Wednesday, 19 June 2013
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) has announced the appointment of Michael Gordon-Smith as interim CEO following the resignation of long-time CEO Maree McCaskill last week. Gordon-Smith will begin in the role on 1 July and has been appointed till February 2014.
Gordon-Smith has ‘almost thirty years of experience with Australia’s content and creative...
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Wednesday, 19 June 2013
The winner of this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award will be announced at the National Library of Australia in Canberra today between 1-2pm.
As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the following books are shortlisted for the award:
Floundering (Romy Ash, Text)
Questions of Travel (Michelle de...
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Wednesday, 19 June 2013
A number of changes to the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) management committee were announced at this year’s annual conference, held in Adelaide from 16-17 June.
Former treasurer Patricia Genat, owner of ALS Library Services, was elected as the new president of the ABA at the association’s annual general meeting. Genat replaces former...
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Wednesday, 19 June 2013
Australian author Margo Lanagan has been nominated for the 2013 British Fantasy Awards.
Lanagan is shortlisted in the Best Fantasy Novel category for her book Sea Hearts (A&U), published in the UK as The Brides of Rollrock Island. Also shortlisted for the award are: Railsea (China Miéville, Macmillan), Blood and Feathers (Lou...
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Wednesday, 19 June 2013
The winners for this year’s Books I Love Best Yearly (BILBY) Awards, the children’s choice book awards for Queensland, have been announced.
The winning titles in each of the categories are:
Books for early readers
Bamboozled (David Legge, Scholastic)
Books for younger readers
The 26-Storey Treehouse...
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Wednesday, 19 June 2013
The shortlist for this year’s Chief Minister’s Northern Territory History Book Award has been announced.
The shortlisted titles are:
Tiwi: Arts, History, Culture (Jennifer Isaacs, Miegunyah)
A Wild History: Life and Death on the Victoria River Frontier (Darrell Lewis, Monash University Publishing)
The...
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Wednesday, 19 June 2013
A study into New Zealand’s goods and services tax (GST) arrangements that was commissioned by Booksellers New Zealand will be considered by the New Zealand Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee, reports Booksellers New Zealand.
As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the report was produced for Booksellers NZ by Victoria University’s New Zealand...
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Tuesday, 18 June 2013
The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) has announced a number of promotions to support National Bookshop Day on 10 August.
The ABA will be running a national competition calling for people to vote for their favourite bookshop, with everyone who votes going into the draw to win $500 worth of Australian Book...
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Tuesday, 18 June 2013
The State Library of Victoria (SLV) has announced the recipients of the 2013-14 Creative Fellowships. Among the recipients selected for funding are several with book-related projects.
Joanne Oliver will work on the biography Etched with Love and Courage: The Life and Work of Jessie Traill, Australian Printmaker, 1881-1967; Nicole Lindsay will...
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Monday, 17 June 2013
The shortlists for this year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted titles in each of the categories are:
Fiction
Floundering (Romy Ash, Text)
The Chemistry of Tears (Peter Carey, Hamish Hamilton)
...
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Monday, 17 June 2013
Allen & Unwin was named Publisher of the Year at the 2013 Leading Edge Books Conference in Adelaide on 15 June, the fourth year running that the publisher has received the honour.
A&U’s sales and marketing director Jim Demetriou accepted the award at an awards dinner at the State Library of South...
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Monday, 17 June 2013
The Light between Oceans by M L Stedman (Vintage) has won this year’s Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) Nielsen BookData Booksellers Choice Award.
The award, which recognises Australian new-release titles that booksellers most enjoyed reading, marketing and handselling during the previous year, was announced at the 2013 ABA Conference gala dinner on 16...
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Monday, 17 June 2013
The Melbourne and Brisbane writers’ festivals have announced a number of events ahead of their official program launches.
The Melbourne Writers Festival, which runs from 22 August to 1 September, will open with a theatrical performance from New York City storytelling troupe The Moth, who will be joined onstage by host Ophira...
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Monday, 17 June 2013
Entwined with You (Sylvia Day, Penguin), the third novel in the erotic fiction series Crossfire, is at the top of the bestsellers and the highest new entries charts. Orginally self-published, the series has become phenomenally successful, selling over six million English-language copies worldwide. The author is currently on a book tour in Australia. Dan...
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Friday, 14 June 2013
Maree McCaskill has resigned as CEO of the Australian Publishers Association (APA) after more than seven years in the position. Her resignation is effective from 14 June 2013.
‘Under Maree’s leadership the APA has continued to serve the diverse needs and challenges of local trade and educational publishers,’ said the APA in a statement.
‘On...
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Friday, 14 June 2013
Penguin Australia has announced that it will publish a series of books with the Australian Football League (AFL) for ‘supporters of all ages’.
The children’s titles, which will be branded with the AFL logo and illustrated with ‘a variety of official team mascots and colours’, include activity, colouring and sticker books for...
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Friday, 14 June 2013
The finalists for this year’s Booksellers New Zealand Industry Awards have been announced.
The finalists in each of the categories are:
Regional Bookseller of the Year (North Island)
Paper Plus Masterton
The Children’s Bookshop, Wellington
Vic Books, Wellington
Regional Bookseller of...
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Friday, 14 June 2013
The shortlists for the Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) Book Design Awards, including the PANZ Young Designer of the Year Award, have been announced.
The titles shortlisted in the best designed cover category are:
At the White Coast (Janet Charman, Auckland University Press), designed by Keely O’Shannessy
...
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Thursday, 13 June 2013
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) and Thorpe-Bowker, parent company of Books+Publishing, have launched TitlePage Plus.
The APA and Thorpe-Bowker said in a joint press release this week that TitlePage Plus ‘creates a single point of access to local availability and enriched metadata for print and digital books’.
The existing TitlePage platform, now...
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Thursday, 13 June 2013
Melbourne-based publisher Scribe Publications is expanding its team with a number of new staff appointments.
Kirsty-Michelle Johnson has been appointed to the position of sales and distribution manager. Johnson previously worked at Penguin Australia in the role of inventory and group export sales coordinator.
Nicole Muir has also joined Scribe in...
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Thursday, 13 June 2013
The finalists for the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) Booksellers of the Year awards have been announced.
The finalists for the Text Publishing Bookseller of the Year are:
Karen Ferris, Berkelouw Books, Sydney
Meera Govil, Eltham Bookshop, Melbourne
Martin Shaw, Readings,...
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Thursday, 13 June 2013
General manager of Nielsen Book Australia Shaun Symonds will take on an expanded role in September, adding responsibility for Nielsen Book New Zealand to his current position.
Symonds will start in the role of general manager of Nielsen Book Australia and New Zealand on 1 September. His appointment follows Ka Meechan’s announcement earlier...
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Thursday, 13 June 2013
Regina Hoekstra has been appointed as the new head of ABC Retail and has been given the task of moving the ABC Shops, ABC Centres and the ABC’s online business to ‘a more sustainable business model’.
ABC Commercial said in a statement this week that Hoekstra has been acting in the...
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Thursday, 13 June 2013
Hardie Grant Egmont (HGE) has signed two new novels in the second round of its Ampersand Project for unpublished YA authors.
HGE will publish The Flywheel, a contemporary novel by Erin Gough, and Sky Hunter Conspiracy, a sci-fi thriller by Caroline Stills, in 2014.
HGE commissioning editor Marisa Pintado said in a...
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Thursday, 13 June 2013
Pinerolo, the Children’s Book Cottage in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, has announced its 2013 illustrators-in-residence.
The illustrators, who will each undertake a one-week residency at Pinerolo, are:
Nette Hilton, July
Sara Acton, early August
Jill Carter-Hansen, late August
...
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Thursday, 13 June 2013
‘If this proposal ever becomes law, the APA can only think that we’re in for some tough times, with publishers likely to have to spend a great deal of time, money and effort fighting court battles to establish what “fair use” means in Australia’—Australian Publishers Association CEO Maree McCaskill responds to...
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Wednesday, 12 June 2013
Scottish author Iain Banks has died, aged 59.
Banks’ novels include The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road, Complicity, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, Transition and Stonemouth (all Abacus). His science-fiction books, published under the name Iain M Banks, include the ‘Culture’ series and The Algebraist (both Orbit Books), and he wrote the...
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Wednesday, 12 June 2013
HarperCollins Australia and New Zealand has announced that it will relocate its New Zealand distribution to its Australian facilities in Moss Vale, New South Wales.
HarperCollins said in a statement that the move will take place at the end of July. Support services, including finance and customer service, will also be...
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Wednesday, 12 June 2013
Pearson has announced that it will close its educational publishing business in New Zealand by the end of August.
Pearson Australia and New Zealand CEO David Barnett said in a statement that the publisher will continue to sell its products in New Zealand via a local distributor, but did not say...
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Wednesday, 12 June 2013
An interim book industry council will be established at the beginning of July following the conclusion of the Book Industry Collaboration Council (BICC) at the end of this month.
BICC chair David Throsby told Books+Publishing that the BICC will deliver its final report to the Federal Government after its last meeting on...
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Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Penguin Australia publisher Bob Sessions, literary agent Robin Dalton, bookseller Jacqueline Cookes and authors Jill Conway and Hazel Edwards were among those recognised in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Sessions was made a Member in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM) for his ‘significant service to the Australian publishing...
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Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Australian author and journalist Steve Lillebuen has been named a winner in the 2013 Arthur Ellis Awards, presented by the Crime Writers of Canada.
Lillebuen, who divides his time between Melbourne and Canada, won in the Best Nonfiction category for The Devil’s Cinema (Viking). To see the full list of winners, click here.
The Devil’s Cinema tells the...
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Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Theodore Boone: The Activist by John Grisham (Hachette) is the fourth instalment in the children’s book series featuring 13-year-old legal whiz kid Theodore Boone. It’s on top of this week’s highest new entries chart. Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed (Bloomsbury) is in first place on the fasters movers chart and second place on the bestsellers chart, behind Dan...
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Friday, 7 June 2013
The shortlist for the 2013 Ernest Scott Prize for history, presented by the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts, has been announced.
The shortlisted titles are:
Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand’s Colonial Past (Tony Ballantyne, Bridget Williams Books)
Larrikins: A History (Melissa Bellanta,...
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Friday, 7 June 2013
The introduction of a broad ‘fair use’ copyright provision and the replacement of statutory licenses with a voluntary licensing model are among the key changes to Australia’s copyright regime proposed in a new discussion paper by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC).
The ALRC released the paper, entitled Copyright and the...
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Friday, 7 June 2013
Journalist Peter Hartcher has won this year’s Ashurst Business Literature Prize for his book The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made Its Own Luck (Black Inc.).
Federal MP Malcolm Turnbull presented the $30,000 award to Hartcher at an event in Sydney on 6 June. Hartcher’s book was selected from a shortlist of five. His book was also previously longlisted for...
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Thursday, 6 June 2013
American author A M Homes has won the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel May We Be Forgiven (Granta).
Homes, the author of six novels, two collections of short stories, a memoir and a travel book, was presented with the £30,000 (A$48,500) prize at an awards ceremony in London on...
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Thursday, 6 June 2013
Ka Meechan has announced that she will retire from her position as Asia Pacific managing director for Nielsen Book later this year.
According to the Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ), Meechan will finish in her role at the end of August. Meechan told Books+Publishing that a ‘new management structure for the region will...
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Thursday, 6 June 2013
The winners of the Wilderness Society’s 2013 Environment Award for Children’s Literature were announced at Readings Carlton on World Environment Day on 5 June.
The winners in each category are:
Primary: Tanglewood (Margaret Wild & Vivienne Goodman, Omnibus Books)
Preschool: The Last Dance (Sally Morgan, Little Hare)....
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Wednesday, 5 June 2013
The shortlists for this year’s Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted titles for the $30,000 Kibble Literary Award, which recognises the work of an established Australian female writer, are:
The Beloved (Annah Faulkner, Picador)
Like a House on Fire (Cate...
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Wednesday, 5 June 2013
Keith Gray, Raina Telgemeir and Libba Bray were among the popular international guests at this year’s Reading Matters conference, which ran from 30 May to 1 June. The biennial event, based in Melbourne, is presented by the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria (SLV).
Gray and Telgemeir’s books topped...
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Wednesday, 5 June 2013
Melbourne-based publisher Scribe will publish its first children’s picture book in November.
Amazing Babes by Sydney writer Eliza Sarlos and Tokyo-based illustrator Grace Lee is described as ‘an inspirational picture book for kids and adults featuring strong, powerful, and world-changing women from around the globe and across generations’. Among the women...
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Wednesday, 5 June 2013
The 2013 Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF) attracted a larger audience and higher box office sales than last year’s festival, according to festival director Sam Twyford-Moore.
The festival, which was the first under Twyford-Moore’s directorship, was held in venues around Melbourne between 23 May and 2 June. While Twyford-Moore said the EWF team...
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Wednesday, 5 June 2013
A new Tasmanian literary festival, the Beaconsfield Festival of Golden Words, will be held for the first time in March 2014.
