Weekly Book Newsletter (end March 2022)
12 March 2015

Stella Prize 2015 shortlist announced

The shortlist for the 2015 Stella Prize has been announced. The shortlisted titles are: Foreign Soil (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Hachette) The Strays (Emily Bitto, Affirm... Read more
 

Mouillot, Dessaix bestsellers at Adelaide Writers’ Week x

Book sales were up 17% at this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week with memoirs from Miranda Richmond Mouillot and Robert Dessaix the top-sellers at the festival... Read more
 

Pan Macmillan delays Pete Evans Paleo diet baby cookbook

Pan Macmillan has delayed publication of a Paleo diet baby cookbook co-written by Pete Evans amid concerns that some of the recipes pose health risks... Read more
 

Penguin seeks explanation from ‘The Whole Pantry’ author over false medical history claims

Penguin Australia is considering its options regarding its commercial relationship with cookbook author Belle Gibson following questions raised in the media about the veracity of... Read more
 

ABA announces 2015 conference program, partnership with Miles Franklin Award

The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) has announced the program for this year’s conference, to be held at the State Library of Victoria (SLV) on 17-18... Read more
 

Australian Romance Readers Awards 2014 winners announced

Kylie Scott was named Favourite Australian Romance Author for the second year in a row at the 2014 Australian Romance Readers Awards in Canberra on 7... Read more
 

Burrell wins Ashurst Business Literature Prize

Andrew Burrell has won the 2014 Ashurst Business Literature Prize for his book Twiggy: The High Stakes Life of Andrew Forrest (Black Inc.). Burrell was presented... Read more
 

‘Beloved Land’ wins ACT Book of the Year

Gordon Peake’s Beloved Land: Stories, Struggles and Secrets from Timor-Leste (Scribe) has won the 2014 ACT Book of the Year Award. Peake’s book, which explores... Read more
 

Report projects 8.3% decline in bookstore sales over five years; ABA queries methodology

An IbisWorld report has projected that bricks-and-mortar bookstores will record an average annual revenue decline of 8.3% in the five years from 2009-10 to 2014-15, according to Inside Retail.... Read more
 

Inaugural Queenscliffe Literary Festival to celebrate ‘The Australian Landscape’

The inaugural Queenscliffe Literary Festival will be held across five weekends in May in the Victorian beachside towns of Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale. The not-for-profit festival is... Read more
 

Keneally wins OzCo Lifetime Achievement in Literature Award

Thomas Keneally is the recipient of the 2015 Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. The award, formerly known as the Writers’ Emeritus Award,... Read more
 

Baum wins 2015 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship

Caroline Baum has won the 2015 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship. Baum, a freelance journalist, broadcaster and editorial director of Booktopia, was announced as the winner at the Adelaide... Read more
 

St Leger to leave the Copyright Agency

The Copyright Agency has announced that CEO Murray St Leger will leave the company in July. St Leger, a former managing director of McGraw-Hill Australia... Read more
 

Pan Macmillan to publish ‘Shantaram’ sequel

Pan Macmillan Australia will publish a sequel to Gregory David Roberts’ novel Shantaram in October under its Picador imprint. The Mountain Shadow is set two... Read more
 

writingWA releases tablet apps for illustrated Indigenous stories

writingWA has released two tablet apps based on illustrated stories by Indigenous writers, as part of its Project 360 initiative. Mamang is based on the... Read more
 

Featherston, NZ, launches bid to become a Booktown x

The town of Featherston on the North Island of New Zealand has launched a Booktown website and will hold a festival in October in the hope... Read more
 

Creative New Zealand releases final ‘Review of Literature’ report

New Zealand arts development agency Creative New Zealand (CNZ) has released its final ‘Review of Literature’ report into support for New Zealand literature, reports Booksellers NZ. In... Read more
 

Craig Potton Publishing changes name to Potton & Burton

New Zealand publishing house Craig Potton Publishing has changed its name to Potton & Burton to ‘reflect the increasingly diverse range of New Zealand books’... Read more
 

