Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Department store Myer and discount supermarket ALDI have both announced that they will offer staff paid maternity leave for the first time.ALDI will offer 14 weeks at half pay, while...

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
The contemporary fiction festival held last weekend by the NSW Writers' Centre was ‘a wonderful success,' the Centre's acting director Arabella Lee has told WBN.‘The weather was perfect and the...

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Six ‘wonderfully diverse' titles have been shortlisted for the $20,000 National Biography Award 2008, the State Library of NSW announced today.The shortlisted books are: Napoleon, 1769-1799: The Path to Power...

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
The winner of this year's ABC Fiction Award is Adelaide-based high-school teacher Kain Massin for his novel God for the Killing.God for the Killing follows the story of heroine Judith,...

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Pacific Rim Voices has announced the winners of the 12th annual Kiriyama Prize. New Zealand author Lloyd Jones' novel Mister Pip (Text/Peng NZ) is this year's fiction winner; The Fragile...

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
The rhyming maestro Dr Seuss is back in the charts with Horton Hears a Who, number one in the Fastest Mover chart this week. For the umpteenth week in a...

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Trade events coming up over the next week, as shown on our events calendar, include: Bologna Children's Book Fair, Bologna, 31 March-3 AprilDeadline for CAL's Professional Development Fund, 4 AprilCreating...

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Robert Fagles, the Princeton University professor emeritus who was famous for his translations of Homer and Virgil, died on March 26. He was 74.

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
The University of Queensland Press writes:UQP would like to offer their condolences to the family and friends of Alan Collins. Alan Collins, who passed away last week, published significant works...

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Clark wins ABR poetry prizeRoss Clark has been announced as the winner of the fourth Australian Book Review (ABR) poetry prize his poem ‘Danger: Lantana.'ABR celebrates 300 issuesThe April issue...

Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Melbourne's Reader's Feast Bookshop has stepped back in time in its role as the official bookseller to the State Library of Victoria's (SLV) new exhibition The Medieval Imagination.Reader's Feast's Mary...

Monday, 31 March 2008
Hachette Livre’s parent company, Lagardere, has reported a ‘fine performance’ for 2007, with earnings before interest and tax up by 9.4%. Locally, the managing director of Hachette Livre Australia reported...

Monday, 31 March 2008
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has launched an education and advocacy group for graphic novel writers and artists. The ‘Comics/Graphic Novels Portfolio’ will ‘actively support a neglected (and often...

Monday, 31 March 2008
Dymocks’s seven-year-old charity arm, the Dymocks Literacy Foundation, is to donate 2,652 books to ten pre-schools and special needs schools along the Gold Coast.Titles from Libby Gleeson, Anthony Browne, Anna...

Monday, 31 March 2008
Feather Man, poet Rhyll McMaster's debut novel (Brandl & Schlesinger), has won the inaugural Barbara Jefferis Award.Founded by the late ABC film critic John Hinde to commemorate his author wife, the...

Monday, 31 March 2008
Online book sales are flourishing compared other areas of online retail, but booksellers could be doing better still, according to a new report.In a survey of 1215 Australian consumers, consultancy...

Monday, 31 March 2008
As first reported in a WBN Special Bulletin, the shortlisted titles in this year's Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year awards have been announced. The shortlist for...

Monday, 31 March 2008
Among the many items added to our Around the World blog in the past week:Agents 'lazy' about new media rightsTintin heads for the big screenOddest title award winnerDo you 'buy'...

Monday, 31 March 2008
The 9th national conference of the Children's Book Council of Australia, to be held in Melbourne from 2 to 4 of May, will be opened by Astrid Lindgren award-winner Sonya...

Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Following an announcement in February that they would be merging, Brumby Books & Music, Bookwise, Gary Allen and Tower Books have announced a name for the new combined group. The...

Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Stories posted to our Around the World blog this week include:UK publishers don't realise how much Aussies resent them, says RosenbloomBuy a book, plant a treeCookery books will be gone...

Tuesday, 25 March 2008
The Arrival by Shaun Tan (Lothian) has been nominated for yet another award, this time in the United States. The Arrival has been nominated for a Hugo in the official...

Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Coming in at number one this week in the Highest New Entries chart is children’s book Columbia Sneezes! Not about Columbians with hay fever problems as the title may suggest,...

Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Trade events coming up over the next week, as shown on our events calendar, include: Victorian Community History Awards entries close, 28 MarchContemporary Australian Fiction Festival, NSW Writers' Centre, 29...

Monday, 24 March 2008
Australia's Workplace Ombudsman, Nicholas Wilson, has warned retailers to abandon attempts to ‘get around' workplace laws. The warning came after a Melbourne retailer was fined $30,000 for underpaying two casual...

Monday, 24 March 2008
The media group Bertelsmann, parent company of Random House Australia, is exploring the sale of its book club unit, Direct Group. Chief Executive Hartmut Ostrowski said that ‘every strategic option' would...

Monday, 24 March 2008
Random House Australia'sÿparent company Bertelsmann has reported a decline in profit for 2007, but the publisher's results in Australia 'wereÿstrong in 2007 andÿin line withÿexpectations,' according to Random House Australia's...