The annual festival, which will be based in the northern Tasmanian town of Beaconsfield and the surrounding West Tamar region, will run from 14-16 March. The festival will include free writers’ talks,...
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Wednesday, 5 June 2013
Jenny Halford was named Penguin Sales Representative of the Year at this year’s Penguin sales conference, which was held in Lorne, Victoria, at the end of May.
Halford has worked for Penguin for 13 years, including the past five years with the Queensland field sales team. Halford was previously a member of...
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Wednesday, 5 June 2013
Designer Suburbs: Architects and Affordable Homes in Australia by Judith O’Callaghan and Charles Pickett (NewSouth) has won the Education, Interpretation and Community Engagement category of this year’s New South Wales National Trust Heritage Awards.
This book ‘is the product of two decades of research and writing on the suburban design of Australia’s post-war years. It...
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Wednesday, 5 June 2013
‘If you categorise books as for boys or for girls, the message is that boys don’t need to be concerned about the female experience. And vice versa’—US author Libba Bray on gendered YA book covers, quoted in a blog post by Alison Croggon on the Guardian Australia website.
...
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Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Sales
Nonfiction—Rockpool Publishing has licensed Danish and Norwegian rights to Angel Whispers (Debbie Malone); Spanish rights to 7 Things Your Doctor Forgot to Tell You; US rights to Natural Remedies (Mim Beim) and 3 Day Detox (Susanne Grace); simplified Chinese rights to Raising Competent Children (Jesper Juul); and French rights to World...
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Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Radio presenter, producer, author and editor Jill Kitson has died.
On the ABC’s Radio National, Kitson produced and presented book shows including First Edition and Book Talk, as well as Lingua Franca and The Americas. She also produced and edited programs for other presenters.
Kitson published a book, The British to the Antipodes (Gentry Publishing), and...
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Tuesday, 4 June 2013
The merger of Penguin and Random House is expected to be completed next month, following the approval of the proposed merger by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) this week.
Penguin parent company Pearson said in a statement that MOFCOM ‘has cleared the planned merger ... without conditions’ and that Pearson and Random...
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Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Simon & Schuster Australia has announced that Kirsty Ward has been appointed to the newly created position of head of consumer and market insights.
Ward, who has already started in the new position, has worked for S&S since 2009, when she joined the company in the newly created role of business analyst....
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Tuesday, 4 June 2013
The schools program for this year’s Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF) has been announced.
The Word Play program, which runs from 4 to 6 September, offers places for 10,000 students from grades 4 to 10 to attend events about fiction, nonfiction, science, fantasy, Asian culture and history.
The international guest at this year’s festival is Elizabeth...
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Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Please note that, due to the Queen’s Birthday public holiday on Monday (occuring in all states except Western Australia), the Weekly Book Newsletter will be published on Thursday 13 June.
The deadline for classifieds and job advertisements is therefore 12 noon Wednesday 12 June. Please send all classifieds, jobs and notices to classifieds@thorpe.com.au.
...
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Monday, 3 June 2013
The longlists for the 2013 Inky Awards, presented by the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria, have been announced. The awards recognise local and international fiction, poetry, anthologies and graphic novels written for young adults.
The Gold Inky Award longlist (for an Australian book) is:
...
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Monday, 3 June 2013
The winners of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize were announced in the UK on 31 May.
UK author Lisa O’Donnell has won the £10,000 (A$15,860) Commonwealth Book Prize for her debut novel The Death of Bees (Windmill Books). Chair of the judging panel Godfrey Smith...
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Monday, 3 June 2013
Melbourne-based author Jane Jervis-Read has won the inaugural Viva La Novella prize offered by Seizure literary journal for her novella Midnight Blue and Endlessly Tall.
Jervis-Read was announced as the winner of the prize in Melbourne on 30 May as part of the Emerging Writers’ Festival. Seizure said that her novella...
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Monday, 3 June 2013
Khaled Hosseini’s third novel And the Mountains Echoed (Bloomsbury) is at the top of the highest new entries chart this week and second on the bestseller charts. Hosseini tells a multi-generational story, which moves from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos. Dan Brown’s Inferno (Bantam) remains at...
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Friday, 31 May 2013
Cengage Learning will adopt a new global pricing structure for US-originated higher education print titles in July, with around a third of the US-originated titles distributed by Cengage Australia to be affected.
Paul Petrulis, vice president of Higher Education and Gale for Cengage Learning Australia, told Books+Publishing that ‘with the new...
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Friday, 31 May 2013
The longlist for the 2013 John Button Prize for writing on Australian politics and policy has been announced.
The longlisted titles are:
The New Leviathan: A National Disability Insurance Scheme (Andrew Baker, Centre for Independent Studies)
Mine-field: The Dark Side of Australia’s Resources Rush...
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Friday, 31 May 2013
The winners of the Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF) Monash University Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing have been announced.
The overall prize, worth $4000, was presented to Rebecca Slater from University of Technology in Sydney. The prize for the highest placed Monash University student, worth $1000, went to Alexandra Coghill. The judges also...
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Thursday, 30 May 2013
Diana Sweeney has won this year’s Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing for her manuscript The Minnow.
Sweeney was presented with the prize by Text publisher Michael Heyward at an event in Melbourne on 29 May. Sweeney has won a $10,000 advance against royalties, as well as a publishing...
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Thursday, 30 May 2013
Booktopia’s head of marketing and chief book buyer John Purcell has been revealed as the author of the Australian erotic fiction trilogy ‘The Secret Lives of Emma’, published by Random House under the pseudonym Natasha Walker.
The author’s identity was revealed on the Australian Women’s Weekly website ahead of an article in...
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Wednesday, 29 May 2013
HarperCollins Australia and New Zealand is considering relocating its New Zealand distribution to its Australian facilities.
HarperCollins said in a statement this week that CEO James Kellow has announced a proposal to HarperCollins staff that, if implemented, will involve closing the company’s distribution operations in New Zealand and instead supplying the...
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Wednesday, 29 May 2013
Pearson has announced that it is reviewing its educational publishing business in New Zealand and may close its New Zealand office.
The publisher said in a statement this week that it is ‘entering into a consultation period to determine how we run our education business in New Zealand’ and will provide...
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Wednesday, 29 May 2013
The 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival, the first under artistic director Jemma Birrell, has recorded the festival’s second-highest box office sales and the second-best year for the festival bookshop.
Executive director Ben Strout told Books+Publishing that this year’s box office sales were only surpassed by the 2010 festival, which featured the sold-out Nine...
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Wednesday, 29 May 2013
This year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival included the annual Visiting International Publishers (VIP) program, which offers Australian publishers the opportunity to meet with international publishers and editors. On 22 May several of the visiting publishers participated in an industry forum, with panels on children’s publishing, English-language markets and translation markets.
Children’s publishing
On the...
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Wednesday, 29 May 2013
This year’s Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize has been awarded to Quinn Berentson.
Berentson received a cash prize of NZ$5000 (A$4203) for his book Moa: The Life and Death of New Zealand’s Legendary Bird (Craig Potton Publishing), which recounts the discovery of bones from an isolated family of birds...
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Wednesday, 29 May 2013
‘I look forward to reading the longlist in next year’s Award for Male Reader Engagement. Or better title, The Day My Bum Grew Up and Started Reading Literary Fiction’—Poet and writer Paul Mitchell argues the case for an Australian award that encourages men to read literary fiction in this guest post...
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Wednesday, 29 May 2013
Sales
Children’s—Hardie Grant Egmont and Little Hare have sold Dutch, French, Spanish, Catalan and complex Chinese rights to The Swap (Jan Ormerod & Andrew Joyner); French rights to Sylvester & Arnold (David Bedford & Tom Jellett); simplified and complex Chinese rights to Parachute (Danny Parker & Matt Ottley); French Canadian rights to...
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Tuesday, 28 May 2013
The Myer Foundation has announced the recipients of the inaugural Merlyn Myer Biography Stipends.
The stipends, which are valued at $50,000 each, have been awarded to Thornton McCamish and Geordie Williamson. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the stipends are an initiative of the Sidney Myer Fund and are awarded to assist...
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Tuesday, 28 May 2013
Hardie Grant Books has launched a free newspaper-style publication that features book extracts and author interviews, called First Pages.
The first edition of First Pages was distributed to cafes in Melbourne and Sydney during the past week, and was made available at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. The issue features writing and interviews from Hardie...
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Tuesday, 28 May 2013
The recently established Canberra branch of the Small Press Network (SPN) has launched a series of informal monthly events.
Organised by Editia founder and publisher Charlotte Harper, the first event was held on Tuesday 28 May at the Gorman House Arts Centre in Braddon, ACT, and featured literary agent Mary Cunnane discussing industry...
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Tuesday, 28 May 2013
The finalists for this year’s Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA) Children’s Book Awards have been announced.
The finalists in each category are:
LIANZA Junior Fiction Award—Esther Glen Medal
The Queen and the Nobody Boy: A Tale of Fontania (Barbara Else, Gecko Press)
Drover’s Quest (Susan...
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Monday, 27 May 2013
The winners of the 2013 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) were announced on Friday 24 May at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney.
This is the second time that the awards have been presented as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival and many of the festival guests were on hand to present...
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Monday, 27 May 2013
Susannah Chambers was announced as the recipient of the 2013/14 Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on 25 May.
The fellowship, which was presented for the 13th time this year, will allow Chambers to spend three months with a range of niche and large publishing houses in the...
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Monday, 27 May 2013
The 2013 Finch Memoir Prize has been awarded to Marie Williams for her memoir Green Vanilla Tea.
The prize, which was presented on 24 May at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, is worth $10,000 and includes publication by Finch.
Williams’ memoir explores what happens when her husband begins to suffer from a mysterious...
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Monday, 27 May 2013
The winners of this year’s Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) Best Young Australian Novelists Awards were announced at the Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF) on 24 May.
The winners are:
Romy Ash (Floundering, Text)
Paul D Carter (Eleven Seasons, A&U)
Emily Maguire (Fishing for...
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Monday, 27 May 2013
The 2013 Pascall Prize for critical writing has been awarded to book reviewer and author Kerryn Goldsworthy.
Goldsworthy was awarded the $15,000 prize, which was judged by previous winner James Bradley (2012) and editor and journalist for the Australian Rosemary Sorensen, on 25 May during this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival.
The judges said Goldsworthy’s writing...
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Monday, 27 May 2013
The winners of the 2013 National Print Awards (NPA) have been announced, with Bambra Press winning the Judges Award for Excellence for Napoleon: Revolution to Empire (Ted Gott & Karine Huguenaud, NGV).
The awards were announced at a gala dinner at the Crown Palladium Ballroom on 24 May, which was held during the printing industry’s PacPrint13 exhibition.
Winners...
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Monday, 27 May 2013
Dan Brown’s latest thriller featuring professor Robert Langdon, Inferno (Bantam), is at the top of the bestsellers chart and the highest new entries chart this week following the success of his previous Langdon novels: The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons and The Lost Symbol. When The Lost Symbol was released in 2009, it remained...
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Friday, 24 May 2013
The winners of this year’s Australian Publishers Association (APA) Book Design Awards were announced in Sydney on 23 May during the Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF).
The winning titles in each of the categories are:
Best Designed Book of the Year
Things I Love (Megan Morton, Lantern), designed by Evi...
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Friday, 24 May 2013
Text Publishing designer Chong Weng Ho has been awarded the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Design Hall of Fame Award at the 2013 Australian Publishers Association (APA) Book Design Awards, which were announced in Sydney on 23 May.
Chong accepted the award from the 2011 Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Award winner Sandy Cull. In his acceptance speech he...
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Friday, 24 May 2013
Maxine Beneba Clarke has won the 2013 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript.
Clarke was announced as the winner of the $15,000 prize, which is administered by the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas, for her manuscript Foreign Soils, a collection of contemporary short stories. The announcement was made by Arts...
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Thursday, 23 May 2013
Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (Lothian) has been selected as one of 10 honour books in Silent Books, a travelling exhibition run by the International Board of Books for Young People (IBBY).
Presented by the Italian arm of IBBY in association with Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni, the Silent Books project has collected...
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013
HarperCollins Australia has appointed Michael White to the newly created position of head of international publishing.
HarperCollins Australia marketing and communications director Simon Milne told Books+Publishing that White’s role covers fiction and nonfiction from HarperCollins UK and US. White previously worked in the publisher’s sales division and was responsible for fiction sales...
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Harlequin Australia has announced that Sue Brockhoff has joined the publisher in the role of publishing and communications manager.
Brockhoff, who was previously head of fiction at HarperCollins, started in the role on 13 May. She replaces former publishing manager Haylee Nash, who joined Booktopia to manage its romance sales in...
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Antonia Hayes has joined ebook provider Copia in the role of Australian merchandising and marketing manager.
Hayes, who started in the role this month, is responsible for Copia’s local merchandising, marketing and publicity activities. Hayes is a co-director of the National Young Writers’ Festival and has previously worked as a publicist for Random House...
