Maree Coote on ‘Letters for Lunch’
Tuesday, 20 June 2023
Maree Coote is a celebrated Melbourne-based publisher, author and illustrator known for her captivating and intricately detailed illustrations. She won the coveted Bologna Ragnazzi 2017 Special Mention Prize for her...
The APA on a new ‘clean and modern’ TitlePage and future potential
Wednesday, 14 June 2023
The APA's Titlepage and supply chain manager Cat Colwell spoke to Books+Publishing about some recent changes to book pricing and availability service TitlePage, as well as its potential to provide more real-time...
Wendy Orr on ‘Honey and the Valley of the Horses’
Tuesday, 6 June 2023
Wendy Orr is a Canadian-born writer who now calls Australia home. She is the author of over 40 books but is perhaps best known for her beloved novel Nim's Island...
ABIAs: This year’s winners on their books, and the industry that produced them
Wednesday, 31 May 2023
At this year’s ABIA awards Books+Publishing digital producer Andrew Wrathall spoke with some of the winners about their books, bookshops and the trends affecting the industry. From BookTok, to paper...
Alice Wood on HarperCollins’s ABIA-shortlisted marketing campaigns
Wednesday, 24 May 2023
HarperCollins, under head of marketing communications Alice Wood, has received three of the five nominations for the inaugural Marketing Strategy of the Year award in this year's Australian Book Industry...
Neurodivergence and editing: An inside view, part two
Wednesday, 17 May 2023
In part two of an edited extract from their paper Neurodivergence and editing: An inside view, delivered at this year's IPEd conference, Louise Merrington AE and Tanja Gardner share the...
Neurodivergence and editing: An inside view
Wednesday, 10 May 2023
In part one of an edited extract from their paper Neurodivergence and editing: An inside view, delivered at this year's IPEd conference, Louise Merrington AE and Tanja Gardner outline the...
Books without barriers: a new guide to accessible inclusive publishing
Wednesday, 3 May 2023
The product of two years’ work by IPEd’s Accessibility Initiative Working Party, based on a review of the international literature and a survey of local publishers, the new publication Books...
Amplify Bookstore’s winter picks
Wednesday, 26 April 2023
Amplify Bookstore is an independent online bookseller specialising in books by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) authors, founded by Jing Xuan Teo and Marina Sano. Here, they share their...
Time to open a bookshop
Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Various new bookshops have opened up across Australia this year and the previous year, with most of them being focused on children’s books. We take a brief look at the...
Carl Merrison on ‘Backyard Footy’
Tuesday, 11 April 2023
Hailing from Halls Creek, children's author Carl Merrison won a 2020 black&write! fellowship to develop his 'Backyard Sports' picture book series. The first book, Backyard Footy (illus by Samantha Campbell, Lothian,...
We Come With This Place: Debra Dank on her debut and what comes next
Wednesday, 5 April 2023
Ahead of the London Book Fair, Books+Publishing's rights publication Think Australian talks to author Debra Dank, whose debut is in the running for three NSW Premier's awards and the Stella...
How international book markets performed in 2022
Wednesday, 29 March 2023
Through the PubMagNet initiative, a collaboration between book industry trade magazines from around the world, representatives from publications in Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK and the US have shared insights...
Jess Racklyeft recommends
Tuesday, 21 March 2023
I am a huge fan of Claire Saxby’s work (I have been honoured to work on the books Iceberg and Whisper on the Wind [both A&U] with her) and recently read Tasmanian...
Jess Racklyeft on Bologna
Tuesday, 21 March 2023
Melbourne-based author and illustrator Jess Racklyeft was the winner of one of two Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) International Bologna Scholarships to attend this year’s Bologna Book Fair....
Megan Rogers recommends
Wednesday, 15 March 2023
The last book I read and loved was Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy (Penguin). I’d been wanting to read it for years but didn’t get a chance until after I’d finished...
Megan Rogers on ‘The Heart is a Star’
Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Megan Rogers' debut novel, The Heart is a Star (HarperCollins, May), centres on a middle-aged anaesthetist, Layla, who is juggling her career, family and love life when she must travel to Tasmania...
Christmas 2022: sales up, supply problems ease
Wednesday, 8 March 2023
Books+Publishing received feedback from representatives of 53 bookshops around Australia for its annual Christmas survey. According to booksellers, there was a bump in book sales in the lead-up to Christmas...
B D Lovell recommends
Tuesday, 28 February 2023
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (Scribner) is probably the last book that I really loved, even though I read it several years ago. It is a YA...
B D Lovell on ‘Between Worlds’
Tuesday, 28 February 2023
B D Lovell's new speculative verse novel Between Worlds (UWAP) follows Earth's first mission to begin the process of colonising Mars. Our reviewer Stefen Brazulaitis says this 'tale of space exploration...
Baby boom: The growth of children’s and young adult market
Wednesday, 22 February 2023
In our latest genre spotlight Books+Publishing takes a look at the children’s and young adult category. Children’s and young adult (CYA) titles have been driving the growth of the Australian book market in...
Dinalie Dabarera recommends
Wednesday, 15 February 2023
I recently finished reading Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Picador), which very poignantly deals with some themes similar to those in my own book, like family, culture and...
Dinalie Dabarera on ‘Quiet Time with My Seeya’
Wednesday, 15 February 2023
Dinalie Dabarera's debut picture book Quiet Time with My Seeya tells a gentle story of the relationship between a young child and her Sinhalese grandpa. 'This mutual love and tenderness...
Strong season for publishers as sales top pre-pandemic figures
Wednesday, 15 February 2023
BookTok drove sales of US titles, print delays were a challenge and, looking ahead, 'pricing will finally be going up', but for most publishers, Christmas 2022 was a good one....
Doris Brett recommends
Tuesday, 7 February 2023
I have been re-reading Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (Penguin). I first read, and loved it, as a teenager. It is a sharply written, laugh-out-loud-on-the-tram novel, satirising the doom-and-gloom,...
Doris Brett on ‘Philomella and the Impossible Forest’
Tuesday, 7 February 2023
Philomella and the Impossible Forest is Doris Brett's first fiction book for children. A 'playful take on the classic quest story' the middle-grade novel follows Philomella who stumbles upon a forest...
Editors and trauma: Why we need an industry framework
Tuesday, 31 January 2023
Camilla Cripps's research finds that the vast majority of editors have worked with traumatic material and 60% report having trauma disclosed to them by an author, yet the industry does...
Dominic Smith on ‘Return to Valetto’
Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Return to Valetto (A&U, March) is Seattle-based Australian expat Dominic Smith's sixth novel. Set in a fictional semi-abandoned Italian town, the book excavates the town's mysteries and explores the lives of the...
Dominic Smith recommends
Tuesday, 24 January 2023
I was late in coming to Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance (Picador), which won the Miles Franklin in 2011. I loved it for its ability to give the colonial settling...
Best of the best books of 2022
Wednesday, 11 January 2023
Across five major ‘best books of 2022’ articles published late last year, over 120 individual titles were mentioned by Australian critics, authors and book industry figures as their favourite reads...