Quote of the week x

‘We have to reset our business to find how we reach bigger audiences to justify our investments in individual titles. We used to operate in... Read more
 

Rights round-up x

Sales Fiction—A&U has sold Korean rights to the first five books in the ‘Phryne Fisher’ series (Kerry Greenwood); Finnish rights to The Distant Hours (Kate... Read more
 

Bestsellers this week

Big international fiction releases are dominating the bestsellers chart, with three new titles making it into the top 10 in their first week. While American... Read more
 

Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015 longlist announced x

The longlist for the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, previously known as the Orange Prize for Fiction, has been announced. View the longlisted titles here.... Read more
 

Sales for US publishers rise in 2014

Publishers in the US have reported an increase in revenue in 2014, according to figures from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) Statshot program reported in Publishers... Read more
 

Penguin Random House relaunches Brightly website for parents

Penguin Random House (PRH) has relaunched its Brightly website to encourage parents to help their children to read, after launching in beta in October 2014.... Read more
 

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction 2015 finalists announced

The finalists have been announced for the 2015 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, which recognises the best work of fiction published in the preceding year by... Read more
 

HarperCollins launches Spanish-language imprints

HarperCollins US is expanding its Spanish-language program by launching imprints HarperCollins Español and HarperCollins Iberica, reports Publishers Weekly. HarperCollins Español will publish around 50 titles each... Read more
 

Grant delivers keynote at UK independent publishing conference

Hardie Grant Books chief executive Sandy Grant has delivered the keynote address at this year’s Independent Publishers Guild spring conference in Oxfordshire, UK, reports the... Read more
 

Kinney to open bookstore in US

US children’s author Jeff Kinney is opening a bookstore in the town of Plainville, outside of Boston, Massachusetts, reports the Boston Globe. ‘The reason that we wanted... Read more
 

Small publisher sells via ‘pay what you want’ model

In the US, small publisher Brooklyn Arts Press (BAP) is pre-selling a title using a ‘pay what you want’ model, reports Flavorwire. Print copies of... Read more
 

Karen Lamb’s ‘Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather’

Inventing Her Own Weather is the first full literary biography of one of Australia’s best writers of the second half of the 20th century. It... Read more
 

Flanagan appointed ILF ambassador; PRH signs on as ‘major charity partner’

Richard Flanagan has been appointed as an ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF). ILF said in a statement that Flanagan ‘brings a wealth of... Read more
 

Wyld wins 2014 Barnes & Noble Discover Award

Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing (Vintage) has won the 2014 Barnes & Noble (B&N) Discover Great New Writers Award in the category of fiction.... Read more
 

Google Cultural Institute launches in Australia

The collections of 14 Australian cultural institutions are now available online via the Google Cultural Institute of Australia, reports ProBono News. The Google Cultural Institute... Read more
 

NSW library seeks dogs for reading program

Lake Macquarie City Library in regional NSW is calling on pet owners and their dogs to participate in its Building Reading Confidence for Kids (BaRK)... Read more
 

Little Free Library movement comes to Canberra

Two ‘Little Free Libraries’, also known as ‘community book exchanges’, have recently opened in Canberra, reports ABC News Canberra. John Lovering, a former employee of... Read more
 

International library news

New Humanities Open Book program to revive backlist titles In the US, the Andrew W Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)... Read more
 

Keeping up with the kids: Chris Kunz on the Kidscreen Miami conference

Chris Kunz attended the Kidscreen conference for children’s entertainment professionals in Miami in February, where she found lots of examples of partnerships between children’s publishers... Read more
 

St Leger to leave the Copyright Agency x

Murray St Leger will leave the postition of CEO at The Copyright Agency in July. (See news.)
 