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013
The Sydney Writers’ Festival was officially launched last night. The opening address was delivered by oral storyteller Daniel Morden, who embodies this year’s festival theme of storytelling, and entertained the audience with a selection of folktale-like stories.
While many of the festival’s sessions are free, a number of ticketed events have...
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Express Media will publish two novella-length books by Australian writers under 30 as part of a new initiative called Hologram.
The Hologram books will be published in early 2014 and the selected authors will each receive $1000. The project, which will run as a once-off initiative, is funded by the Australia...
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Sophie Masson has been re-elected as chair and David Day as treasurer of the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) board.
Masson, Irina Dunn, Helen O’Neill, Chris Pash, Mark Carthew, Robyn Sheahan-Bright and Hazel Edwards were also elected as board members for 2013-2014, and join Day, Ann James, Brian Dibble, Lynne Spender, Jeremy...
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013
‘As an unintended consequence of changes in consumer buying habits, people are not paying taxes on things that they have done for years’—Australian Booksellers Association CEO Joel Becker calls for the Australian government to close the GST ‘loophole’ on goods purchased from overseas suppliers in a blog post that was first...
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Kevin Jones, former manager of Publishers Distribution Limited (PDL), has died aged 65. Jones worked as manager of PDL, an Auckland-based distribution company, from March 2003 to May 2012.
...
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Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Hachette Australia has partnered with Sydney creative agency Droga5 and Qantas to create a set of paperback books that are timed to be read during 10 of the airline’s main flying routes.
The ‘Stories for Every Journey’ set includes 10 books by existing Hachette authors. Two of the books by Sean...
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Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Australian illustrators Ben Sanders and Tony Flowers have been shortlisted in the children’s book category of the UK-based Association of Illustrators (AOI) Illustration Awards.
Sanders has been shortlisted for his book I’ve An Uncle Ivan (Thames & Hudson) and Flowers has been shortlisted for the cover and internal illustrations in Samantha-Ellen Bound’s What the...
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Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Booktopia CEO and founder Tony Nash has been nominated for the 2013 Australian Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Nash, who founded Booktopia in 2004, is one of 18 nominees competing in the Eastern region category, which includes entrepreneurs from the ACT and NSW. A regional winner will be...
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Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Melbourne-based publisher Scribe will launch a new series of nonfiction books about contemporary media trends later this year.
The ‘Media Chronicles’ series will launch with The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience by blogger Tim Dunlop in September, followed by Stop Press: The Last Days of...
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Monday, 20 May 2013
The winners of this year’s New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award were announced in Sydney on 19 May, on the eve of the 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival.
Ali Cobby-Eckermann’s verse novel Ruby Moonlight (Magabala Books) was named Book of the Year and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, taking home...
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Monday, 20 May 2013
The winners of the 2012 Aurealis Awards were announced at a ceremony in Sydney on 18 May, with Margo Lanagan picking up four awards, including best fantasy novel and joint winner of best young adult novel.
The full list of winners is:
Best Fantasy Novel
Sea Hearts (Margo Lanagan,...
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Monday, 20 May 2013
The winners of the Northern Territory Literary Awards have been announced.
The winners in the book-related categories are:
Short stories
‘Responsible’ (Lois Murphy)
Youth
‘Change Takes a Change’ (Juliette Parsons)
Poetry
‘Five memories from the end of a life’ (Kaye Aldenhoven)
Travel stories
‘It feels...
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Monday, 20 May 2013
Charlaine Harris fans will be sad to say goodbye to Sookie Stackhouse, the small-town telepathic waitress who loves vampires. Dead Ever After (Hachette), the 13th and final book in the ‘Southern Vampire Mysteries’ (adapted into the TV series True Blood), is at the top of the highest new entries chart this week. It’s...
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Friday, 17 May 2013
Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) CEO Joel Becker has written a blog post on the Council of Small Business Australia website calling for Australian leaders to ‘show some gumption’ and close the GST ‘loophole’.
In December 2012, the Federal Government gave ‘in principle’ support for lowering the current low value threshold for collecting GST on goods purchased from overseas...
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Friday, 17 May 2013
The Melbourne Writers Festival has released its schools program for 2013.
Among the authors featured in this year’s program, which runs from 26 to 29 August, are international guests Deborah Ellis, author of the ‘Parvana’ series about the lives of children in Afghanistan; Scott Westerfeld, author of the sci-fi series ‘Uglies’ and...
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Friday, 17 May 2013
Tony Grybowski has been appointed as the new CEO of the Australia Council for the Arts.
Grybowski joined the Australia Council in 2007 and previously held the position of executive director of arts organisations. His background includes management positions at the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Musica Viva Australia and the Australian Youth Orchestra, and...
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Thursday, 16 May 2013
The shortlist for this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript has been announced.
The shortlisted manuscripts are:
A Field Guide to Birdwatching in Bad Weather (Naomi Bailey)
The Strays (Emily Bitto)
Foreign Soil (Maxine Beneba Clarke).
The...
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Thursday, 16 May 2013
The nominations for each of the positions on the management committee of the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) have been announced, ahead of the association’s 2013 annual general meeting in June.
As previously reported by Books+Publishing, executive director of ALS Library Services and current ABA treasurer Patricia Genat is the sole nominee...
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Thursday, 16 May 2013
The Galley Club of Sydney has cancelled its book and magazine production awards for 2013 because of a lack of resources and industry support, reports ProPrint.
‘There were just too few of us who are willing to sort books, add up score sheets, organise seating plans and phone sponsors for support this...
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Thursday, 16 May 2013
A new publisher has been launched in Melbourne.
Inkerman & Blunt is the brainchild of Donna Ward, founding editor of WA creative writing journal Indigo. The publisher will release its first book, Australian Love Poems 2013 (ed by Mark Tredinnick) in August, with a chapbook of flash fiction by LiteraryMinded blogger Angela...
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Australian author Michael Sala has won the Pacific region for the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize and New Zealand writer Zoe Meager has won the Pacific region for the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Sala’s book The Last Thread (Affirm Press) was one of five books by Australian authors shortlisted for this year’s Commonwealth Book...
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013
The shortlist for the 2013 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing has been announced.
The shortlisted authors and their manuscripts are:
Meg Caddy for Waer, a ‘fantasy novel set in an imagined land of waerwolves, thieves and magic’
Jo Hegerty for Lost...
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013
The Federal Government has outlined its funding plans for Creative Australia, its recently released national cultural policy, in the 2013-14 Commonwealth Budget.
As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the policy includes a $75.3 million boost for the Australia Council for the Arts over four years. According to the budget papers, which were released...
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013
‘The idea of a national body that enables individual writers’ centres to work more closely together remains a valuable one’—New South Wales Writers Centre chair Linda Funnell reflects on the defunding of Writing Australia.
...
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Sales
Fiction—Golvan Arts Management has optioned the film rights to Mice (Gordon Reece, Allen & Unwin) to Southern Light Alliance, partnering with Cyan Films. HarperCollins has sold German volume rights to In Search of Africa (Frank Coates); German translation rights to My Brother’s Keeper (Donna Malane); Hungarian translation rights to Golden Earrings (Belinda Alexandra); and Polish translation...
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Tuesday, 14 May 2013
The City of Melbourne Council has allocated $135,000 in its 2013-14 draft budget towards the establishment of a permanent City of Literature office in partnership with the Victorian Government.
The council, which released its annual plan and draft budget on 9 May, said the funding will ‘kick start’ the establishment of the office,...
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Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Thousands of school children will read Gus Gordon’s picture book Herman and Rosie (Viking) during Read for Australia, a nation-wide reading event to be held during National Literacy and Numeracy Week (NLNW) in July.
Read for Australia encourages school students across the country to read the same book simultaneously at 2pm Australian...
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Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Books by Australian and New Zealand authors are among the winners of the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), which recognise excellence in independent publishing.
Two Australian titles are among the winners of the National IPPY Awards, which were awarded in 77 categories. Drawing Life for Kids: My Art Journal (Queensland...
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Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Sydney-based author and photographer Katie Quinn Davies has won the photography category of the 2013 James Beard Foundation culinary awards in the US for her book What Katie Ate (Lantern).
Quinn Davies was announced as the winner at a presentation ceremony on 3 May in New York. What Katie Ate was...
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Monday, 13 May 2013
Writing Australia, a national organisation that was launched in 2011 to support writers’ centres across Australia, has been ‘quietly defunded’, according to a report from artsHub. According to artsHub, the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts withdrew funding for the organisation in December 2012, two years into its...
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Monday, 13 May 2013
Hugh Mackay’s The Good Life: What Makes a Life Worth Living (Pan Macmillan) is not a book about ‘how to feel good, how to find happiness or how to reap some reward for your goodness,’ writes Books+Publishing reviewer Paula Grunseit. ‘Hugh Mackay’s message is that while those things may well be...
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Friday, 10 May 2013
RMIT University in Melbourne will open two pop-up bookshops in June to cater for students buying their textbooks for the second semester of the university year.
The university said in a statement that plans are also underway to open ‘full-fledged permanent shop[s]’ at its campuses in the Melbourne CBD and Bundoora...
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Friday, 10 May 2013
The black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing Project at the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) has announced the winners of the 2013 kuril dhagun Indigenous Writing Fellowships.
The winners are:
Scott Prince and Dave Hartley for Deadly D and Justice Jones–Making the Team
Tristan Savage for Rift...
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Friday, 10 May 2013
Melbourne-based literary journal Kill Your Darlings (KYD) has opened an online store, which will sell editions of KYD as well as other books and stationery.
The store, which can be accessed from the KYD website, currently sells print and digital editions of KYD but will soon expand to include books that...
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Thursday, 9 May 2013
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) has announced the shortlist for this year’s Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) Book of the Year Award, which is sponsored by Booktopia.
The shortlisted titles are:
The 26-Storey Treehouse (Andy Griffiths, illus by Terry Denton, Pan)
The Lost Diggers...
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Thursday, 9 May 2013
Discount department store Big W has signed up as a major sponsor of Mamamia’s The Book Circle and will screen episodes of the online book show on its website.
The first episode for 2013, which is available on the Mamamia website here, features Kelly Doust (The Crafty Minx at Home, HarperCollins), Kylie Ladd (Into...
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Thursday, 9 May 2013
The Davitt Awards, presented by Sisters in Crime for crime books written by Australian women, has introduced a new lifetime achievement award.
The 2013 Davitt Awards will present awards in six categories: Best Novel (Adult), Best Novel (Children’s and Young Adult), Best True Crime Book, Best Debut Book, Readers’ Choice and...
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Thursday, 9 May 2013
Children’s book illustrator, author and teacher Gregory Rogers has died, aged 55.
Scholastic Australia writes:
‘Scholastic Australia wishes to note the passing of the much-loved and respected illustrator and author, Greg Rogers. He has left us too soon. He leaves behind a remarkable body of work and was the first Australian to...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Patricia Genat, managing director of ALS Library Services, will replace Jon Page as the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) president after the organisation’s annual general meeting in June.
ABA CEO Joel Becker told Books+Publishing that Jon Page, who is general manager of Pages & Pages Booksellers in Sydney, will not be running for...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Sony has opened its Reader Store in Australia, offering a range of local and international ebooks. The Reader Store has previously been available in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Austria and Japan.
Among the local publishers with titles in the ebookstore are Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Allen & Unwin, HarperCollins, Hachette, Pan Macmillan, Hardie Grant...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Bookselling chain QBD has become the first Australian retailer to launch an ebookstore powered by Copia.
The QBD ebookstore is now live and is integrated with the existing QBD website. Among the local publishers with ebooks available are Macmillan, Random House, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Wiley, HarperCollins, Allen & Unwin, Text...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
The Victorian Government has announced close to $29 million in new funding for the state’s arts sector in its latest budget.
The government, which released its 2013-14 Budget on 7 May, also announced a number of changes to the way it funds arts projects, including the introduction of a new contestable...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
The finalists in this year’s Northern Territory Literary Awards have been announced.
The finalists in the book-related categories are:
Short stories:
‘Flag of Surrender’ (Kerry Taylor)
‘From Where I Thought You Would Appear’ (Josh Cameron)
‘whitefellas give what they would otherwise...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) has announced that Christos Tsiolkas will be the guest speaker at the conference’s ‘celebrating bookselling’ gala dinner at the Hilton Adelaide on 16 June. Tsiolkas’ new book Barracuda will be published by Allen & Unwin in late October.
The dinner menu will be designed by Adam Liaw,...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Thames & Hudson Australia has announced that distribution of its titles and those of its sales agencies will move from Macmillan Distribution Services (MDS) to Alliance Distribution Services (ADS) from July.
The publisher said in a statement that MDS will continue to receive orders for Thames & Hudson titles and those of...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Booksellers have reported strong sales and author events attracted record crowds at this year’s Clunes Booktown Festival, with up to 18,000 people visiting the central Victorian town for the event.
Visitors enjoyed a sunny weekend, which kicked off with a Friday night event on 3 May with popular author Peter FitzSimons,...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
‘It has been inspiring to have been a part of the management of change, and part of the growing professionalism and internationalisation of the industry’—former Penguin publishing director Bob Sessions announces his retirement.
