book
Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired world rights to All the Ways I See, by Nas Campanella and Eliza Hull, in a deal brokered by Pippa Masson at Curtis Brown. Sophie...
Read the latest Publishers Weekly
Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Books+Publishing is partnering with US trade news magazine Publishers Weekly to provide our subscribers with exclusive access to the weekly digital edition of PW magazine. View the edition here.
The Watchmaker’s War (Danny Ben-Moshe, HarperCollins)
Tuesday, 25 November 2025
In Danny Ben-Moshe’s debut novel, The Watchmaker’s War, Yakov Holtzman, a former Lithuanian underground resistance commander, hopes to leave the trauma of World War II behind him as he makes...
AI for Business: A Guide to AI Adoption (Jon Whittle, CSIRO Publishing)
Tuesday, 25 November 2025
As artificial intelligence becomes the latest business buzzword, many people equate it solely with generative tools like ChatGPT. In AI for Business: A Guide to AI Adoption, director of CSIRO’s...
The Last Resort (Amanda Hewitt, Echo)
Tuesday, 25 November 2025
Amanda Hewitt’s debut, The Last Resort, opens with Abbey, newly divorced and reeling from the end of her marriage, as she seeks solace in the Maldives. During a late-night swim,...
Yet She Lives: Fierce and Fantastical Women of Norse Mythology (Lisa Hannett, T&H)
Tuesday, 25 November 2025
In Yet She Lives: Fierce and Fantastical Women of Norse Mythology, Lisa Hannett brings giantesses, witches and warriors from the ancient world to life. Building on the work of her...
Thom-Jones takes out top Scarlet Stiletto Award
Tuesday, 25 November 2025
Author Sandra Thom-Jones has won first prize in Sisters in Crime’s 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards for her short story “Der Hölle Rache”. Thom-Jones, who identifies as neurodivergent, said, “I’m still...
HarperCollins acquires new Swann novel
Tuesday, 25 November 2025
HarperCollins has acquired ANZ rights to Leah Swann’s novel Later, Only Love Remains, in a deal brokered by Gaby Naher at the Naher Agency. Described by the publisher as a...
Transit Lounge acquires new Kenway novel
Tuesday, 25 November 2025
Transit Lounge has acquired world rights to East Coast Low, Lisa Kenway’s follow-up to All You Took from Me (also Transit Lounge, 2024). East Coast Low tells the story of...
Beveridge receives lifetime achievement award
Monday, 24 November 2025
Poet Judith Beveridge has been named one of this year’s recipients of Creative Australia Awards for Lifetime Achievement. Born in London in 1956, Beveridge moved to Sydney in 1960. Her...
ABC adapts “The Unbelieved”
Monday, 24 November 2025
Production has commenced on Dustfall, a six-part ABC adaptation of Vikki Petraitis’s 2022 crime novel The Unbelieved (A&U). Allen & Unwin sold film/TV rights to The Unbelieved to UK-based Moonriver TV,...
The Next Chapter 2026 recipients announced
Monday, 24 November 2025
The Wheeler Centre has announced the 2026 recipients of The Next Chapter fellowship program. The fellowships aim to encourage “voices who aren’t getting heard through conventional publishing channels”, according the...
UQP sells UK and Commonwealth rights to “Dead Ink”
Monday, 24 November 2025
University of Queensland Press (UQP) has sold UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada and ANZ) rights to Jordan Prosser’s Blue Giant to Dead Ink Books. According to the publisher, Blue Giant...
