Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Dr Jean Battersby died on 26 February this year. Battersby was the first chief executive for the Australia Council for the Arts and a pioneering influence on the arts in...

Tuesday, 24 March 2009
The US discount chain Costco has confirmed its first Australian store will open in Melbourne's Docklands in July. The store will employ 225 staff and will offer products under a...

Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Psychologist and author John S Cheetham has died, aged 60. Cheetham was author of Grow Up! How to raise an adult by being one yourself and Teach Your Child to...

Tuesday, 24 March 2009
New Zealand author and photographer Geoff Moon has died. He produced over 30 different titles including New Zealand Forest Birds and Their World, Bird Migration in New Zealand and A...

Tuesday, 24 March 2009
The Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) has announced that its planned 2010 conference has been cancelled. CBCA national executive president Marj Kirkland said the decision was made with ‘the...

Tuesday, 24 March 2009
In rights news this week: FictionHarperCollins has sold German rights to Frank Coates's The Last Maasai Warrior. Text has sold Brazilian rights to Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright to Grua...

Tuesday, 24 March 2009
This year's annual Leading Edge Books conference, held from 21 to 23 March at Crowne Plaza in New South Wales' Hunter Valley, attracted over 200 member store and supplier delegates....

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
In the April issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine (viewable in e-magazine form here) Angela Meyer rounds up the titles publishers have on offer for Mother's Day this year.We also speak to...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
New Zealand editor Andrew Mason has died. Mason was literary editor of the Listener from 1981 to 1991, and worked for Bridget Williams Books. He edited many books including Michael...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Murdoch Books has announced it will be ‘branching out into the exciting world of children's book publishing', and will be sourcing illustrations for one of its forthcoming children's titles by...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
The government-funded Books Alive campaign will run in September rather than August this year and will feature a series of television commercials promoting the initiative. ‘Following a debrief session at...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
In rights news this week: FictionAllen & Unwin has sold Commonwealth Writers' Prize South East Asia and Pacific region winner The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas to France and Lithuania; the next...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
‘Let me be clear. Absolutely clear. Not one word spoken in that session, either from the panelists or from the audience, was new or innovative. The panel, well, we've all...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
The Australia Council has announced a new initiative to support artists in creating residencies with non-arts businesses and industries. Connections Residency program is open to artists in all disciplines, including...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
A new publishing scholarship has been announced in New Zealand. The scholarship, endowed by the late Andrew Mason, who died in January, is in memory of Mason and his father...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
The Australian Shadows Award, Australia's top horror fiction award, has gone to Western Australian author Lee Battersby for his novelette ‘The Claws of Native Ghosts' (published in The Beast Within,...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
The regional winners of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize have been announced. From a list of over 350 books, the four international judging panels have chosen eight regional winners, including...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
The Western Australian Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has frozen the assets of Kingsley Flett, the co-author of Shadow Warrior, which details the criminal activities of David Everett. The book...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
The Miles Franklin Literary Award Longlist for 2009 has been announced. It consists of:Addition (Toni Jordan, Text)A Fraction of the Whole (Steve Toltz, Hamish Hamilton)Breath (Tim Winton, Hamish Hamilton)Fugitive Blue...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Goodall and Brophy joint winners of 2009 Calibre PrizeJane Goodall and Kevin Brophy are the joint winners of this year's Calibre Prize for essay writing. A joint initiative of the...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Raymond E Feist's Wrath of a Mad God is number one in the Highest New Entries chart this week. It apparently contains the ‘cataclysmic end' to the ‘Darkwar' series. Unsurprisingly,...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Trade events coming up over the next week, as shown on our events calendar, include: Somerset Celebration of Literature, Mudgeeraba, QLD, 16-20 MarchAustralian Copyright Council--2009 training program, Perth, 17-20 MarchAbu...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Be one of first to see Elegy starring Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley, based on the book The Dying Animal by Philip Roth. As a special offer for WBN subscribers,...

Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Among the many stories added to our around the world blog in the past week:Ebook gift cards: a good idea made too complex?Ebook pricing: do customers or publishers set expecations?UK...

Tuesday, 10 March 2009
The Australian Industry Group has become the most recent body to lodge a Productivity Commission submission in favour of retaining the current laws pertaining to the parallel importation of books....

Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Among the stories added to our Around the World blog in the past week:Agents Twitter themselves into troubleBorders US cuts over 700 staffB&N buys FictionwiseAmazon launches Kindle app for iPhoneRandom...

Tuesday, 10 March 2009
In response to last week's story on the Australian Publishers Association (APA) survey of book prices, a bookseller writes ... ‘Using the same standards of "impartiality" I ran my own...