...
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Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Journalist and radio personality Rafael Epstein has launched a new book club for listeners of his Melbourne ABC radio program Drive.
According to the ABC, Read with Raf will offer Drive listeners the ‘opportunity to read the classics and new releases from some of the best international and local authors’. Epstein’s Drive...
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Tuesday, 7 May 2013
The Aurealis Awards will be held in Canberra over the next two years.
Owner Chimaera Publications announced in a statement that the awards, which celebrate science-fiction, fantasy and horror writing in Australia, will be administered in 2014 and 2015 by Canberra-based speculative fiction organisation Conflux, which runs the annual Canberra speculative fiction conference. The awards have been administered by Sydney-based...
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Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Children’s book illustrator, author and teacher Gregory Rogers has died, aged 55.
Erica Wagner, publisher of books for children and teenagers at Allen & Unwin, writes:
‘Gregory Rogers passed away just after midday on May 1, 2013. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer three years ago, but rallied and lived to the full,...
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Monday, 6 May 2013
Penguin Australia has announced that Bob Sessions will retire from the company on 27 September.
Sessions has worked for Penguin Australia for more than 27 years and was head of the publishing department for 22 years. He stepped down as publishing director in April 2011 to work in the part-time role...
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Monday, 6 May 2013
The shortlist for this year’s Books I Love Best Yearly (BILBY) Awards, the children’s choice book awards for Queensland, has been announced.
The shortlisted titles in each of the categories are:
Books for early readers
Bamboozled (David Legge, Scholastic)
Green Eggs and Ham (Dr Seuss,...
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Monday, 6 May 2013
Independent publisher Jane Curry Publishing (JCP) has launched a new digital-first imprint called Storyworks.
The first title to be published under the Storyworks imprint is Partners, a debut novel by Melbourne-based investment banker Harrison Young. The ebook, which was published this week, is now available from a range of eretailers including...
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Monday, 6 May 2013
The shortlist for the Wilderness Society’s 2013 Environment Award for Children’s Literature, which promotes ‘caring and responsibility for the environment’, has been announced.
The shortlisted books in the Preschool category are:
Our Nest is Best! (Penny Olsen & Penny O’ Hara, NLA Publishing)
Kangaroos...
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Monday, 6 May 2013
On top of the fastest movers chart this week is The Fast Diet (Mimi Spencer & Michael Mosley, Short Books), which recommends readers feast for five days a week and fast for two days to lose weight. In the same vein comes The 5:2 Diet Book (Kate Harrison, Hachette), which is in fifth place on the...
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Friday, 3 May 2013
Sonya Hartnett’s novel Of a Boy (Penguin) has been adapted into a film.
The Weight of Elephants was shot in Southland, New Zealand, in March 2012. It is the feature film debut from New Zealand writer-director Daniel Joseph Borgman, and stars young New Zealand actors Demos Murphy and Angelina Cottrell.
Hartnett’s 2002 novel, which was published in the...
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Friday, 3 May 2013
Bloomsbury will launch a digital-first imprint for young adult, teen and new adult fiction in the second half of this year.
Bloomsbury Spark is currently accepting unsolicited submissions for a range of genres, including romance, contemporary, dystopian, paranormal, science-fiction, mystery, thriller and historical fiction. The publisher is looking for novels, novellas...
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Friday, 3 May 2013
US publisher O’Reilly has announced that it is ending its Tools of Change (TOC) conference and blog after seven years.
Founder Tim O’Reilly wrote on the TOC blog that the publisher came to the decision after TOC 2013 that ‘a conference was no longer the best vehicle for us to contribute to...
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Thursday, 2 May 2013
Ten Tiny Things by Meg McKinlay and Kyle Hughes-Odgers (Fremantle Press) has won the Australian and New Zealand division of this year’s Crystal Kite Member Choice Awards, presented by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).
The Crystal Kite Awards are presented annually by SCBWI in five continental divisions...
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Thursday, 2 May 2013
The finalists for the 2013 Sir Julius Vogel Awards for New Zealand science-fiction, horror and fantasy have been announced.
The finalists in the best novel category are:
Dead Radiance (T G Ayer, Evolved Publishing)
Growing Disenchantments (K D Berry, Bluewood Publishing)
Empire...
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Wednesday, 1 May 2013
The shortlist for this year’s Reading & Enjoying Australian Literature (REAL) Awards, which acts as a shortlist for children’s choice book awards in the Australian Capital Territory (COOL Awards), New South Wales (KOALAs), the Northern Territory (KROC Awards) and Victoria (YABBAs), has been announced.
The shortlisted titles in each of the...
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Wednesday, 1 May 2013
The New Zealand Book Council has announced the recipients of its 2013 International Travel Fund grants.
Eight writers and illustrators will receive grants to attend international literary festivals and share New Zealand’s ‘literary culture and heritage on the world stage’.
YA author Kate De Goldi and cartoonist Dylan Horrocks will visit the Brisbane...
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Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Berlin-based ereading company txtr has launched ebookstores in Australia and New Zealand.
The stores officially launched at the beginning of February and each store currently sells approximately 700,000 ebooks, including local titles from Hachette, Penguin, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Pan Macmillan, Allen & Unwin, Bloomsbury, Text, Harlequin and Wiley. The...
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Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Newtone Press has acquired BPA Print Group after the printer was placed into receivership in late March.
According to Print21, Melbourne-based Newtone Press is taking on BPA Print Group’s operations and the majority of its workers, estimated to be around 20. It has also purchased most of BPA Print Group’s equipment and...
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Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Independent bookselling chain Unleash Books & Education closed its four stores in Westfield shopping centres in Sydney in March.
A spokesperson for Westfield confirmed to Books+Publishing that the Unleash Books stores located at Westfield Miranda, Westfield Bondi and Westfield Kotara all stopped trading between 21 and 26 March.
As previously reported...
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Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Stephanie Campisi’s ‘Read in a Single Sitting’ blog has won the Words and Writing category in the Best Australian Blogs 2013 competition.
Category judge, Random House managing editor Brandon Van Over, described Campisi’s blog as ‘really thoughtful, diverse in content, accessible and well designed’. ‘You can see the passion that goes into it,...
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Wednesday, 1 May 2013
‘Judges of literary prizes today occupy two increasingly incompatible roles. Think of a strip club spruiker wearing an academic gown and brandishing his rolled doctorate as he dutifully proclaims the pleasures to be had within, and you’ll have a sense of the weird combination of hard-nosed marketing and aesthetic discrimination they...
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Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Sales
Fiction—Scribe has licensed North American rights to Cat & Fiddle (Lesley Jørgensen) to Penguin US.
Children’s—Scholastic has licensed Spanish rights within the US to Forever (Anna Pignataro).
Acquisitions
Nonfiction—Black Inc. has acquired ANZ rights to On My Knees (Periel Aschenbrand, Harper Perennial US) to be published under the Nero imprint.
...
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Tuesday, 30 April 2013
The shortlist for this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award features five books by Australian women.
The shortlisted titles are:
Floundering (Romy Ash, Text)
Questions of Travel (Michelle de Kretser, A&U)
The Beloved (Annah Faulkner, Picador)
...
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Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Allen & Unwin has announced that the judges of the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award have decided not to present the award this year.
This is the second time in the award’s history that the judges have decided not to select a winning manuscript. The award was also not presented in 1985.
Judge and...
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Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Penguin Books Australia has announced that it will publish 50 classic crime novels in July as part of a new range of Green Popular Penguins.
The new range will feature a green version of the iconic Popular Penguin design, described as ‘a nod to the design for Penguin’s original “Mystery and...
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Tuesday, 30 April 2013
A new series of illustrated books for younger readers will feature previously published short stories from Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton, Pan Macmillan has announced.
The series kicks off with the release of The Cat, the Rat and the Baseball Bat in June. The book features a single story taken from Griffiths...
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Monday, 29 April 2013
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) has announced the shortlist for this year’s Book Industry Innovation Award, which will be presented as part of the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) in May.
The finalists are:
HarperCollins for ‘Around the World in 80 Hours—Twitter Fiction Festival’
...
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Monday, 29 April 2013
TitlePage has moved a number of changes ‘into production’ ahead of the pending relaunch of the platform.
TitlePage said in a statement that it has ‘moved some new functionality into production’ over the weekend, including the representation of stock levels in numeric values. TitlePage said that ‘some publisher file loads still need to catch...
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Monday, 29 April 2013
Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts was named best novel at this year’s Ditmar Awards for Australian science-fiction, fantasy and horror writing.
Lanagan also received the Norma K Hemming Award for race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in Australian speculative fiction. The awards were presented at the National Science Fiction Convention, Conflux 9,...
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Monday, 29 April 2013
Nora Roberts’ Whiskey Beach (Hachette) is at the top of the bestsellers and highest new entries charts this week. The novel tells the story of Eli Landon, whose perfect world is shattered after his wife is brutally murdered. Eli is named the prime suspect but when the case is eventually dropped, he retreats to Whiskey Beach, where...
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Friday, 26 April 2013
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) has announced the finalists for this year’s Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs).
The finalists in each of the categories are:
Chain/Franchise Bookseller of the Year
QLD Dymocks Brisbane
SA/NT Dymocks Adelaide
NSW/ACT Hill of Content Balmain...
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Friday, 26 April 2013
The shortlist for this year’s Ashurst Business Literature Prize has been announced.
The shortlisted titles are:
7 Myths about Women and Work (Catherine Fox, NewSouth)
The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made Its Own Luck (Peter Hartcher, Black Inc.)
The House...
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Friday, 26 April 2013
Melbourne publisher Sleepers is celebrating its 10th birthday this year.
The anniversary coincides with a big year for the small press, which was founded in 2003 by Louise Swinn and Zoe Dattner. The publisher has three debut novels out this year—Inheritance by Balli Kaur Jaswal, which was published in February, Holy...
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Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Allen & Unwin has been ordered to pay members of Schapelle Corby’s family more than $50,000 in damages over the publication of a number of photographs in Sins of the Father by Eamonn Duff, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
The case was heard by Federal Court justice Robert Buchanan in Sydney on 23...
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Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Melbourne campus bookseller RMIT Bookshop will close on 30 April.
The independent business, which is owned by the Melbourne Co-operative Bookshop Group (MCGB), has operated in the Melbourne CBD for 53 years. The RMIT Bookshop outlets located on Little Latrobe Street in the city and at RMIT’s Bundoora campus in Melbourne’s north will both close at the end...
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Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Annabel Blay from Curtis Brown reports:
‘Busy and buzzy’ was the most frequent observation from editors, agents and scouts about this year’s London Book Fair (LBF), which ran from 15-17 April, although many agreed that despite packed schedules there seemed to be fewer people in the aisles than in previous years.
This meant...
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Wednesday, 24 April 2013
‘Amazon has over sixty-five percent of the ebook market in Australia and over seventy-five percent of ereaders owned in Australia are Kindles’—Pages & Pages general manager and Australian Booksellers Association president Jon Page explains why he has decided to introduce a ‘Kindle amnesty’ at Pages & Pages. ...
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Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Hyland House publisher and doyen of the book industry Al Knight has died, aged 88.
Knight's wife Janet McCalman writes:
‘Al came to Melbourne in 1971 to be MD of Thomas Nelson. He played a major role in the flowering of Australian publishing that was subsidised by the change of government, the new Australia Council...
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Tuesday, 23 April 2013
The recipients of the 2013 Australian Society of Authors’ (ASA) Children’s Picture Book Illustrators’ grants have been announced.The Emerging Illustrator’s grant of $5000 was awarded to Marc Martin for The River. The judges awarded a further grant of $5000 to Gregory Mackay for Anders!.The following illustrators were also shortlisted in the Emerging category:...
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Tuesday, 23 April 2013
The finalists in the Best Australian Blogs 2013 competition have been announced.
Finalists in the Words and Writing category are:
‘Alpha Reader’ by Danielle Binks
‘Book to the Future’ by Michelle McLaren
‘CheeseburgerGothic’ by John Birmingham
‘Lives...
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Tuesday, 23 April 2013
The shortlist for this year’s Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) Nielsen BookData Booksellers Choice Award has been announced. The shortlisted titles are: The Light between Oceans (M L Stedman, Vintage) QF32 (Richard de Crespigny, Pan Macmillan) The Essential Leunig: Cartoons...
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Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Former Murdoch Books owner Matt Handbury and digital director Mark Ashbridge have partnered to launch a new website dedicated to food and cooking.
Eatlove, which launched in October 2012, features recipes from well-known Australian chefs and allows consumers to ‘follow’ and interact with the chefs, as well as connect to the...
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Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Pages & Pages Booksellers in Mosman, Sydney, has announced that it will introduce a ‘Kindle amnesty’ on the third Saturday of every month, asking customers to trade in Amazon Kindles for BeBook ereaders and raising consumer awareness of the limitations of the Kindle.On each amnesty day, customers who purchase a BeBook...
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Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Children’s author and illustrator E L Konigsburg has died, aged 83.