Dean joins UQP

UQP has appointed Jessica Dean as marketing coordinator following the departure of marketing and publicity manager Meredene Hill. Dean, who has worked in marketing and publicity... Read more
 

Ray Koppe Young Writers’ Residency applications open x

The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) is accepting applications for the annual Ray Koppe Young Writers’ Residency in April 2015. The program is open to... Read more

Black Inc. Congratulates Andrew Burrell for ‘Twiggy’, Winner of the 2014 Ashurst Business Literature Prize x

Black Inc. congratulates Andrew Burrell for Twiggy: The High-Stakes Life of Andrew Forrest, winner of the 2014 Ashurst Business Literature Prize.

The judging panel described the unauthorised biography as ‘an important record of one of the nation’s most successful business people who is also one of our most generous philanthropists. It’s also an entertaining read.’

Orders for Twiggy (9781863956208, RRP $19.99) can be placed with United Book Distributors on 03 9811 2555 or email orders@unitedbookdistributors.com.au

www.blackincbooks.com

 

Scribe Congratulates Gordon Peake x

Scribe congratulates Gordon Peake on winning the ACT Book of the Year Award, as well as the inaugural People’s Choice Award, for Beloved Land: stories, struggles, and secrets from Timor-LesteBeloved Land (ISBN 9781922070685) is available from United Book Distributors: (03) 9811 2555.

 

Hachette Australia Announces Exciting New Acquisition x

Hachette Australia Publishing Director Fiona Hazard is delighted to herald the signing of a stunning new work of fiction to the Hachette Australia list. The Other Side of The World is the brave, breathtaking new novel from former Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist Stephanie Bishop. The novel, set in the UK, India and Perth in the 1960s, tells the story of a fractured marriage, and of a woman torn between two very different worlds. The book has already been sold to Tinder Press in the UK and advance proofs are generating extraordinary reader reactions in both Australia and the UK, with scouts from other territories clamouring to read the work.

Fiona Hazard: ‘Hachette Australia is incredibly proud of our growing list of exciting and unique Australian voices; writers like Catherine Therese, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Inga Simpson, Favel Parrett and Brooke Davis. I am thrilled we can now add Stephanie Bishop’s name to that dynamic list.’

Hachette Australia Joint Managing Director Louise Sherwin-Stark said: ‘The Other Side of the World is causing disruption in the Hachette Australia offices.  With every new in-house reader, huddles are being formed to discuss the novel we believe will create a major literary stir this year.  Booksellers are contacting us in similar breathless excitement, and we look forward to more feedback as The Other Side of the World proofs reach the top of bookseller reading piles.  We are so pleased to be working with Tinder Press in the UK, an imprint of Headline UK, the home of Maggie O’Farrell and Patrick Gale.’

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD will be published in July. ISBN: 978 0 7336 3378 2 RRP: $29.99

 

Bloomsbury Academic Changes x

Please be advised that the new contact for the following imprints of Bloomsbury Academic is Rachael McDiarmid, Sales & Marketing Manager—Bloomsbury Academic. All bookseller sales and product queries should be directed to rachael.mcdiarmid@bloomsbury.com or Ph. 02 8820 4900

Bloomsbury Academic (ISBN Prefix 978034062, 978085785, 978184930, 978144114, 97816289)
A&C Black (ISBN Prefix 97814081, 978071368)
Arden Methuen (ISBN Prefix 978071368, 978140812, 978041347, 978147252)
Berg (ISBN Prefix 978185973, 978184520)
Fairchild (ISBN Prefixes 97815636, 978160901, 978294049, 978147253, 978147252)
Bloomsbury Professional Reference (ISBN Prefix 978184592, 978184766, 978075452)
Bristol Classics (ISBN Reference 97818539, 978086292, 978090651, 978185399, 978071562, 978040698, 978178043)
Bloomsbury Academic USA (ISBN Prefix included in Bloomsbury Academic)
Verso Academic (ISBN Prefix 978178168, 978178478)
Hart (IBN Prefix 97819013, 978184113, 978184946)
Continuum Academic (ISBN Prefix 97818553, 978082645, 978082647)
Continuum Religious Studies (ISBN 97805670, 978082641, 978056748)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

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