Tuesday, 26 September 2006
Several organisations representing authors and librarians have issued a joint statement protesting the forced removal of two books from the University of Melbourne's library. Join the Caravan (Azzam Publications) and...

Tuesday, 26 September 2006
Former Jacaranda Wiley MD John Collins writes: Shirley Macpherson, former college and professional marketing manager at Jacaranda Wiley (now Wiley Australia) has died in Toowomba, aged 75. A long-time publishers'...

Tuesday, 26 September 2006
The Happiness of Kati by Jane Vejjajiva (Allen & Unwin) has been named the winner of the 2006 SEA Write Award. The book is the first children's title to have...

Tuesday, 26 September 2006
Adelaide, Nature of a City (ed by Christopher Daniels & Catherine Tait, Biocity--the Centre for Urban Habitats at the University of Adelaide) has been awarded the 2006 Whitley Medal. The...

Tuesday, 26 September 2006
Kate Lyons, author of The Water Underneath and The Corner of Your Eye (both Allen & Unwin), has been awarded Arts NSW's 2006 Writer's Fellowship. Lyons will receive $20,000 to...

Tuesday, 26 September 2006
Loney Planet has signed a licensing deal with Sony to launch a new series of ‘Passport to...' guides on Sony's Play Station Portable (PSP). The guides, to London, Amsterdam, Barcelona,...

Tuesday, 26 September 2006
Hachette Livre Australia has announced that Fiona Hazard has been appointed publishing director, effective immediately. Hazard, formerly director of publishing and production, has been at Hachette for seven years and...

Tuesday, 26 September 2006
We have two quick matters to bring to your attention that relate to your subscription to WBN and/or MX.1. We're moving to a new, faster email-sending platform. Therefore, from the...

Tuesday, 26 September 2006
The Canadian Consulate General has announced Jeanne Ryckmans as the successful candidate for the inaugural Australia/Canada Publishers' Exchange.Ryckmans, publisher of fiction and nonfiction for Vintage, Knopf, Random and Arrow at...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Belinda Castles has been announced as the winner of this year's Australian/Vogel Literary Award.Castles won the award--for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under 35--for her second novel The River...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
The Australian Government has released its draft recommendations for changes to the Copyright Act dealing with technological protection measures (TPMs).For more information, see this website.

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has recommended that the Australian Government drop the term ‘sedition' from its anti-terror laws.Summarising the main outcome of a five-month review, ALRC president David...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Macmillan Publishers Australia has announced the resignation of Shane Armstrong as managing director of Macmillan Education Australia (MEA).After almost eight years with Macmillan, Armstrong is moving to Singapore to take...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Publishers and distributors that visit the Frankfurt Book Fair are again warned to beware of correspondence from Austrian-based company Construct Data Verlag AG and an associated company, Premium Recovery.WBN understands...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
The finalists in the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature have been announced, along with the finalists for the Best Writing Award. The winner of the prize will receive a $30,000...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Trade events coming up over the next week, as shown on our events calendar, include: The Advertiser's Big Book Club Literary Event, which finishes up on 20 September; the Scribe book launch of...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
The 2006 Brisbane Writers Festival wound up on Sunday, having run from 13 September. This was the 10th annual festival and the first for director Michael Campbell, who said he...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
This week it's all about the fairies: Rainbow Magic Funday Fairies. They've taken up all but the top spot in this week's highest new entries chart. The prize for most...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Novelists Julian Davies and Robin Wallace-Crabbe; illustrator-bookbinder Phil Day; and bookseller Ingeborg Hansen have formed the publishing house Finlay Lloyd, which last week published the collection of essays When Books Die....

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has announced it will be running an expanded mentorship program with funding of $150,000 from the Cultural Fund of the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL)....

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Unseen Footprints by Sheridan Voysey (Scripture Union) has been named the 2006 winner of the Australian Christian Book of the Year award. Also shortlisted for the award were A Spectator's...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Dymocks has announced it will open a new store in the Westfield Queensgate Centre at Lower Hutt in New Zealand in early November. The franchise owner will be Darren Gilchrist.

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
In news from our Around the World blog this week comes reports that Amazon is developing its own e-book reader; meanwhile Sony's e-Reader will be launched in the US next...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
German-born writer Sasha Soldatow has died in Sydney, aged 58. His book Private: Do Not Open (Penguin) was one of the first explicitly gay works published by a mainstream Australian...

Tuesday, 19 September 2006
Maori writer and popular young-adult author Kingi McKinnon has died at the age of 63. McKinnon wrote several award-winning novels about the experience of young Maori in the modern world.