Konigsburg wrote or illustrated more than 20 books including picture books, contemporary novels and books about historical figures. She was a two-time winner of the Newbery Medal and the only writer to have received both the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor...
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Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Canadian author and editor A S A Harrison has died, aged 65.
Harrison’s debut novel The Silent Wife (Headline) is due for worldwide release in June. Harrison previously published Orgasms (Coach House Press), a collection of interviews with women, and is the author of Zodicat Speaks (Penguin) and Revelations: Essays on Striptease and...
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Monday, 22 April 2013
Australian electronics retailer JB HiFi has launched an ebookstore. The store, which went live on 22 April, is part of the retailer’s NOW platform, which also sells digital music. Among the local publishers with titles in the ebookstore are HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House, Allen & Unwin, Hachette, Lonely Planet, Pan Macmillan and Text Publishing. A...
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Monday, 22 April 2013
The Canadian Competition Bureau and the Department of Canadian Heritage has cleared the proposed merger of Penguin and Random House.
Random House parent company Bertelsmann said in a statement on 19 April that the proposed merger was cleared by the Canadian regulators ‘without conditions’. ‘Bertelsmann and Pearson welcome the Canadian authorities’...
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Monday, 22 April 2013
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year with a National Writers’ Congress in October.
The ASA, which was founded in 1963, will also hold an anniversary dinner in Melbourne in August, and will publish a history of the association by author Stephany Stegall under its...
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Monday, 22 April 2013
After Elizabeth witnesses a mafia murder she enters a witness protection program and begins a new life as computer security expert Abigail Lowery. The anxiety of her past life takes its toll, however, until Abigail meets and falls in love with the local police chief Brook Gleason. He is the only one who can convince her...
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Friday, 19 April 2013
Australian author Tom Keneally has been shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for his novel The Daughters of Mars (Vintage).
Keneally’s novel, which tells the story of sisters working as nurses on the Western Front during World War I, is one of six novels shortlisted for this...
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Friday, 19 April 2013
Text Publishing has signed an eight-book deal with self-published YA author Darrell Pitt.
Pitt, a Melbourne writer who is currently completing a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing at RMIT, has previously published two YA series, ‘The Steampunk Detective’ and ‘Diary of a Teenage Superhero’, as ebooks through Smashwords and Amazon. Pitt...
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Friday, 19 April 2013
Lonely Planet is celebrating 40 years of publishing travel books this year.
The company has a number of events planned across the globe to celebrate the occasion, including, in Australia and New Zealand, a ‘Share Your Travel Story’ competition and a series of limited-edition retro covers for a number of its guidebooks....
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Thursday, 18 April 2013
Leading Edge Books (LEB) has announced a number of sessions and participating authors for its annual conference, to be held from 14-16 June at the Hilton Hotel in Adelaide.
Registrations for LEB delegates will open from 4pm on Friday 14 June, followed by a cocktail party in the evening with authors David...
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Thursday, 18 April 2013
The program for the tenth 2013 Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF) in Melbourne has been announced.
The festival will begin with a gala event on 23 May, featuring a keynote address from poet and critic Astrid Lorange. The opening event will include the announcement of the winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
The Small Press Network (SPN), literary journals and writers’ festivals are among the organisations that will receive funding from the Copyright Agency in its latest round of grants from its Cultural Fund.
The SPN will receive $60,000 over three years to run its Independent Publishers Conference. The conference, which was first held...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Carrie Tiffany has been named the winner of the inaugural Stella Prize, an award established to promote books by Australian women writers.
Tiffany received the $50,000 award for her second novel Mateship with Birds (Picador) at a presentation event in Melbourne. In her acceptance speech Tiffany announced that she would share $10,000 of...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Haylee Nash has joined Booktopia to manage the online bookseller’s romance sales.
Nash, who started in the role on 15 April, was previously publishing manager for Harlequin Australia, where she worked for five years. A spokesperson for Harlequin Australia told Books+Publishing that the publisher is currently recruiting for a replacement for...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Australian writer Joe Ducie has won the inaugural Guardian Hot Key Books Young Writers Prize.
Ducie, 24, from Perth, Western Australia, was named one of two joint winners of the prize for his unpublished YA novel The Rig, a science-fiction thriller about a teenage prison-break specialist. The other winner was Katie...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
The effects of globalisation on the English language, the gamification of editing and the business of freelancing were among the topics discussed at the sixth Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) National Editors Conference in Fremantle, which ran from 10-12 April.
Conference convenor Marisa Wikramanayake told Books+Publishing that over 200 delegates attended the biennial...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
The shortlist for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction, previously known as the Orange Prize for Fiction, has been announced.
None of the Australian and New Zealand authors who were longlisted for the award made it onto the shortlist, which features three British and three American authors. The shortlisted titles are:
...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Ross McMullin has won the individual category of the 2013 Manning Clark House Cultural Awards for his book Farewell, Dear People (Scribe).
McMullin’s book, a collection of 10 biographies of Australian soldiers who died during World War I, was selected from a shortlist of 12 books. The judges gave special mentions...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
‘In only a few short years since they first started discussing the position of women in literature they have made something beautiful.’ Stella Prize winner Carrie Tiffany praised the work of the Stella Prize organisers in her acceptance speech. You can listen to the full audio here.
...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Sales
Fiction—Hachette has sold Bulgarian and Latvian language rights to Wildflower Hill (Kimberley Freeman); Latvian language rights to Lighthouse Bay (Kimberley Freeman); Serbian language rights to The Book of Love (Phillipa Fioretti); and German language rights to Blackwattle Lake (Pamela Cook).
Nonfiction—Hachette has sold Korean and Vietnamese language rights to Opening the...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Graham Davey, president of the Young Australians Best Book Awards (YABBA), has died.
Davey was the president of YABBA for more than 20 years. During his career he served as the Victorian branch president of the Children’s Book Council of Australia and also worked as an entertainer, a school storyteller and a...
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Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Melbourne-based author and historian Kevin Wong Hoy has died, aged 65.
Australian Scholarly Publishing writes:
‘Kevin made a significant contribution to Chinese Australian history, having written and edited books and journals, including Cheon of the Never Never (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2012). His commitment to the arts was unending, and he will be sadly...
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Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Australian author Gideon Haigh has won the 2013 Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year Award in the UK for his book On Warne (Hamish Hamilton).
Haigh was announced as the winner of this year’s £3000 (A$4440) prize on 15 April. His book was selected from a shortlist of six,...
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Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Kobo has unveiled a new high-definition ereading device, which will be available from Australian and New Zealand retailers in June.
The Kobo Aura HD is a front-lit, 6.8-inch device with a screen resolution of 256 dpi, which Kobo said is the ‘highest-resolution screen available in an ereader today’. The eInk device...
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Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Booksellers New Zealand has announced the program for its 2013 conference, to be held in Christchurch from 23-24 June.
This year’s conference will focus on the theme ‘The future is in your hands’ and will include a trade exhibition, a conference dinner and industry awards. The conference will also coincide with the presentation...
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Tuesday, 16 April 2013
If:book Australia has asked 12 writers to participate in its ‘N00bz challenge’ and digital publisher Editia will publish the writers’ experiences as a collection of essays.
The organisation has asked writers to become a N00b—slang for ‘newbie’ or novice—by stepping outside their comfort zone to try a new professional experience, and then write about it.
The writers include: Romy Ash, Carmel Bird,...
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Tuesday, 16 April 2013
The winners of the 2012 Australian Shadows Awards have been announced.
Kirstyn McDermott won the novel category for Perfections (Xoum) and Kaaron Warren won the long fiction category for ‘Sky’ from her collection Through Splintered Walls (Twelfth Planet Press). Through Splintered Walls also won the award for best collection.
Martin Livings won the short story...
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Monday, 15 April 2013
The winners in each category of the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards (QLA) will receive a cash prize of $5000, up from $1000 in 2012, thanks to support from new sponsors this year.
Entries are now open for the 2013 awards, which will include 11 awards categories, down from 15 in 2012. This...
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Monday, 15 April 2013
Online bookseller Bookworld has launched a next-day delivery offer, guaranteeing next-day delivery for orders for books that are in stock in its Melbourne warehouse to all Australian capital cities.
The former Borders online business said in a statement on 3 April that the new shipping option ‘makes Bookworld the fastest and...
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Monday, 15 April 2013
Hinkler Books has announced an agreement with Ripley Entertainment to handle all sales, distribution and fulfillment of Ripley’s titles in Australia and New Zealand, effective from 4 April.
Ripley’s titles were previously distributed by Ice Water Press, which was placed into receivership in February.
Hinkler Books managing director Nadika Garber said in a...
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Monday, 15 April 2013
When a family-owned furniture firm in New York explodes into flames in the middle of the night, destroying a museum containing priceless antiques along with it, a dark secret from the family’s past is exposed in the ashes, which threatens the lives of sisters Kate and Hannah Connelly. Mary Higgins Clark’s Daddy’s Gone...
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Friday, 12 April 2013
The 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF) program has been launched and is now available on the website. Tickets went on sale on Saturday 13 April, and the program was published as a liftout in the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 April, and is available in bookshops, libraries and other venues.
International authors attending this year’s festival,...
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Thursday, 11 April 2013
The shortlists for this year’s New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted titles for the book-related categories are:
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000) and nominees for the People’s Choice Award
The Voyage (Murray Bail, Text)
The Daughters of Mars (Thomas...
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Thursday, 11 April 2013
The longlists for this year’s Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards have been announced—the first time in the history of the awards that the judges have revealed the longlisted titles.
The longlisted titles for the $30,000 Kibble Literary Award, which recognises the work of an established Australian female writer, are:
Questions...
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Thursday, 11 April 2013
Australian poet Jennifer Maiden has been shortlisted for the international Griffin Poetry Prize for her collection Liquid Nitrogen (Giramondo Publishing).
The Griffin Poetry Prize, which is awarded annually to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language, is Canada’s richest poetry award. You can view the International and...
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Thursday, 11 April 2013
The Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) has been contracted to manage New Zealand’s visiting international publisher program, Te Manu Ka Tau: Flying Friends (TMKT), at this year’s Auckland Writers & Readers Festival (15–19 May).
In previous years the TMKT program has been run by the New Zealand Arts Council, Creative New...
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Thursday, 11 April 2013
The Australian Catholic University (ACU) has launched a new literature prize, the ACU Prize for Literature.
The ACU said in a statement that the newly established prize ‘aims to support writers and to continue the tradition of the Catholic Church as a key patron of the arts’.
In 2013 the prize will be awarded for a...
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Wednesday, 10 April 2013
A number of Australian and New Zealand writers have been shortlisted for the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Books by Australian authors shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize are:
Floundering (Romy Ash, Text)
Mazin Grace (Dylan Coleman, UQP)
...
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Wednesday, 10 April 2013
After last year’s rocky launch, the online sales campaign Click Frenzy is back in 2013 with a number of new events.
Four Click Frenzy events are currently planned for 2013: 24-hour sales for Mother’s Day, from 7pm on 21 April; the end of financial year, from 7pm on 25 June; and Father’s...
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Wednesday, 10 April 2013
The latest round of funding for the Copyright Agency’s Creative Industries Career Fund has been announced.
Writers Zane Lovitt and Samia Khatun are two of the recipients to receive funding. Lovitt will use his grant to attend workshops and presentations at the Thrillerfest conference for writers of crime fiction running from 6-9...
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Wednesday, 10 April 2013
The ABC has launched a new educational website aimed at providing online educational material to children, teachers and parents.
The website, called Splash, is funded by the Federal Department of Broadband, Communication and Digital Economy and the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, in partnership with Education Services Australia (ESA). The site...
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Wednesday, 10 April 2013
‘Every time Australia Post raises their postage rates it makes it harder to compete against overseas book retailers’—General manager of Pages & Pages Booksellers and Australian Booksellers Association president Jon Page reflects on Australia Post’s latest price increase for prepaid parcels.
...
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Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Author and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has died, aged 85.
Jhabvala was born in Germany and lived in the UK, in India and the US. She wrote 12 novels, 23 screenplays and eight collections of short stories. Jhabvala won two Academy Awards for her adaptations of the E M Forster novels...
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Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Peter Workman, founder of New York publisher Workman Publishing Company, has died aged 74.
Workman helped to first publish The Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Russo in 1981 and through the company’s imprint Artisan, published The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller and Eric Ripert's On the Line.
...
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Tuesday, 9 April 2013
The shortlists for this year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted titles in each of the categories are:
Older Readers:
The Ink Bridge (Neil Grant, A&U)
Sea Hearts (Margo Lanagan, A&U)
...
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Tuesday, 9 April 2013
The shortlists for this year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted titles in each of the categories are:
Older Readers:
The Ink Bridge (Neil Grant, A&U)
Sea Hearts (Margo Lanagan, A&U)
...
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Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Pan Macmillan has announced that Tracey Cheetham has been appointed to the newly created role of publicity and marketing director.
Cheetham, who has already started in the new role, was previously head of publicity for Pan Macmillan. The company also announced this week that Cheetham has joined the Macmillan board of...
