Australian market news: Mergers, new ventures, and local top-selling authors
After a turbulent 12 months for independent publishing, with three established independent publishers acquired by and integrated into larger publishing houses, 2025 has been an opportunity to walk a new publishing landscape.
Affirm Press (acquired by Simon & Schuster Australia in August 2024), Pantera Press (acquired by Australian independent publisher Hardie Grant in September 2024), and Text Publishing (acquired by Penguin Random House Australia in January 2025) have all continued to publish under their own imprints in 2025, with all three announcing new acquisitions, moving into 2026 and 2027.
With change often comes opportunity, and 2025 has also welcomed the launch of several new publishing ventures.
Pink Shorts Press, announced in November 2024, has officially launched its first acquisitions: Plastic Budgie, a piece of autofiction from Olivia De Zilva, and Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere, a collection of satirical short stories from Alex Cothren.
Other new publishing ventures include Perentie Press, with a focus on graphic novels, and Bakers Lane Books, with a mandate for ‘bold, inclusive storytelling’.
Productivity and generative AI
At the forefront in every conversation about the creative industries is, of course, the looming presence of generative AI. Australian publishing industry professionals have kept a weather eye on what is happening with our US and UK colleagues, as well as in other markets around the world. With the Australian Government’s Productivity Commission tasked with exploring the impact, the industry has responded with concerns regarding fair recompense to creators and recognition of copyright in this context.
NielsenIQ BookData
In a report presented at the BookPeople conference mid-2025, NielsenIQ BookData highlighted that its BookScan data for the 2025 year-to-date (as at the end of quarter 1) showed value gains in science fiction and fantasy, personal growth and cooking. The former two categories were driven respectively by the third book in Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series, Onyx Storm (Piatkus), and the late 2024 publication of The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins (Hay House). The cookbook market in Australia continues to be dominated by Nagi Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats cookbooks, Tonight and Dinner (both Macmillan), and there have been small gains in young adult fiction – off the back of Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping (Scholastic) – and handicrafts, arts and crafts, thanks to a resurgence of colouring books.
Overall, for the first quarter of 2025, NielsenIQ reported that sales were down 2.6% by volume but only 1.1% by value, with the company reporting a trend of higher price points as an explanation of this pattern.
As reported in our previous market update, 2024 was the fourth highest year on record for book sales. While the market is still correcting after 2022 – an outlier year for sales – and recorded a decline in 2024 of 3.0% in value and 1.2% in volume, according to figures from NielsenIQ BookData’s BookScan service, book sales still remained strong, with 68.9 million books sold for a value of $1.29 billion.
Back at the BookPeople conference, NielsenIQ added that, within this overall 2024 figure, adult trade nonfiction was worth $441 million; children’s, YA and educational was worth $368 million; and adult fiction was worth $411 million.
In adult fiction for 2024 overall, the segment was up 7.2% in value compared to 2023. By category, general and literary fiction was up 1%; crime, thriller and adventure were up 6%; graphic novels and manga were down about 5%; and romance was up 9% from 2023. It was clear, however, that growth was being driven by sci-fi/fantasy sales, which were up 38% from 2023. In 2024, romance was worth $68.6 million in sales, while sci-fi/fantasy was worth $76.1 million. (For those looking to compare these to pre-pandemic numbers, these categories were worth $18 million and $25 million in sales respectively in 2019.)
In trade nonfiction – which overall was down 8.5% by value to $441 million in 2024 – biographies and autobiographies were down 19%, personal development was down 9%, and the arts was down 12%. However, food and drink was up 19%, beside a small gain in leisure and lifestyle of about 1%.
In children’s, the segment overall was down 3.8% in value in 2024, compared to 2023. Children’s fiction was down 8%, picture books were down 5%, children’s general nonfiction was down 10%, YA was down 12%, and preschool and early learning were down 4%. However, significant growth came through children’s comic strip fiction and graphic novels, which grew by 10%, and children’s general interest and leisure titles, which were up 16%.
Top 10 Australian authors of 2024
According to NielsenIQ’s report, the highest-selling Australian authors of 2024 were:
- Nagi Maehashi
- Anh Do
- Liane Moriarty
- Aaron Blabey
- Trent Dalton
- John Farnham and Poppy Stockell
- Mem Fox
- Tim Winton
- Brooke Bellamy
- Chris Hammer.
Category: Think Australian feature
