Drury appointed to new Affirm national sales team
Wednesday, 7 September 2022
Affirm Press has appointed former Simon & Schuster national field sales manager Kay Drury as the first member of its new sales team. The new national sales team, which Affirm...
Big Issue fiction edition returns
Wednesday, 7 September 2022
The Big Issue has announced the authors chosen for its annual fiction edition. The 2022 edition includes works from 12 writers selected from 905 submissions. The selected works were anonymously...
Wang wins 2022 Spark Prize
Wednesday, 7 September 2022
Becca Wang has won the 2022 Spark Prize, presented by Hardie Grant Books and RMIT Writing and Publishing, for her nonfiction book proposal ‘Birth Right’. Chosen from a shortlist of...
APA convenes diversity & inclusion working group; releases UniMelb ‘baseline’ survey results
Wednesday, 31 August 2022
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) has released the results of a ‘baseline’ survey of the Australian publishing industry undertaken by University of Melbourne researchers, and convened a Diversity & Inclusion...
Delaney’s ‘Reasons Not to Worry’ sells in multiple territories
Wednesday, 31 August 2022
Rights to Brigid Delaney’s nonfiction work Reasons Not to Worry (A&U, September) have been sold to North America, the UK and Commonwealth (ex ANZ and Canada), Greece and Serbia, in...
Byron Writers Festival returns after two years of upheaval
Wednesday, 31 August 2022
The 2022 Byron Writers Festival, which ran 26 to 28 August, was ‘a resounding success’, according to the organisers. The first in-person festival since 2019, following the cancellation of the...
Dymocks Neutral Bay win top award at in-person conference
Wednesday, 24 August 2022
Gina and Colin Pettitt of Dymocks Neutral Bay were awarded the Dymocks Chairman’s Award for Retail Excellence in 2022 during the bookselling chain’s annual conference, which ran from 7 to...
Transit Lounge acquires Bacon literary mystery novel
Wednesday, 24 August 2022
Transit Lounge has acquired world rights to Serengotti, a literary mystery novel by Eugen Bacon. According to Transit Lounge publisher Barry Scott, Serengotti takes the classic story of a woman...
CWF: ‘the little festival that could’ returns after two years of false starts
Wednesday, 24 August 2022
After being postponed and ultimately cancelled in 2021, the Canberra Writers Festival (CWF) returned in person this month, doubling its audience numbers in comparison to the 2020 CWF hybrid in-person...
Readings announces New Australian Fiction Prize 2022 shortlist
Tuesday, 23 August 2022
The shortlist for the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize has been announced. The shortlisted titles are: Cold Enough for Snow (Jessica Au, Giramondo) Hovering (Rhett Davis, Hachette) Losing Face (George Haddad, UQP)...
Oscar and Friends to close Double Bay store
Wednesday, 17 August 2022
Oscar and Friends bookshop has announced the closure of its original Double Bay store in Sydney. In a statement, the bookshop said that ‘sadly due to the redevelopment of our...
Readings YA Book Prize 2022 shortlist announced
Wednesday, 17 August 2022
The shortlist for the 2021 Readings Young Adult Book Prize has been announced. The shortlisted YA novels are: The Museum of Broken Things (Lauren Draper, Text) Sugar Town Queens (Malla...
Aus market up 4.1%, romance up 77% YTD
Wednesday, 17 August 2022
Australian book sales are up by 4.1% in value compared to this time last year, according to Nielsen BookData, which reports Australian book market sales of $544 million year to...
Readings union members to consider industrial action
Wednesday, 10 August 2022
Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) members at Readings bookshop will consider industrial action, following on from a protest outside the independent chain’s Carlton store in Melbourne on 6...
ILF announces digital event for ILD 2022
Wednesday, 10 August 2022
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) has announced two events in collaboration with the Sydney Opera House for Indigenous Literacy Day (ILD), which falls on Wednesday, 7 September this year. The...
Caro’s ‘The Mother’ optioned for film
Wednesday, 10 August 2022
Film rights for Jane Caro’s first novel for adults, The Mother (A&U), have been optioned by New Town Films in a deal negotiated by Jacinta di Mase of Jacinta di...
Pantera announces Public Holiday Swap initiative
Wednesday, 3 August 2022
Pantera Press has announced a new Public Holiday Swap initiative that gives permanent employees the option to work on a public holiday and take a different day of leave in...
Weir, Henderson launch Bold Type Agency
Wednesday, 3 August 2022
Former Penguin Random House (PRH) senior rights manager Nerrilee Weir and former Simon & Schuster (S&S) publishing director Fiona Henderson have announced the creation of a new rights agency. Bold...
MWF full program announced
Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) has announced its full 2022 program, which runs 8–11 September, and features over 150 events. The festival makes its return to live programming after two years...
APA, ABA children’s publishing conference returns
Wednesday, 27 July 2022
The program for the Australian Publishers Association (APA) Children's Publishing Conference, held in conjunction with the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA), has been announced. ‘Between the Covers, Behind the Counter’, which...
Kenwood’s ‘Unnecessary Drama’ sells to US
Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Text has sold North American rights to Nina Kenwood’s second YA novel Unnecessary Drama to Sarah Barley at Flatiron Books, in a deal brokered by David Forrer at Inkwell Management....
A&U acquires Lim middle-grade novel
Wednesday, 20 July 2022
Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ, Oceania and non-exclusive Asia rights to a new middle-grade novel by Rebecca Lim, Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky, via the Annabel Barker...
Affirm acquires two Robinson novels
Wednesday, 20 July 2022
Affirm Press has acquired world rights to two new novels by Alice Robinson. The first title, Blueshifts, is a literary/speculative fiction novel set both 100 years into the future and...
T S Bookshop urges board to rethink closure
Wednesday, 20 July 2022
Customers and supporters of the T S Bookshop in Melbourne have launched a Change.org petition in response to the planned closure of the store by the board of the Theosophical...
Summers leaves Hardie Grant
Wednesday, 20 July 2022
Hardie Grant Books publisher Arwen Summers has left the role after five years at the company. Summers said in a LinkedIn post she was 'in need of major change' after two...
FedEx to manage all UBD new releases
Wednesday, 13 July 2022
United Book Distrbutors (UBD) has announced that from next month all its new release deliveries will be managed by FedEx (TNT). The distributor said that, after assessing its freight model...
McHardy leaves Booktopia
Wednesday, 13 July 2022
Franscois McHardy has left his position as head of publishing at Booktopia after three years in the role, and will be lecturing next semester in the Master of Publishing course...
Byron Writers Festival full 2022 program announced
Wednesday, 13 July 2022
Byron Writers Festival, Australia’s largest regional writers festival, has announced the full line-up for its 2022 event, which runs 26–28 August. After a two-year hiatus due to Covid, the festival...
Royal Societies of ANZ partner on $10,000 writing award
Wednesday, 6 July 2022
The Royal Societies of Australia and New Zealand Te Apārangi have announced a new partnership with the Creative Force Foundation, co-founded by author and environmentalist Bruce Piasecki. Under the partnership,...
Hachette acquires Dunn debut novel
Wednesday, 6 July 2022
Hachette Australia has acquired world rights to Dirt Poor Islanders, the debut novel by Winnie Dunn. Dirt Poor Islanders explores growing up in a blended Tongan family in Western Sydney...