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Tuesday, 9 April 2013
The Copyright Agency has announced $266,300 in new funding for Reading Australia, a website designed to promote Australian literary works.
The agency said in a statement this week that the new funding, which is in addition to the project’s initial funding from the agency’s Cultural Fund in 2010, brings the Reading...
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Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Author Nadia Wheatley and illustrator Ron Brooks have been nominated by IBBY Australia as the Australian candidates for the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Awards.
The International Board of Books for Young People (IBBY) has received 60 nominations from its member sections from around the world, and will release a full list of nominees later this...
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Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Sales
Fiction—Scholastic has put a US deal in place for The Runaway Hug (Nick Bland & Freya Blackwood); and licensed Japanese rights to The Very Hungry Bear (Nick Bland). Random House has licensed Tahitian rights to The Mountain (Drusilla Modjeska).
Nonfiction—Black Inc. has sold at auction world English language rights (ex ANZ)...
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Monday, 8 April 2013
A number of Australian authors have made the longlist for the 2013 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, one of the world’s largest prizes for short story collections.
The longlisted titles by Australian authors are:
The Swarm (Andy Kissane, Puncher & Wattman)
An Unknown Sky...
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Monday, 8 April 2013
The European Commission has cleared the proposed merger of Penguin and Random House.
The commission announced its decision in a statement on 5 April, saying that ‘the transaction would not raise competition concerns’ as ‘the merged entity will continue to face several strong competitors’.
The commission said it assessed the proposed merger...
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Monday, 8 April 2013
Australia Post has increased the price of its prepaid parcels as part of a range of measures it says will help meet ‘increasing demand for straightforward and hassle-free parcel delivery solutions’.
The organisation has also launched a new range of domestic parcels that gives senders the option of selecting delivery speed,...
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Monday, 8 April 2013
New Zealand publisher Bridget William Books (BWB) has launched a new series of short digital-only books called BWB Texts.
BWB launched the new series in March with Paul Callaghan: Luminous Moments by Paul Callaghan, followed by another five titles in April, including Creeks & Kitchens: A Childhood Memoir by Maurice Gee...
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Monday, 8 April 2013
Random House has partnered with advertising agency BMF on a new book donation campaign, which involves specially designed dust jackets doubling as pre-paid envelopes.
The idea behind the campaign is that once a reader has finished reading one of the campaign’s titles, the dust jacket can be removed, turned inside out and...
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Monday, 8 April 2013
Ten years ago, Rebecca Saunders settled down with Charlie Lewis on their farm. But now, as the farm begins to fail, Rebecca wonders how the romance with her husband vanished. What can she do to change a life that has stalled? Rachael Treasure’s The Farmer's Wife (HarperCollins) is at the top of the fastest...
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Friday, 5 April 2013
HarperCollins Australia has announced that Rochelle Fernandez has been promoted to the role of commissioning editor for HarperVoyager.
Fernandez, who has already started in the role, was previously digital editor at HarperCollins. She replaces Deonie Fiford, who joined HarperVoyager in March 2012 and worked part-time in the commissioning editor role. Fiford...
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Friday, 5 April 2013
‘In the past two years we have seen a significant rise in digital sales of books, products, platforms and subscriptions ... against a backdrop of declining physical books sales. This trend, which we see accelerating in the future, has meant it is no longer viable, or critical, for us to own...
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Thursday, 4 April 2013
The Dymocks store in Karrinyup, Perth, is reopening and the store in Hunter Street, Sydney, is closing.
Dymocks Karrinyup was operating for almost 15 years before it closed in December 2012. The new store will open on 1 May under new owners James and Joanna Brown, who also own and operate the Dymocks stores in Ellenbrook,...
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Thursday, 4 April 2013
Smith’s Alternative Bookshop is being transformed into ‘a more dedicated theatre/event space’ following its recent sale, reports Canberra news website RiotACT.
RiotACT reports that new owners Jorian Gardner and Domenic Mico, who are heavily involved in Canberra’s arts scene, have decided to rebuild the bookshop with a smaller books section, and will...
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Thursday, 4 April 2013
The Books+Publishing Daily newsletter will not publish on Friday 5 April due to an internet outage. The Daily will return on Monday.
...
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Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Andrew Kelly, publisher of Wild Dog Books, reports from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair:
The weather was wet in Bologna, and the mood at this year’s book fair was subdued. As usual, there was a strong Australian contingent, with Australian publishers more buoyant than most. Sarah Foster from Walker Books observed that...
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Wednesday, 3 April 2013
The finalists for the 2013 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards have been announced. The shortlisted titles in each category are:
Picture books
A Great Cake (Tina Matthews, Walker Books)
Melu (Kyle Mewburn, Ali Teo & John O’Reilly, Scholastic)
Mister Whistler (Margaret...
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Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Tamara Seldon Truss has returned to the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) in the role of member services officer.
Seldon Truss, who previously worked in the same role in 2006 and 2007, started in the role at the beginning of March. She replaces Michelle Bansen, who left the ABA earlier this year...
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Wednesday, 3 April 2013
What Katie Ate by Sydney-based author and photographer Katie Quinn Davies (Lantern) has been nominated in two cookbook categories of the 2013 James Beard Foundation Awards in the US.
What Katie Ate is one of three finalists in the general cooking category and one of three finalists in the photography category....
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Wednesday, 3 April 2013
The shortlist for this year’s Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize has been announced.
The shortlisted titles are:
Graft (Helen Heath, Victoria University Press)
Science on Ice: Discovering the Secrets of Antarctica (Veronika Meduna, Auckland University Press)
Moa:...
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Tuesday, 2 April 2013
Melbourne-based publisher Black Inc. has relaunched its Nero imprint for commercial titles, expanding the list to include Australian-originated nonfiction titles.
The publisher has also announced that Jeanne Ryckmans has joined the Black Inc. team in the role of publisher for the Nero imprint. Ryckmans most recently worked as a consulting publisher at...
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Tuesday, 2 April 2013
A number of Australians are in the running for the 2013 Hugo Awards for science-fiction.
Australian fantasy author Tansy Rayner Roberts has been nominated for Best Fan Writer. In the running for Best Fancast is the Australian-made Galactic Suburbia Podcast, which is presented by Roberts, Twelfth Planet Press publisher Alisa Krasnostein and sci-fi critic Alex Pierce; as well...
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Tuesday, 2 April 2013
In the magical underworld of Victorian London, danger closes in on the Shadowhunters in the final instalment of the bestselling ‘Infernal Devices’ trilogy. Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare (Walker Books) is at the top of the bestsellers chart and the highest new entries chart this week. When Emily married John, the most eligible...
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Thursday, 28 March 2013
Macmillan Australia has announced that it will close Macmillan Distribution Services (MDS) by the end of March 2014.
Macmillan managing director Ross Gibb told Books+Publishing that as a result of the decision, distribution of Pan Macmillan and Macquarie titles will move to Alliance Distribution Services (ADS) as of 1 July, followed...
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Thursday, 28 March 2013
The shortlisted works for the Ditmar Awards ballot have been announced and voting has commenced.
The shortlisted works include:
Best Novel
Sea Hearts (Margo Lanagan, A&U)
Bitter Greens (Kate Forsyth, (Random House)
Suited: The Veiled Worlds 2 (Jo Anderton, Angry Robot)...
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Thursday, 28 March 2013
New Zealand publisher Gecko Press has won the Oceania category in the Bologna Prize for the Best Children’s Publisher of the Year.
The Wellington-based children’s publisher was announced as one of six prize-winners in the categories of Europe, Africa, Asia, Central and South America, North America and Oceania. As previously reported...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
A number of independent booksellers who have been selling ebooks via the Booki.sh platform have expressed their disappointment in OverDrive’s decision to discontinue retail sales from the platform.
As reported in a Books+Publishing Special Bulletin, OverDrive confirmed on 22 March that the Booki.sh platform will discontinue retail sales on 1 July. OverDrive, which...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
The owners of Australian online print bookstore Boomerang Books and ebookstore Booku have put their business up for sale.
Clayton Wehner and Steven Tein, directors of Eclipse Commerce Pty Ltd, which operates both Boomerang and Booku, have described the business as ‘an attractive acquisition prospect for a bricks-and-mortar bookstore seeking a strong...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Ebook provider Copia is currently looking to expand its local team, advertising for someone to manage the online marketing and merchandising for its Australian operations.
Copia said in a job advertisement this week that it is looking for someone to work part-time in the role of editor/merchandiser. The role will start...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
A new academy has been chosen to vote on the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs).
The academy has been reduced in size from 150 to 100 members, consisting of 50 booksellers and 50 publishers, with new members chosen to reflect the diversity of the book industry. According to a statement from Australian...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
A study commissioned by Booksellers New Zealand and produced by Victoria University’s New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation has recommended that the New Zealand government drastically reduce its tax-free threshold for online purchases, and that it collect the taxes through a ‘multilateral agreement’.
Under New Zealand’s current law,...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
The Romance Writers of America (RWA) has announced the finalists for the 2013 RITA Awards, with a number of Australian authors included in the honours.
More than 1200 books were judged in 12 categories of the RITA Awards, which recognise excellence in romance novels and novellas published in 2012. Works by Australian authors...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Argentinian illustrator and performing artist Isol is the recipient of the 2013 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the world’s richest prize for children’s and young adult literature.
Isol, who was born Marisol Misenta, was announced as this year’s recipient on 26 March in Stockholm, to coincide with the 2013 Bologna Children’s Book...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
The program for the 2013 Reading Matters conference, run by the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria (SLV), has been announced.
The conference will kick off with a welcome address from SLV CEO and state librarian Sue Roberts. Among the conference’s sessions are: ‘Is there an app for that?’ featuring Paul Callaghan,...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Sydney-based publishing services company Media Publishing has launched a new online bookstore called Talu Books.
The store, which soft-launched in August 2012 with a small number of titles, sells both print books and ebooks, and currently stocks art, health and wellbeing, photography, technical and sport titles. Among the publishers with titles available...
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013
‘Put simply, a book that has overseas impact means more than a book that has a purely local impact. This is the form of the new cringe’—Emmett Stinson argues in the Sydney Review of Books that there is a new cultural cringe in Australia, which can be observed in the way single-author...
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Tuesday, 26 March 2013
The longlist for this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award has been announced.
The longlisted titles are:
Floundering (Romy Ash, Text)
Lola Bensky (Lily Brett, Hamish Hamilton)
Street to Street (Brian Castro, Giramondo)
Questions of Travel (Michelle...
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Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Sales
Nonfiction—Black Inc. has sold Japanese translation rights to The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power (Hugh White) to Keiso Shobo.
Acquisitions
Fiction—Spinifex has acquired North American and UK rights to Town of Love (Anne Ch Ostby) in addition to the ANZ rights previously acquired for both print and ebook editions; an...
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Tuesday, 26 March 2013
New Zealand novelist and short-story writer Barbara Anderson has died, aged 86. Her novels include Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (Vintage), The House Guest (Vintage), Proud Garments (Ebury) and Girls High (Vintage). Her memoir Getting There: An Autobiography (Victoria University Press) was published in 2008.
Fergus Barrowman, publisher at Victoria University Press,...
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Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has died, aged 82.
Achebe’s novels include Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah (all Penguin). He also wrote a book of poetry, Beware Soul Brother (Heinemann), and a collection of autobiographical essays, Home...
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Monday, 25 March 2013
The Light between Oceans by M L Stedman (Vintage) has been named Indie Book of the Year at the 2013 Independent Booksellers of Australia Awards, presented at Berkelouw Bookstore in Sydney on 25 March.
Stedman also picked up the award for Best Debut Fiction. The Best Fiction award went to Toni Jordan...
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Monday, 25 March 2013
Tony Burke has been appointed as the new Federal Minister for the Arts and Gary Gray has been appointed as the new Federal Minister for Small Business.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the appointments on 25 March as part of a wider cabinet reshuffle following the resignations of several ministers in the...
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Monday, 25 March 2013
Australian and New Zealand authors and illustrators are among those who have been acknowledged on the 2013 White Ravens list for international children’s and youth literature.
The following Australian authors and illustrators feature on the 2013 list:
Terri Rose Baynton (Mr Bear Branches and the Cloud Conundrum, ABC Books)
...
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Monday, 25 March 2013
Kids can’t wait for Easter, according to this week’s fastest movers chart. The top two books are The Great Big Aussie Easter Egg Hunt by Colin Buchanan (Scholastic) and The Easter Bunny’s Helper by Anne Mangan (HarperCollins), and in fourth and fifth place are If I Were the Easter Bunny by Louise Gardner (HarperCollins)...
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Saturday, 23 March 2013
James Boyce has won the overall Tasmania Book Prize in this year’s Tasmanian Literary Prizes, presented on 22 March as part of the Ten Days on the Island festival.
Boyce won the $25,000 prize for the best book with Tasmanian content in any genre for 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the...
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Friday, 22 March 2013
Ebook distributor OverDrive has confirmed to Books+Publishing that it will discontinue ebook sales from its Booki.sh platform.
