Tuesday, 9 January 2007
The staff at Harcourt Education extend their heartfelt condolences to the family and loved ones of Neil Curtis, an extremely talented and much loved illustrator. Neil passed away on Monday...

Tuesday, 9 January 2007
New Zealand author Fleur Beale has won the 2007 Storylines Gaelyn Gordon Award for a Much-loved Book for her first novel for children Slide the Corner (Scholastic), first published in...

Tuesday, 9 January 2007
Beginning this year, the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival will become an annual event, expanding to a four-day program, including readings, workshops, poetry events, panel discussions and interviews. The festival...

Tuesday, 9 January 2007
South Australian playwright and script editor Roxxy Bent has won Sisters in Crime's 13th Scarlet Stiletto Award by taking out the HarperCollins-sponsored first prize of $750--plus scarlet stiletto trophy--in the...

Tuesday, 9 January 2007
Plans for a  month of events to ‘nurture, showcase and celebrate the literary arts' to be held on the Sunshine Coast in June this year were announced in late December....

Tuesday, 9 January 2007
Kate Crawford was the winner of the individual 2006 Manning Clark House National Cultural Award for Adult Themes: Rewriting the Rules of Adulthood (Macmillan), with the group award given to...

Tuesday, 9 January 2007
German publisher Tandem has announced its Könemann list will be renamed Ullmann, following the departure from the company on 18 December of consultant Ludwig Könemann, from whom the list took...

Tuesday, 9 January 2007
Independent UK publisher Profile Books has bought fellow independent publisher Serpent's Tail for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will add fiction to Profile's list. ‘This is one of the great...

Tuesday, 9 January 2007
Madison Press Books, the ‘book packager' behind titles including Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall's Sexual Intelligence and Being a Girl (both Hardie Grant), has announced a buyout by...

Monday, 1 January 2007
Adelaide-based distributor Bookwise is confident about its future, despite its US-based parent company Advanced Marketing Services (AMS) filing for bankruptcy under the US Chapter 11 law.'The Chapter 11 filing will have...

Thursday, 21 December 2006
J K Rowling has announced that the title of the seventh and final Harry Potter will be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.Bloomsbury has not yet received the completed manuscript...

Wednesday, 13 December 2006
Social entrepreneur and Anglican clergyman Nic Frances has been announced as the recipient of the 2006 Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues for his submission The End of Charity (developed...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The booksellers who responded to our annual pre-Christmas survey certainly know their stuff. Seven of this week's top 10 bestsellers also appear in our survey's list of hot Christmas sellers....

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
In the news from our Around the World blog this week: Lawrence Ferlinghetti receives top French honour; Bloomsbury shares drop following a profit warning; Random House revives Bodley Head; a...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The amendments made by the Senate to the Copyright Amendment Bill 2006 were agreed to by the House of Representatives on 5 December. ‘The provisions in Schedules 6 to 8...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Several Australian educational publishers have joined together to provide an ‘online content aggregator service' aimed initially at the university MBA market. Ross McCaul, manager digital services at the Copyright Agency...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The first literary speed dating event hosted by the State Library of Victoria (SLV) on 6 December--entitled Text Appeal--was ‘an outrageous success' according to the SLV's Matt van Hasselt. ‘It...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The State Library of Victoria (SLV) launched its Reading Victoria summer reading program on 7 December, with the announcement of the recommended reading list. The list recommends 20 novels set...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
WBN's publisher Thorpe-Bowker has agreed to purchase Australian Library News (ALN), the popular weekly e-newsletter for Australian and New Zealand library professionals, from its current owners, Stevens and Dent Information...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The winners of the second annual John Marsden Prize for Young Australian Writers were announced by Marsden on 7 December at the Melbourne launch of Zero: Voiceworks magazine #67, in...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Author David Malouf launched the Centre for the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature at Macquarie University on Monday night. The centre has been established to ‘promote scholarship and research into...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
This bumper edition of WBN, incorporating our annual pre-Christmas survey, is the final WBN for 2006.The WBN team wish all of our readers a merry Christmas and a happy new...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Funtastic has announced that it has gone through a restructure that has ‘incorporated a major re-investment into the publishing business unit.'Belinda Payne, Funtastic's GM of marketing and creative services, told...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Allen & Unwin writes: ‘Neil Curtis died on Monday 11 December after a typically defiant battle with cancer. He was 56 years old. An exhibition of his artwork ‘My Bottom...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Pat Woolley, director of Wild & Woolley and Fast Books, writes: ‘Reverend Vernon Turner, OAM, the director of Sydney's Christian radio station FM103.2, died recently after several years of ill...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
American academic and author Jack Williamson, whose career as a pulp SF novelist spanned more than 75 years, has died at the age of 98. Williamson began writing in the...

Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The International Publishers Association (IPA) was awarded the Sloboda (Liberty) Prize for its ‘contribution to human rights and freedom in the world' by Ibrahim Spahic, president of the Sarajevo International...