The QBD bookselling chain has opened a new Parramatta store and will open two new stores in Melbourne before Christmas. The Parramatta store, in Westfield... Read more

Felicity Castagna, Bernard Cohen, Mandy Ord and Ellena Savage are among the six recipients of a combined $95,000 from Copyright Agency as part of its... Read more

HarperCollins Australia and Kathryn Heyman of the Australian Writers Mentoring Program have announced Naima Ibrahim as the winner of the 2020 Heyman Mentorship Award. Ibrahim’s... Read more

Text Publishing has acquired world rights to an ‘anti-usage’ language guide by ABC journalist Tiger Webb. Webb is the ABC’s language research specialist, providing broadcasters... Read more

In the UK, Hazel V Carby has won the £25,000 (A$46,750) Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding for her book Imperial Intimacies: A Tale... Read more

In awards news this week, crime writer Michael Robotham won this year’s CWA Gold Dagger award for best crime novel, becoming the first Australian to win the award twice. Maria Papas won the City of Fremantle Hungerford Award, picture book Mophead won a hat-trick of PANZ Book Design Awards, and Tim McGuire received the ASA’s Ray Koppe Residency for a writer under 35. Meanwhile, the shortlist for the 2020 Danger Prize for Sydney crime writing was announced.

Over the past week, two industry figures have announced new publishing projects: former bookseller and Penguin Books product manager Katherine Larsen has established YA publisher Debut Books, and Learning Discovery CEO James Layton has launched children’s book publisher Larrikin House.

Internationally, two in three UK authors, illustrators and translators have reported a loss of income due to Covid-19. The winners of the Forward Poetry Prize and the Not the Booker were announced, as were the finalists for the Cundill History Prize.

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In the lead-up to Christmas 2020, Books+Publishing is asking book buyers across the country to share the titles they’re investing in for the busiest time of year... Read more

Alison Gibbs’s 1970s–set novel Repentance (Scribe, January) is the story of a small Australian town that undergoes radical change when newcomers face off against the... Read more

Sales Nonfiction Alessandra Stucchi at Berla & Griffini has sold Italian rights to White Tears/Brown Scars (Ruby Hamad, MUP) to Tlon, on behalf of Rach... Read more

Matthew Reilly’s sixth Jack West Jr novel, The Two Lost Mountains, has debuted at number one on the Australian bestsellers chart, bumping All Our Shimmering Skies down... Read more

In Dingo Bold, Rowena Lennox wrestles with the emotionally laden subject of the human–wild divide through the lens of the policies managing the dingoes on... Read more

It’s 1976, a time of change and cultural shifts. The town of Repentance perches on the edge of the Great Dividing Range: the old families... Read more

The Women and the Girls follows three mothers as they walk away from their unhappy marriages and move their children into a share house in... Read more

Little Gem is a witch-in-training who has the best intentions but doesn’t always get things quite right. When a travelling spell goes wrong Gem finds... Read more

‘We writers give far more to the economy and society and our culture than we ever take back. We are not looking for patronage or political favours, we are simply seeking a fair go. We are not elites. We are not chardonnay-sipping socialists. We are writers. We are creators. We are storytellers. And we have been forgotten.’—In his written submission to the parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s creative and cultural industries and institutions, crime author Michael Robotham says the federal government’s slow withdrawal of financial support for writers is political.

Garry Eastman, director of Garratt Publishing, died on 14 October 2020. Eastman, who established what was then called John Garratt Publishing in 1995, was a... 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

The Small Press Network will hold the 2020 Independent Publishing Conference online, on Thursday 26 and Friday 27 November.

With two days of programming, it will cover a variety of topics, including Women of Colour in publishing and metadata best-practices, with a keynote on resilience and recovery in book publishing post-Covid. The conference will also include the shortlist announcement for the SPN’s inaugural Book of the Year Award, which can be booked separately, for free.

Deep discounts are available for SPN members, students and the unwaged.

Book now: The Small Press Network – 2020 Independent Publishing Conference online
Closing date for ticket sales: Wednesday 25 November