OverDrive, which acquired the local Booki.sh platform in March 2012, said today that it will close the platform on 1 July. OverDrive said is it ‘committed to honouring all customer purchases via the Booki.sh system’....
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Friday, 22 March 2013
Embiggen Books owner Warren Bonett is creating a mini guide to promote Melbourne’s bookshops, in conjunction with the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA).
Bonett, who used to work as a book designer in London, said he got the idea for A Guide to Melbourne Bookshops after hearing people ask: ‘Where have all...
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Friday, 22 March 2013
The program for the 2013 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival, to be held between 15 and 19 May, has been released.
New Zealand’s largest festival of ‘literature and ideas’ will this year feature 150 international and local guests in more than 100 events. The festival will open with its traditional gala...
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Thursday, 21 March 2013
Penguin Australia has renamed its children’s division Penguin Young Readers.
Penguin said in a statement that the name has been changed ‘to better reflect [the division’s] diverse range of print and digital work’. The division was previously known as Books for Children & Young Adults.
The name change coincides with an expansion of the division’s...
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Thursday, 21 March 2013
The winners of the inaugural Most Beautiful Books Australia and New Zealand (MBBANZ) award have been announced.
The winners are:
Anthology of New Zealand Literature (ed by Jane Stafford & Mark Williams, Auckland University Press)
A Bell is a Cup (Matt Connors, Rainoff)
...
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Thursday, 21 March 2013
The finalists for the 2012 Aurealis Awards have been announced.
Among the categories announced were:
Fantasy novel
Bitter Greens (Kate Forsyth, Vintage)
Stormdancer (Jay Kristoff, Tor UK)
Sea Hearts (Margo Lanagan, A&U)
Flame of Sevenwaters (Juliet Marillier,...
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Thursday, 21 March 2013
Griffith REVIEW founding editor Julianne Schultz, Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) CEO Louise Adler, Text publisher Michael Heyward, Lonely Planet founders Maureen and Tony Wheeler and Black Inc. owner Morry Schwartz have been included in the Australian’s Arts 2013 Top 50 list.
‘The Audience’ has topped this year’s list, which was published in...
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013
The shortlist for the inaugural Stella Prize has been announced.
The shortlisted titles are:
The Burial (Courtney Collins, A&U)
Questions of Travel (Michelle de Kretser, A&U)
The Sunlit Zone (Lisa Jacobson, Five Islands Press)
Like a...
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013
The Federal Government’s recently announced National Cultural Policy and $75.3 million boost in funding for the Australia Council has been well received by the book industry. However, details about how the funding will be used to support the literary sector remain unclear.
The majority of the funding—$60 million—will go towards ‘critical funding...
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013
The New Zealand Commerce Commission has cleared the proposed merger of Penguin and Random House.
Commerce Commission chairman Mark Berry said in a statement on 19 March that ‘the commission is satisfied that the proposed acquisition would be unlikely to substantially lessen competition in any of the relevant markets’. ‘In reaching...
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Sydney-based specialist publisher Millennium House is for sale.
Millennium House founder and managing director Gordon Cheers told Books+Publishing that he has decided to sell the business, which publishes around 20 reference books, including the world’s largest atlas, Earth Platinum, because he would like to write children’s books as well as return...
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Dymocks Children’s Charities (DCC) has launched a fundraising initiative for schools in NSW called Book Bonus.
Book Bonus is an online read-a-thon in which students raise funds through sponsorship, with half of the funds raised to be converted to Dymocks gift cards and distributed to NSW schools and the other half to go to...
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Hardie Grant Egmont (HGE) has been appointed licensee of the Transformers brand in Australia and New Zealand.
The publisher acquired the license after former licensee Ice Water Press was placed into receivership in February, and will begin publishing Transformers titles in the fourth quarter of 2013.
HGE has also purchased some of Ice...
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Sales
Fiction—Scribe has licensed Spanish rights to The Low Road (Chris Womersley).
Nonfiction—Black Inc. has sold Welcome to Your New Life (Anna Goldsworthy) to HarperCollins India (English language edition for Indian subcontinent); and Chinese translation rights to Party Time: Who Runs China and How to Linking Publishing Company, Taiwan (traditional character)....
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013
‘The development of a National Cultural Policy is a golden opportunity for the Government to not just build the infrastructure of the future but to ensure that it can deliver the highest quality Australian content possible—otherwise, we may end up with a state-of-the-art broadband network filled predominantly with porn, pirated material...
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Tuesday, 19 March 2013
BBC Worldwide has sold Lonely Planet to US-based media company NC2 Media, owned by billionaire Brad Kelley. BBC Worldwide said in a statement that it has sold the Melbourne-based publisher to NC2 Media for $75 million (£51.5 million), close to $114 million (£75 million) less than what the corporation paid for the business....
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Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Catherine McInnis has been appointed deputy editor of Melbourne-based literary journal Meanjin.
McInnis, who also works for Melbourne University Publishing in the role of digital marketing assistant, started in the deputy editor position this month, replacing Zora Sanders, who has taken over the editorship of the journal from publisher Sally Heath....
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Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Alphabet Soup, a literary magazine for primary-school aged children, has closed.
Launched in 2008, the quarterly magazine showcased children’s writing and artwork alongside that of adults, and had a subscriber base that included ‘Australian families, grandparents, teachers, school libraries and public libraries’. The magazine is in the process of contacting subscribers, who...
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Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Children’s book author and illustrator Patricia Mullins will be awarded the 2012 Dromkeen Medal at the State Library of Victoria (SLV) on 20 March.
Mullins is the author and illustrator of more than 20 children’s books, including Hattie and the Fox, written by Mem Fox, and V for Vanishing (both Scholastic). Her...
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Monday, 18 March 2013
Attendance figures at this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week were ‘pretty consistent with last year’s numbers’, reported festival director Laura Kroetsch, who said that ‘some of the sessions ran to well over 1000 people in the audience’. The event ran from 2 to 7 March.
The 10 bestselling titles at Adelaide Writers’ Week’s book...
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Monday, 18 March 2013
The shortlist for the 2013 ALS Gold Medal has been announced.
The shortlisted titles are:
Darkness on the Edge of Town (Jessie Cole, Fourth Estate)
Questions of Travel (Michelle de Kretser, A&U)
Montebello (Robert Drewe, Hamish Hamilton)
...
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Monday, 18 March 2013
A man and a boy step off a boat in a new country, where they must learn a new language and customs, and become ‘washed clean’ of their previous life—including their memories. J M Coetzee’s latest novel, The Childhood of Jesus (Text), ‘is not like any other novel you have read’, says the publisher. It’s at the top of this week’s highest new entries...
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Thursday, 14 March 2013
Local authors including Peter Carey, J M Coetzee and Anna Funder are among more than 110 members of an academy that will select the winner of the inaugural Folio Prize in the UK in 2014.
The Folio Society has been revealed as the major sponsor of the new prize, which was...
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Thursday, 14 March 2013
‘70% interesting content relevant to our followers, 20% interaction with others and 10% self-promotion’—Alaina Gougoulis explains the maths behind Text Publishing’s approach to social media in an article on the Wheeler Centre website, which also examines the question of whether or not authors and publishers should retweet compliments.
...
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Thursday, 14 March 2013
Businessman and arts patron James Strong has died in Sydney, aged 68.
Strong was the chairman of the Australia Council for the Arts (OzCo) from 2006-2012. He also served as chairman of several arts companies, including the State Library of Victoria, and was a board member of the Sydney Writers’ Festival.
In...
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Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Australian authors M L Stedman and Carrie Tiffany and New Zealand author Emily Perkins have been longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction in the UK.
The longlist for the award, which was previously known as the Orange Prize for Fiction, was announced in London on 13 March. Stedman has been...
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Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Pages & Pages Booksellers in Sydney has started selling a new ereading device this week.
The BeBook Touch is a dedicated ereader with an eInk screen and wifi access, and is priced at $179.95.
Pages & Pages originally stocked the Cumulus, an Android-based tablet, when the store launched its ReadCloud-powered ebookstore in late 2011,...
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Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Walker Books Australia is celebrating 20 years of publishing books for children in 2013.
The publisher said in a statement that it is celebrating the anniversary by launching the campaign ‘We Believe in Picture Books’. Starting this month, the campaign will centre on a new blog that will feature ‘videos, guest posts and pictures from Walker authors, illustrators, staff...
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Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Allen & Unwin, Koala Books, The Five Mile Press and Gecko Press have been nominated in the Oceania category of the inaugural Bologna Prize for the Best Children’s Publisher of the Year.
The BOP Bologna Prize has been established by the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and the Italian Publishers Association to...
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Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Copyright Licensing New Zealand (CLNZ) has referred its dispute over licensing fees for university course materials to the Copyright Tribunal.
CLNZ said in a statement that ‘a refusal by the country’s eight universities to agree a fairer annual licence fee, allowing lecturers to copy authors work for their students, has left the...
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Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Baker and loner Sage Singer befriends Josef Weber, an old man much loved by the community. One day Josef asks Sage for a favour—to kill him. Sage is shocked and refuses, but then she learns his dark secret—Josef was a Nazi SS guard. Adding to the drama, Sage’s grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. Jodi Picoult’s The...
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Sunday, 10 March 2013
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has announced that it is ‘not opposed’ to the proposed merger of Penguin and Random House.
As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the ACCC commenced an ‘informal review’ of the proposed merger on 11 January and sought comments from interested parties. The commission completed the...
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Friday, 8 March 2013
Random House has launched a digital-first romance imprint for teen readers and is currently inviting submissions.
Called Hooked, the imprint will publish stories for readers aged 15-plus that are ‘full of romance, love, lust, tension, suspense and fantastic characters’, said the publisher in a statement.
Submissions of 60,000-80,000 words are due by the end...
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Friday, 8 March 2013
Lucy Treloar has won this year’s Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award for her manuscript The Things We Tell Ourselves.
Treloar’s manuscript was selected from a shortlist of three for the award, which was announced during Adelaide Writers’ Week on 7 March. The other manuscripts shortlisted for the award were The Great...
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Thursday, 7 March 2013
Stephany Steggall has won the 2013 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship.
Writers Victoria said in a statement that Steggall will use the $10,000 fellowship to work on a biography of Australian author Thomas Keneally. Steggall has previously written biographies of Colin Thiele, Ivan Southall and Bruce Dawe.
Steggall was announced as the winner of...
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Thursday, 7 March 2013
The shortlisted titles for this year’s Australian Publishers Association (APA) Book Design Awards have been announced.
The titles shortlisted for the Children’s Cover of the Year Award are:
I Can Jump Puddles: Australian Children’s Classics (Alan Marshall, Viking), designed by Allison Colpoys
The Children of the King (Sonya Hartnett, Viking),...
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Thursday, 7 March 2013
Random House Australia has created a free iPad app that highlights 12 new-release Random House titles each month.
The Random House New Books App, which was released at the start of this month, allows users to read free samples of the featured titles and share the sample chapters on Facebook and Twitter....
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Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Random House has announced that Fiona Henderson will return to the publisher in the role of nonfiction publisher.
Henderson, who is leaving her role as head of nonfiction at HarperCollins, will start in the new role on 11 March. Henderson previously worked for Random House in the role of executive publisher, before...
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Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Scholastic Australia has announced that it has acquired children’s publisher Koala Books.
Scholastic said in a statement that the Koala Books list will be published as an imprint of Scholastic from 2 April, and Koala Books founder and managing director Gordon Jackson will join Scholastic as publisher of the imprint. A...
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Wednesday, 6 March 2013
The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) has appointed Steve Jones to the newly created position of marketing/project officer.
Jones is a former manager of Books Kinokuniya in Sydney and a consultant to the book industry.
The ABA told Books+Publishing that Jones will be responsible for promoting and developing bookshop initiatives including IndieBound...
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Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Kate Larsen has been appointed director of Writers Victoria, commencing on 13 May.
Larsen, an arts administrator, writer and poet, replaces former Writers Victoria director Roderick Poole, who left the organisation at the end of 2012.
Writers Victoria said in a statement that Larsen ‘brings extensive experience in strategic leadership, creative direction...
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Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Pantera Press CEO Alison Green, literary agent and publicist Benython Oldfield, author Emily Maguire, and author and editor Jean Bedford have joined the board of the New South Wales Writers’ Centre.
Chair of the NSW Writers’ Centre board Linda Funnell told Books+Publishing that the new board members replace former chair Susanne...
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Wednesday, 6 March 2013
‘Given the great success of the Quarterly Essay series, including most recently as an ebook, we saw a need and desire for punchy, accessible, authoritative short books about today’s key issues’—Black Inc. publisher and Quarterly Essay editor Chris Feik explains why the publisher is launching a new series of short nonfiction...
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Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Sales
Fiction—Black Inc. has sold world English language rights (ex ANZ) for The Death of Napoleon (Simon Leys) to the New York Review of Books. Stephanie Abou from Foundry Literary + Media, on behalf of Zeitgeist Media Group Agency, has sold rights for The Burial (Courtney Collins, A&U) to Einhorn Books/Putnam in North America;...
