Tuesday, 5 September 2006
Egypt's most celebrated author Naguib Mahfouz has died from heart failure, aged 94. Mahfouz was the first Arab writer to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature. He is best...

Tuesday, 5 September 2006
Australia's famous ‘Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin has died from a stingray attack off the coast of Queensland. Irwin published three books in his career: The Crocodile Hunter: The Birthday Present...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
In our Around the World blog this week: Amazon announces plans to buy back US$500 million of the company's shares of the next two years; the summer reading promotion of...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
With just a few shopping days to go until Father's Day, this week's bestsellers belong to dad. At number one is the classic military book option (Peter FitzSimon's Tobruk in...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
Ralph Saubern writes on behalf of ACER Press: On Wednesday last week, Deirdre Morris, general manager of ACER Press, passed away after a short battle with cancer. She will be...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
Sue Hines writes on behalf of Allen & Unwin: Actor, writer, obituarist, art critic, bookseller and lover of books, Philip Jones died on Friday 25 August after a long and...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
Simon & Schuster (Australia) writes: International thriller writer Colin Forbes died last week at the age of 83. Colin wrote 33 novels, a book a year without fail, well over...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
Australian Democrats founder Don Chipp died from pneumonia on Monday, aged 81. Chipp entered federal parliament as a member of the Liberal party, where he delighted libertarians by clearing a...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
Further to last week's story about the transition to ISBN-13, WBN has been informed that the DOS-based version of Preswick Data's IBID system--used by Dymocks and a number of independent...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
Friendly Fire, a collection of poetry by Jennifer Maiden (Giramondo), has won the $10,000 Age Book of the Year award, announced on Friday as part of the Melbourne Writers' Festival....

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
The books shortlisted for this year's Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were announced on 24 August. The shortlist is as follows: Fiction Book Award: The Garden Book (Brian Castro, Giramondo); Grace...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
As previously reported in WBN, the Australian newspaper intends to launch a monthly literary supplement in the vein of its now defunct Australian Review of Books. To be called the...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
The Canberra Readers and Writers Festival held from 25 August to 27 August at the National Library of Australia was a success for the ACT Writers Centre, which has organised...

Tuesday, 29 August 2006
The Melbourne Writers' Festival kicked off last Friday 25 August with the announcement of the Age Book of the Year winners, followed by the festival's traditional keynote address, this year...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
Trade events coming up over the next week, as shown on our Events Calendar, include: Children's Book Week, which wraps up on 25 August; the University of Melbourne Publishing & Communications annual...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
The shortlist of books for this year's Canberra's Own Outstanding List (COOL) awards--the ACT's children's choice book awards--has been announced. Voting begins on 1 September and finishes on 15 September with the winning...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
In news from our Around the World blog, arts and development funding body New Zealand Creative gets a new chief executive; Time Out booksellers launch a competition to find the...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
The National Library of Australia (NLA) has recently begun the process of moving 40 kilometres of its collection material into a new offsite storage facility.Despite the enormity of the task,...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
The Victorian public library system has announced a new, state-wide internet catalogue and interlibrary loan system called LibraryLink.Launched last week, LibraryLink makes the catalogues of 42 metropolitan and 97 regional...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
As reported in a WBN special bulletin last Friday, the winners and honour books in this year's Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Awards were announced...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
Imagine how useful it would be if the whole book trade had access to the same calendar. Now it does!Our new online events calendar provides the whole industry with a way of...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
Pan Macmillan has announced a new trade publishing division, Picador Asia. The imprint will aim to secure world rights to Asian titles to publish simultaneously in Asia, the UK, Australia and...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
Rockpool Publishing, a new Australian publishing house owned by former Random House production manager Lisa Hanrahan and Gary Allen of book distributor Gary Allen Pty Ltd, will launch its list...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
The Prime Minister, John Howard, has announced the creation of a new annual prize for Australian history. The prize, which the Prime Minister said could go to a substantial written...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
The deadline for applications for grants from the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) Professional Development Fund is this Friday, 25 August. In 2005-06 $150,000 was allocated to the fund, which allocates...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
It looks like Australian readers like a little murder and mystery in their reading diet at the moment. The Husband, Dean Koontz's nail-biter about a landscape gardener whose wife is...