News sections | Books+Publishing

Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

Tuesday, 10 August 2021
Permafrost is a decadent, artistic delight, full of sensory pleasure for the reader. S J Norman, a visual and performance artist who won the inaugural Kill Your Darlings Manuscript Award with this collection, makes a...

Bodies of Light (Jennifer Down, Text)

Tuesday, 10 August 2021
Bodies of Light is Jennifer Down’s third book and her best yet. It begins with fierce, ageing Maggie (now living in the US under a new identity) being prompted to revisit...

S&S acquires Cachia memoir ‘Then There Was Her’

Tuesday, 10 August 2021
Simon & Schuster has acquired world rights to Then There Was Her by influencer and entrepreneur Sophia Cachia, in a deal brokered by Bruce Kaider at ONE Sports & Entertainment....

Read the latest Publishers Weekly

Monday, 9 August 2021
Books+Publishing is partnering with US trade news magazine Publishers Weekly to provide our subscribers with exclusive access to the weekly digital edition of PW magazine. View the edition here.

PRH acquires Scott debut ‘Compulsion’

Friday, 6 August 2021
Penguin Random House Australia has acquired ANZ rights to debut novel Compulsion by Kate Scott, in a deal agented by Benython Oldfield at Zeitgeist Agency. Compulsion centres on Lucy, a...

Shortlist for 2021 National Biography Award announced

Friday, 6 August 2021
The State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW) has announced the shortlist for the 2021 National Biography Award. The shortlisted works are: The Lotus Eaters (Emily Clements, Hardie Grant) One...

Colin Roderick Award 2021 shortlist announced

Thursday, 5 August 2021
The shortlist for the $20,000 Colin Roderick Award, administered by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies (FALS) at James Cook University, has been announced. The six shortlisted titles are: Consolation (Garry...

Queensland Literary Awards 2021 shortlists announced

Thursday, 5 August 2021
The shortlists for the 2021 Queensland Literary Awards have been announced. The shortlisted titles in each category are: Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance ($25,000) Car Crash...

MWF program, latest award winners

Wednesday, 4 August 2021
Melbourne Writers Festival has revealed this year’s program, which runs from 3–12 September. Meanwhile, Writing NSW and the NT Writers Centre, as well as the NSW Central Coast’s Words on...

‘Still Alive’ sells to Fantagraphics

Wednesday, 4 August 2021
Melbourne graphic novel publisher Twelve Panels Press has sold world English rights (ex ANZ) to Safdar Ahmed’s Still Alive to Gary Groth at Fantagraphics, to be published under the Fantagraphics...

Rights round-up

Wednesday, 4 August 2021
Sales Fiction Brandl & Schlesinger has sold US and Canadian rights to Mother Tongue (Joyce Kornblatt) to Publerati Maine. Children’s/YA Hardie Grant Children's has sold UK and Korean rights to...

Pantera acquires McWilliams debut middle-grade novel

Wednesday, 4 August 2021
Pantera Press has acquired world rights to The Reindeer and the Submarine, the debut middle-grade novel by Beverly McWilliams. Inspired by the true story of a reindeer who lived aboard...

How to Make Friends: A Bear’s Guide (Cat Rabbit, Berbay)

Wednesday, 4 August 2021
Bear loves writing, drawing and collecting stickers. But with only the company of her toys, Bear is a bit lonely and would like to make some friends. She sets off...

Cat Rabbit on ‘How to Make Friends: A Bear’s Guide’

Wednesday, 4 August 2021
Cat Rabbit is a textile artist and designer based in Melbourne. In her latest picture book, How to Make Friends: A Bear's Guide (Berbay, October), Rabbit explores the struggles of...

Dark Rise (C S Pacat, A&U)

Tuesday, 3 August 2021
Will is on the run from the men who killed his mother. When a terrifying artefact is unleashed on the Thames docks, Will finds himself thrust into a hidden world...

Scary Monsters (Michelle de Kretser, A&U)

Tuesday, 3 August 2021
Montpellier, France, 1981. Twenty-two-year-old Lili is teaching English at a local high school and navigating a new experience of displacement in her adopted European home—after emigrating to Australia with her...

The Stoning (Peter Papathanasiou, Transit Lounge)

Tuesday, 3 August 2021
At dawn one Sunday, homicide detective George Manolis is woken with a call: a schoolteacher has been murdered in the outback town of Cobb, and the local police need his...

Out Here: An anthology of Takatāpui & LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa (ed by Chris Tse & Emma Barnes, Auckland University Press)

Tuesday, 3 August 2021
The whakataukī (Māori proverb) ‘ka mua, ka muri’ means ‘to walk backwards into the future’; we look to the past to inform our future. Out Here: An anthology of Takatāpui & LGBTQIA+ writers from...