Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe (Fourth Estate) has won the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) Booksellers Choice Award at the 2019 ABA conference awards night, held in... Read more

The State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW) has announced the shortlist for the 2019 National Biography Award, worth a total of $42,000. The shortlisted... Read more

Agents Gaby Naher of The Naher Agency and Grace Heifetz of Curtis Brown Australia have partnered to form a new literary agency called Left Bank... Read more

The owners of Lorne Beach Books in regional Victoria are selling their shop after 40 years in the book trade. David and Meryl Bartak owned... Read more

The program has been announced for the 2019 Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF), which runs from 5–8 September. Over 160 writers will appear at the festival,... Read more

Sonic Youth co-founder and author of the memoir Girl in a Band (Faber) Kim Gordon, Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, and Black Lives Matter activist and... Read more

Two former Finch Publishing staff have launched Bad Apple Press, a ‘boutique’ publisher of local nonfiction specialising in memoir. Bad Apple Press was founded by... Read more

Hardie Grant’s insurer, Chubb, cited Malcolm Turnbull’s forthcoming memoir as a factor that influenced its decision not to renew the publisher’s existing defamation cover, reports the... Read more

The Australian Book Review (ABR) has announced its inaugural $10,000 Behrouz Boochani Fellowship, presented in association with the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at the... Read more

Hachette Australia has acquired ANZ rights to Gold Coast-based author Allie Reynolds’ debut novel Shiver, in partnership with Headline UK. Headline’s fiction publishing director Jennifer... Read more

Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies, winner of the 2019 International Man Booker Prize, from Claire Roberts at... Read more

North American rights to Victoria-based writer Madeleine Ryan’s forthcoming debut novel A Room Called Earth have been sold to Penguin Random House USA imprint Penguin... Read more

Scholastic Australia has acquired world rights to two children’s books by TV personality Rove McManus. Scholastic will publish the picture book Disgusting McGrossface in September... Read more

ABC Books has acquired three new books by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki in a deal negotiated by Jeanne Ryckmans of the Cameron Creswell Agency. The deal... Read more

Paramount Pictures has acquired the film rights to Adrian McKinty’s forthcoming novel The Chain (Hachette, July), reports Deadline. Paramount executive Alex Jackson acquired the rights... Read more

The shortlist for the 2019 Chief Minister’s Northern Territory History Book Award has been announced. The three shortlisted titles are: Found in Translation: Many meanings... Read more

Jane O’Sullivan has won the 2019 Lip magazine Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction for her short story ‘Limpet Teeth’. Judge Melanie Joosten said O’Sullivan’s piece, chosen... Read more

Melbourne-based literary magazine The Lifted Brow and RMIT’s non/fictionLab have announced the longlist for their Prize for Experimental Nonfiction. The longlisted writers and their works are:... Read more

Sales Fiction Barbara J Zitwer of the Barbara J Zitwer Agency has sold North American rights to A Room Called Earth (Madeleine Ryan) to Penguin Random... Read more

Books+Publishing’s weekly publicity round-up covers forthcoming publicity for Australian and internationally authored books due to appear in Australian media over the coming weeks. Fiction &... Read more

This week’s bestseller chart is looking very similar to last week’s, with Boy Swallows Universe (Trent Dalton, Fourth Estate) topping the chart for the third... Read more

Over one million children in schools, libraries and bookshops across Australia participated in this year’s National Simultaneous Storytime on 22 May, so it was no... Read more

‘If Iceland, with 300,000 people, can sustain literary culture, why not Africa, where there are 40 million speakers of Yoruba, or 60 million Hausa, and 100 million speaking Swahili?’—In the opening keynote at the International Publishers Association’s Africa Rising summit, Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o encouraged publishers to publish books in indigenous languages, while addressing the misconception that there is no existing market for them.

The UK Publishers Association (PA) has found the UK publishing industry’s revenues in 2018 fell two percent on the previous year, with a five percent... Read more

The Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) annual StatShot report on the US book industry, published on 21 June, found the total US book market to... Read more

In the UK, two authors writing about the conflict in Northern Ireland have been awarded £3000 each (A$5470) as part of the Orwell Prize, reports... Read more

Claire Adam has won the 2019 Desmond Elliott Prize for first-time novelists for Golden Child (Faber). The winning novel, which follows the lives of a... Read more

PEN America has condemned the death of prominent Uighur writer Nurmuhammad Tohti, who died after being held in one of Xinjiang’s internment camps, reports the... Read more

Joy Harjo has been named the 23rd poet laureate of the United States, becoming the first Native American poet to hold the post, reports Publishers... Read more

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... Read more

Christchurch’s central library, Tūranga, has won two awards at the 2019 New Zealand Property Industry Awards. Opened in October last year after six years of... Read more

Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) have launched a searchable database of Australian library records spanning 1861 to 1928. The Australian Common Reader website... Read more

Over the past 10 years, Victoria-based editor Kate Goldsworthy has worked for a wide range of publishers, both in-house and as a freelancer. She shares... Read more

Not 10 pages after inheriting his grandfather’s ostensibly magical shoeshine kit, Vincent is scouted to shine shoes at the Grandest Hotel on Earth—a job that... Read more

Five Mile has new staff members joining its team in newly created positions. Amanda Rae is appointed to the position of global sales executive and... Read more

Better Reading is looking for great bookshops and libraries, booksellers and librarians to feature on our site. Our BR community is highly engaged across social media and loves hearing your stories. If you’d like us to feature your store or library, please get in touch. If you know of a great bookseller or librarian, tell us about them. All we need from you is the idea, some photos and perhaps a brief Q&A. Let’s celebrate the places and people that bring books to the community. Contact: jane@betterreading.com.au

Bookshop for sale

Lorne Beach Books, Lorne, Vic

Opened in 1999 by David and Meryl Bartak after 20 years of owning and operating Black Mask Books in Toorak Rd, South Yarra. Forty years of creating and helping readers is coming to an end. It’s time to put on the thongs and walk on the beach.

An independent, eclectic quality bookshop with no competition, no newsagency and no DDS in prestigious coastal town.

Suit someone looking for a sea-change or as a coastal addition to an existing shop.

Good price for the right person. A new lease with options available.

Contact David and Meryl Bartak.
Email: david.bartak13@gmail.com
Phone: 0412 547 188

Walker Books Australia is delighted to announce that they have taken on the Australian distribution of award-winning UK publishing house What on Earth Books, beginning August 2019. For more information visit the website.