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Rights round-up

Wednesday, 10 May 2017
Sales Fiction—HarperCollins has sold world German-language rights to Bonkers (Michelle Holman) to Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur. Scribe has sold UK & Commonwealth audio rights to The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy...

PRH acquires ‘subversive’ boarding school YA debut

Wednesday, 10 May 2017
Penguin Random House Australia has acquired the rights to Margot McGovern’s contemporary YA debut Neverland. Random House Young Readers publisher Zoe Walton acquired ANZ rights and English-language rights in Asia via Jacinta...

Budget confirms return of Catalyst funding to OzCo

Wednesday, 10 May 2017
The 2017-18 federal budget has confirmed the return of Catalyst funding to the Australia Council, first announced in March this year. The budget papers show that the government is directing...

EWF 2017 program launched

Wednesday, 10 May 2017
The Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF) has announced its full 2017 program, which runs from 14-23 June in venues across Melbourne’s CBD, Footscray and Dandenong. The festival will open with ‘an...

Spufford wins 2017 Ondaatje Prize

Wednesday, 10 May 2017
Francis Spufford’s debut novel Golden Hill (Faber) has won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize in the UK. The annual £10,000 (A$17,630) prize is awarded for ‘a distinguished work...

Brave new world: Sydney’s Beachside Bookshop

Tuesday, 9 May 2017
Sydney’s Beachside Bookshop, which specialises in teen fiction, celebrated its one-year anniversary earlier this year. Owner and second-generation bookseller Libby Armstrong shares her bookseller’s diary. ‘Oh, you’re very brave.’ If...

Clinton, Patterson collaborate on novel

Tuesday, 9 May 2017
Former US president Bill Clinton and author James Patterson have teamed up to write a political thriller, which will be published by Cornerstone in June 2018, reports Publishers Weekly. The...

CBCA partners with party supplies company

Monday, 8 May 2017
The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) has partnered with Australian party supplies company The Party People to promote Children’s Book Week. The CBCA said the partnership will enable it...

New ‘Books+Publishing Junior’ reviews out now

Friday, 5 May 2017
Books+Publishing’s latest Junior newsletter contains nine reviews of books publishing in June and July. The two highest-scoring titles were Kyle Hughes-Odgers’ picture-book One Thousand Trees (Fremantle Press, July) and Peter...

Ditmar Awards 2017 ballot announced

Friday, 5 May 2017
The ballot for the 2017 Ditmar Awards was announced on 10 April. The shortlisted works include: Best Novel The Grief Hole (Kaaron Warren, IFWG) The Lyre Thief (Jennifer Fallon, HarperCollins)...

Book-to-film adaptations coming in 2017

Thursday, 4 May 2017
The second half of 2017 promises a wide selection of book-to-film adaptations, with remakes of popular classics, adaptions of new sci-fi novels and much in between. Christina Copeland rounds up...

Cece wins 2017 Text Prize

Thursday, 4 May 2017
Adelaide-based author Adam Cece has won the 2017 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing for his middle-grade manuscript ‘The Extremely Weird Thing That Happened in Huggabie Falls’. The...

Four publishers selected for Austrade China-Korea trip

Thursday, 4 May 2017
Representatives from four Australian publishers have been selected to participate in the 2017 Austrade China-Korea Publisher Visits program. The delegation, led by Penguin Random House senior rights manager Nerrilee Weir,...

Arthur C Clarke Award 2017 shortlist announced

Thursday, 4 May 2017
In the UK, the shortlist for the 2017 Arthur C Clarke Award for science-fiction has been announced. The six shortlisted titles are: A Closed and Common Orbit (Becky Chambers, Hodder)...

Crime teen investigation: Tristan Bancks on ‘The Fall’

Wednesday, 3 May 2017
In Tristan Bancks’ middle-grade novel The Fall, 12-year-old Sam Garner finds himself investigating a crime after witnessing a body falling from his apartment building. Bancks spoke to reviewer Braiden Asciak....

Rights round-up

Wednesday, 3 May 2017
Sales Fiction—Text has sold Catalan and Lithuanian rights to Fear (Dirk Kurbjuweit) to Ara Llibres and Baltos Lankos, respectively; Dutch rights to The Spare Room (Helen Garner) to Colibri; and...

SA library launches soft toy echidna into space

Wednesday, 3 May 2017
Tea Tree Gully library in South Australia has launched a soft toy echidna into space to encourage local children’s interest in the history of space exploration, reports the ABC. After...