Local titles selling overseas
3 October 2023
Since the industry last gathered for a major rights fair, titles from Australian publishers have continued to sell into international markets, with a range of new and established authors’ works...
Rights sales: Screen
3 October 2023
Among recent book to screen adaptations, Cognito Entertainment, a new independent film and television production company in the United States, has optioned Every Version of You (Grace Chan, Affirm) for...
Latest acquisitions: Fiction
3 October 2023
Among the new fiction signed by Australian publishers this year are books by several authors trying something new. Echo has acquired world rights to Katrina Kell’s first novel for adults,...
Latest acquisitions: Nonfiction
3 October 2023
Hachette Australia announced last year that it would enter a publishing scout partnership with screenwriter, author and broadcaster Benjamin Law. The results are now materialising, with adult nonfiction publisher Sophie...
Latest acquisitions: Children’s and YA
3 October 2023
Christmas Press has acquired world rights to Leaf Letters, a junior fiction title by author-illustrator Lorena Carrington. Christmas Press publishing director Sophie Masson said, ‘Told in words and pictures, this...
Australian titles selling internationally
6 April 2023
Fiction sales Black Inc. has sold world English-language rights (ex ANZ) to One Hundred Days by Alice Pung to HarperCollins imprint HarperVia. Shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, One Hundred Days is Pung’s...
Latest acquisitions: Fiction
6 April 2023
Affirm Press has acquired world rights to One Divine Night by Mick Cummins, the winner of the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (VPLA) for an unpublished manuscript, in a deal brokered...
Latest acquisitions: Nonfiction
6 April 2023
Affirm Press has acquired world rights to the debut nonfiction work by journalist and activist Melinda Ham, via Rochelle Fernandez of Alex Adsett Literary. The Lucky Ones is about refugees...
Latest acquisitions: Children’s and YA
6 April 2023
Affirm Press has acquired world rights to a new five-book series by Amelia Mellor as well as the third novel in Mellor’s series that began with The Grandest Bookshop in the...
YA, graphic novels among recent international sales
29 September 2021
Lisa Fuller’s multi-award-winning YA novel Ghost Bird (UQP), which previously won the David Unaipon Award for an Unpublished Indigenous Writer, has been sold to UK independent publisher Old Barn Books...
Debut buzz: new authors attract major deals
29 September 2021
A number of debuts have been picked up by Australian publishers in recent months amid significant buzz. Hachette Australia has acquired world rights to two crime novels by Canberra debut...
‘Ginnie & Pinney’ educational children’s series optioned for TV
29 September 2021
Big Sky Publishing’s educational children’s series Ginnie & Pinney, Learn & Grow has been optioned for development as a television series by Australian animation studio Moody Street Productions. Created by...
Modern families, joy and koalas: latest nonfiction acquisitions
29 September 2021
A new acquisition at NewSouth Publishing offers a ‘meticulously researched and highly accessible deep-dive’ into 21st-century families. The publisher has acquired ANZ rights to Kin: Family in the 21st century...
Uplit dominates recent fiction acquisitions
29 September 2021
Hachette Australia has acquired world rights to two uplifting ‘family dramedies’ by Toni Jordan, author of numerous award-winning, bestselling novels, including Addition, Nine Days and Our Tiny, Useless Hearts (all...
Diverse voices among recent fiction acquisitions
9 June 2021
Penguin Random House Australia (PRH) has acquired ANZ rights to The Matchmaker (2023), a romantic comedy from debut Pakistani–Australian author Saman Shad, via Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown. The novel...
Two debut novels picked up in US, UK
9 June 2021
Two debut novels—Ella Baxter’s New Animal and Peter Papathanasiou’s forthcoming crime fiction The Stoning—have recently been acquired by publishers in the US and UK. US rights to Ella Baxter’s New...
‘The Yield’ among numerous novels optioned for screen
9 June 2021
Tara June Winch’s 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award-winning novel The Yield (Penguin) has been optioned for the screen. The Yield centres on Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi and his granddaughter August, who...
‘Body inclusive wellbeing guide’ among nonfiction acquisitions
9 June 2021
Simon & Schuster Australia has acquired world rights to a body inclusive wellbeing guide by Shreen El Masry, a non-diet, body inclusive personal trainer and the owner of the Sydney-based...
Magabala picture book scores North American sale
26 May 2021
A number of Australian children’s picture books have been sold into international markets over the past few months, including a North American sale for Indigenous publisher Magabala Books. Magabala Books...
Text signs Sheppard in two-book deal
26 May 2021
Text Publishing has acquired world rights to the second YA novel by Holden Sheppard, in a two-book deal via Gaby Naher of Left Bank Literary. The Brink (2022) follows a...
‘Sorrow and Bliss’, ‘Jane in Love’, ‘The Geography of Friendship’ acquired for screen
17 March 2021
Meg Mason’s novel Sorrow and Bliss has sold into 21 countries since it was published by HarperCollins Australia in 2020, and now Hollywood has come calling. The US production company...
New children’s acquisitions include collaboration from Alice Pung, Sher Rill Ng
17 March 2021
Author Alice Pung and illustrator Sher Rill Ng have teamed up on a highly anticipated new children’s book that was acquired at auction by HarperCollins Children’s Books Australia via Curtis...
Two China memoirs on Australian nonfiction line-up
17 March 2021
Two new memoirs that explore life in modern-day China have been acquired by Australian publishers. Allen & Unwin has acquired ANZ rights to Vicky Xu’s memoir You’re So Brave at...
‘Superstar’ Mirandi Riwoe among Australian fiction acquisitions
17 March 2021
University of Queensland Press publisher Aviva Tuffield describes author Mirandi Riwoe as a ‘superstar who deserves all the recognition she’s received to date for Stone Sky Gold Mountain—and I’m sure...
Australian children’s, YA titles headed for screen
30 September 2020
After a decade in print, Sally Rippin’s bestselling Billie B Brown junior fiction series (Hardie Grant Egmont) is finally heading to the screen. Global production company Fremantle and development partner...
‘The Dressmaker’ sequel among recent Oz acquisitions
30 September 2020
Australian publishers have been busy acquiring new titles over the past six months, including a kids’ guide to journalism, a ‘vital, groundbreaking book’ about gender transition, and a highly anticipated...
Award-winners among recent rights sales successes
30 September 2020
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic putting a halt to international travel, a majority of Australian rights managers and literary agents have reported a stable rights market over the past year, with...
Internationally published refugee memoir to be adapted for film
19 March 2020
Behrouz Boochani’s multi-award-winning memoir No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (trans by Omid Tofighian, Picador)—an account of the Iranian refugee’s incarceration on Manus Island by the Australian...
Educational picture books on ‘microbial worlds’ sold to Korea, China
19 March 2020
Children’s/YA sales Language rights to four titles in the ‘Small Friends Books’ series of educational picture books—co-published by art–science collaborative and micro-publisher Scale Free Network (SFN) and CSIRO Publishing—have been...
Affirm acquires new picture book from Godwin, Lester
19 March 2020
Children’s/YA acquisitions Affirm Press has acquired the rights to Sing Me the Summer (November), a new picture book from bestselling children’s book creators Jane Godwin and Alison Lester (pictured), which...
