Monday, 12 December 2011
The State Library of Victoria's has announced the appointment of Sue Roberts as its new CEO and state librarian.Roberts, who has 15 years' experience in strategic library leadership in the UK and...

Monday, 12 December 2011
Australian poet John Kinsella has withdrawn from the 2011 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry because of ethical concerns about award sponsor Aurum Funds, reports the Bookseller. Kinsella, shortlisted for...

Monday, 12 December 2011
The winner of the 2011 Human Rights Literature Award was announced in Sydney on 9 December. The nonfiction award, which is sponsored by the Co-op Bookshop, was awarded to Half...

Monday, 12 December 2011
The Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts has announced the first three writers to receive grants through its Book2 program. Nam Le, Anna Krien and Favel Parrett...

Sunday, 11 December 2011
Children's authors Alison Lester and Boori Monty Pryor were named the inaugural Australian Children's Laureates at a ceremony in Adelaide on 10 December. South Australian Minister for Education and Child...

Sunday, 11 December 2011
Shearer's Bookshop officially launched its ReadCloud-based ebookstore on 6 December. 'ReadCloud has a focus on schools and education. We do a lot of business with schools right across Sydney, so...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
National Year of Reading 2012 (NYR) is set to officially launch at the National Library of Australia in Canberra on 14 February 2012. Jennifer Byrne from the ABC's First Tuesday...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Among the many international booktrade stories added to our Around the World blog in the past week: Amazon acquires US titles from Marshall CavendishEd King wins 2011 Bad S-x in...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
In the current issue of Bookseller+Publisher Fullers events manager Rachel Edwards talks about the ways the store is tweaking its events program, including the introduction of ticketed events. 'I was hesitant...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Next week's Weekly Book Newsletter (14 December) will be the last for 2011. The first Weekly Book Newsletter for 2012 will be 11 January 2011.Any news or advertisements for the final...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
‘All too often in the past good intentions to work across the industry for common good have foundered on grounds of self-interest or mutual ignorance, and an unbiased, truly representative...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
On Fancy Goods this week, Andrea Hanke begins our round-up of all those 'best books of 2011' lists, Eliza Metcalfe reviews Paramedico: Adventures by Ambulance by Benjamin Gilmour (Pier 9), Heath Graham...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
The South Australian Writers' Centre (SAWC) has appointed Sarah Tooth as its new director. Tooth, who has most recently co-directed the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali, will begin...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
In rights news this week: SalesFiction--Text Publishing has sold Dutch rights in Fishing the River of Time (Tony Taylor) to Contact; and Turkish rights in The Vanishing Act (Mette Jakobsen) to Dogan...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
The Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) will hold a publishing conference in March 2012. The conference, which will be held on 1 and 2 March in Auckland, will feature...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
While they are yet to secure a sponsor for the Stella Prize, prize organisers say they expect to be able to announce the establishment of the award for women's writing...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Stephanie Plum is heading back to New Jersey after a nightmare vacation in Hawaii. To make matters worse, the man sitting beside her on the plane, misses the connecting flight...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney will join the 2012 Sydney Writers' Festival (SWF) as a new sponsor.    The new partnership between the university...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
A new New Zealand award for a children's book in the mind, body, spirit (MBS) genre will be launched in 2012.The planned NZ$10,000 (A$7600) prize will be awarded to a published children's...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Finch Publishing has announced the launch of its ebook program. Marketing and publicity manager Laura Boon told the Weekly Book Newsletter that the publisher's ‘leading thirty titles... are being converted'...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
New Zealand bookselling chain Paper Plus will complete a multi-million dollar rebranding process in March 2012. Paper Plus CEO Rob Smith told the Weekly Book Newsletter that the rebranding process...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Library supplier ALS has launched the ePlatform ebook lending service in Australia. Launched locally at the SWITCH public libraries conference in late November, ePlatform offers local content from publishers including Allen...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
The European Union (EU) Competition Commission has launched a formal antitrust investigation into agency pricing agreements for ebooks between Apple and five major international publishers. The commission said in a...

Tuesday, 6 December 2011
The 2010-11 Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History has been jointly awarded to A Three-Cornered Life: The Historian W K Hancock by Jim Davidson (UNSW Press) and Bad Characters: S-x,...

Monday, 5 December 2011
The animal protection institute Voiceless has announced a new $15,000 short writing prize to be awarded for the first time in 2012. The Voiceless Writing Prize will award $15,000 to...

Monday, 5 December 2011
The Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) has appointed Mike Shuttleworth as its new program manager. Shuttleworth, formerly program manager at the State Library of Victoria's Centre for Youth Literature, replaces Jenny...

Monday, 5 December 2011
Brisbane poet Graham Nunn is the recipient of the 2011 Johnno award, presented by the Queensland Writers Centre (QWC) for outstanding contributions to writing in Queensland. Nunn, who is also...