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Tuesday, 5 March 2013
HarperCollins publicity manager Kelly Fagan has been awarded the 2013 Unwin Trust UK-Australia Fellowship.
Fagan will be sponsored by the UK-based Unwin Charitable Trust to spend three months in the UK ‘researching how the changing landscape is affecting the role of marketing and publicity’.
Judges Patrick Gallagher, Lou Johnson and Cate Paterson said...
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Tuesday, 5 March 2013
Christine Farmer has joined Allen & Unwin in the role of publicity manager for Murdoch Books.
Farmer, who previously worked for HarperCollins Australia and New Zealand in the role of publicity and communications director, started in her new role with Murdoch Books at the end of February. She replaces Shannnon Blanchard,...
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Tuesday, 5 March 2013
Former Small Press Network (SPN) general manager Zoe Dattner has been appointed president of the organisation, replacing Emmett Stinson, who has stepped down from the position.
Stinson, who has been president of SPN for four years and involved in the organisation since its inception, will remain on the board.
Dattner told Books+Publishing...
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Tuesday, 5 March 2013
Black Inc. will launch a new series of ‘short books on big issues by prominent Australian writers and thinkers’ in July.
The Redbacks series will launch with Battlers & Billionaires by Federal Labor member of parliament Andrew Leigh and Why We Argue about Climate Change by Eric Knight, author of Reframe:...
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Monday, 4 March 2013
Australian bookselling chain Dymocks has announced that it will close its self-publishing platform, D Publishing, at the end of this month.
D Publishing said in a notice on its website that it will close D Publishing on 25 March. Authors are no longer able to upload new manuscripts on the D...
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Monday, 4 March 2013
For the fourth year running, historical romance author Anna Campbell has been named Favourite Australian Romance Author at the Australian Romance Readers Awards, which were announced in Brisbane on 2 March.
Campbell also won the Favourite Historical Romance award for Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed (HarperCollins), as well as three...
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Monday, 4 March 2013
Allen & Unwin has become the first Australian publisher to be included in the Richard & Judy Book Club in the UK, with Second Chances by New Zealand based author Charity Norman, published in the UK as After the Fall, selected for club’s Spring season.
A&U UK director Clare Drysdale told Books+Publishing...
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Monday, 4 March 2013
Alex Cross is in charge of tracking down three killers who are on the rampage in Washington DC. Under so much pressure, Cross doesn’t realise that an old enemy is also tracking him. James Patterson’s Alex Cross, Run (Century) is in first place on the bestsellers chart this week, followed by last week’s bestselling title The Indigo...
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Monday, 4 March 2013
Please note that, due to the public holiday next Monday in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and ACT, the Weekly Book Newsletter will be published on Thursday 14 March.
The deadline for classifieds and job advertisements is therefore 12 noon Wednesday 13 March. If you have any problems placing classifieds or jobs, please email classifieds@thorpe.com.au.
...
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Friday, 1 March 2013
The Queensland Literary Awards (QLA) will offer three fellowships this year as a result of a new funding agreement with the Queensland Government.
The Courier-Mail has reported that the Queensland Government will fund three fellowships for Queensland writers, worth $15,000 each, with an additional $17,000 for administrative costs. Professional services firm Deloitte has also signed up as...
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Friday, 1 March 2013
Allen & Unwin is celebrating 25 years of publishing books for children and young adults in 2013.
A&U children’s books director Liz Bray told Books+Publishing that the publisher will mark the anniversary with parties for its staff in Melbourne and Sydney, as well as running competitions and sharing insights into how...
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Friday, 1 March 2013
The Copyright Agency, Australian Publishers Association (APA) and Australian Society of Authors (ASA) will partner for the first time to deliver a seminar on education publishing in Sydney in March.
The Education: Information two-day seminar will be held on 14 and 15 March. The Copyright Agency said in a statement that the...
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Thursday, 28 February 2013
The 2013 Perth Writers Festival has attracted over 36,000 attendees, an increase of 5000 on last year, reports program manager Katherine Dorrington.
Dorrington told Books+Publishing that the highlights of this year’s festival, which ran from 21-24 February, were Margaret Atwood’s solo event at the Perth Concert Hall, which attracted a full house...
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Thursday, 28 February 2013
Peter Strong, owner of independent Canberra bookstore Smiths Alternative Bookshop, has sold the business.
Strong told Books+Publishing that the new owners are a Canberra-based couple, who plan to refurbish the store and increase the business’ focus on food and wine events. Strong added a wine bar to the bookstore in 2011...
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Wednesday, 27 February 2013
Penguin Australia gained overall market share in 2012 and recorded higher sales than 2011, according to chief executive officer Gabrielle Coyne.
Coyne told Books+Publishing that Penguin ‘had a strong sales performance in 2012’, ending the year with three number-one bestsellers: Bryce Courtenay’s Jack of Diamonds in fiction, Jamie Oliver’s 15-Minute Meals...
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Wednesday, 27 February 2013
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) has led a delegation of rights managers and literary agents to the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE), which ran from 20 January to 4 February, followed by a two-day ‘exploratory trip’ to Korea.
Nerrilee Weir, rights manager for Random House Australia and project leader for the trip, reports:
In an Australia...
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Wednesday, 27 February 2013
Joel Fulton has joined the recently established Victorian Book Agencies as a partner with founder Gary Angliss.
Fulton, who previously worked as a sales representative for Dennis Jones & Associates, told Books+Publishing that he officially joined the sales and distribution business as a partner on 1 February. Fulton had previously helped...
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Wednesday, 27 February 2013
Tasmania’s literary festival The Shock of the Now has released its program.
The festival, which runs from 16-17 and 22-24 March in Hobart, features a keynote address from Peter Singer and ‘The Martini Lecture’ presented by Frank Moorhouse. Among the other authors attending the festival are Michelle de Kretser, Anita Heiss, Robert...
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Wednesday, 27 February 2013
‘The YA category doesn’t really appear to exist and there’s little interest in dystopian novels or vampires’—Random House rights manager Nerrilee Weir reports on a recent ‘exploratory’ rights trip to Korea.
...
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Tuesday, 26 February 2013
Arts Victoria has announced its latest round of Arts Development grants.
In all, 56 new projects received funding as part of the grants program, which supports Victoria’s independent professional artists and arts organisations.
Several writers were among the recipients. They are:
Bonny Cassidy ($8000): for the development of the...
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Tuesday, 26 February 2013
The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards winners have been announced.
Four books won equal first place in the Charity & Fund Raising category for Australia/Pacific. The winners in this category are:
Lentil as Anything (Shanaka Fernando & Greg Hill, Ilura Press)
Haileybury Cookbook: Cooking from the Heart (Haileybury...
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Tuesday, 26 February 2013
The longlist for the 2013 ALS Gold Medal has been announced.
The longlisted titles are:
Lola Bensky (Lily Brett, Hamish Hamilton)
Darkness on the Edge of Town (Jessie Cole, Fourth Estate)
Questions of Travel (Michelle de Kretser, A&U)
...
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Tuesday, 26 February 2013
A number of books by Australian authors have been selected for the 2013 United States Board of Books for Young People (USBBY) list of Outstanding International Books for children and young adults.
The titles by Australian authors included in the list are:
A Bus Called Heaven (Bob Graham, Walker...
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Tuesday, 26 February 2013
WritingWA has announced a new cultural exchange program with the National Book Council of Singapore, which will involve Western Australian authors and illustrators attending a writers’ festival in Singapore, the publication of an anthology and a residency program in Australian and Singaporean schools.
The three-year program has been made possible through...
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Tuesday, 26 February 2013
Allen & Unwin has announced that it will publish eight novels by Alex Miller in the UK in 2013 ahead of the author’s new novel, which is due to be released in the UK in early 2014, reports the Bookseller.
The publishing program will begin in April with the release of Autumn...
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Tuesday, 26 February 2013
Online magazine the Peach has launched a new monthly book club.
The Peach Book Club launched this month with an online discussion of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (Orion) led by Peach writer and community editor Marisa Siegel. Each monthly discussion will be run like an online forum in which readers can leave...
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Monday, 25 February 2013
UK illustrator Barbara Firth has died, aged 84.
Walker Books editor at large David Lloyd writes:
‘Barbara Firth was an illustrator of children’s books of great sensitivity, insight, humour and imagination. Her best-known works were probably the five “Little Bear” books, written by Martin Waddell, of which the first, Can’t You Sleep,...
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Monday, 25 February 2013
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) raised a total of $769,000 and delivered more than 18,000 books to over 180 remote communities in 2012.
As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the ILF had raised $515,000 as of October 2012 following Indigenous Literacy Day (ILD) in September. The foundation said in its newsletter that...
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Monday, 25 February 2013
The Small Press Network (SPN) has announced the details of its first ‘Publishing Insider’ roadshow event in Sydney.
The event, which explores the topic ‘Why print?’, will feature three Sydney publishers discussing the print medium and making predictions on the future of the form. It will also consider the question: ‘how long...
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Monday, 25 February 2013
Creative Clunes, the organisation behind the annual Clunes Booktown Festival in regional Victoria, has announced that it is launching a year-round program of writers’ talks.
The Sunday Selection program will be held on two Sundays per month, commencing this Sunday 3 March and finishing on Sunday 1 December. The first speakers to...
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Monday, 25 February 2013
Alchemist Sydney Sage is struggling to draw the line between her teachings and the urges of her heart. Then she meets the rebellious Marcus Finch, who is on the run from the Alchemists. The Indigo Spell (Razorbill) is the third book in Richelle Mead’s ‘Bloodlines’ series, a spin-off of the ‘Vampire Academy’ series. The...
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Friday, 22 February 2013
Your Bookshop, a chain of independent bookshops in Sydney, will open its fifth store in April.
Your Bookshop co-owner Bonnie Serov told Books+Publishing that the new store will be located in the Westpoint Shopping Centre in Blacktown in the north west of Sydney, and is expected to open in mid-April. Serov said the...
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Friday, 22 February 2013
Random House has revealed its 20 bestselling Vintage Classics books for 2012.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is at the top of the list, which incorporates Vintage Classics and Vintage Children’s Classics. The only Australian title to make the top 20 is Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang.
The top...
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Thursday, 21 February 2013
The longlist for the inaugural Stella Prize has been announced.
The longlisted titles are:
Floundering (Romy Ash, Text)
Mazin’ Grace (Dylan Coleman, UQP)
The Burial (Courtney Collins, A&U)
The People Smuggler (Robin de Crespigny, Penguin)
...
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Thursday, 21 February 2013
In the US, three independent bookstores have filed a class action complaint against Amazon and the big six publishers that centres on the use of digital rights management (DRM) to lock consumers into reading ebooks on an Amazon Kindle, reports the Huffington Post.
The class action complaint was filed in New York...
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Thursday, 21 February 2013
Simon & Schuster Australia’s net sales were up by 15% in 2012 compared to the year before, reports managing director Lou Johnson.
Johnson told Books+Publishing that sales of print books were ‘around even’ with the year before and that S&S was ‘very pleased’ with this result, which reflects the publisher’s ‘creativity and...
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Wednesday, 20 February 2013
Online gambling website sportsbet.com.au has launched a betting market on the title of the new James Bond novel, which is being written by William Boyd and will be published by Jonathan Cape on 26 September.
The bookmaker currently has A Kiss for a Kill as the favourite title at $7, followed by...
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Wednesday, 20 February 2013
Shearer’s Bookshop in Leichhardt, Sydney, is moving to a temporary location on 31 March as the Norton Street Palace Cinema is undergoing substantial renovations.
The independent bookshop, which is located under the cinema at 99 Norton Street, will move 850 metres to the Marketplace Leichhardt shopping centre on the corner of Marion and...
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Wednesday, 20 February 2013
Kate Eltham, CEO of the Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF), and Michelle Broun, CEO of Magabala Books, are among 23 arts managers who have been selected to participate in the Australia Council for the Arts 2013 Emerging Leaders Development Program.
The program, which is now in its third year, aims to ‘support...
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Wednesday, 20 February 2013
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has announced the establishment of a licensing program to manage online sales of digitised works originally published in print journals.
The DigiJournals program, a joint initiative of the ASA and the Copyright Agency, offers members the opportunity to have their works scanned, indexed and made...
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Wednesday, 20 February 2013
Education New Zealand (ENZ) has announced that it will fund an export development program for educational publishers in 2013 through the Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ).
The New Zealand government agency, which is responsible for marketing New Zealand’s education industry overseas, has committed NZ$184,500 (A$150,845) to the program, which is designed to measure and...
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Wednesday, 20 February 2013
‘Chick lit, rom com, women’s fiction; whatever you want to call it—these are the books that get us out of bed every day and keep us up late at night’—the team behind Simon & Schuster Australia’s new online community The Sweet Escape describe the type of books that will feature on...
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Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Collins Booksellers and ABC Centre in Melbourne’s eastern suburb of Croydon is up for sale.
The store, which was established in August 1994, has been managed by owner Mark Elliott for its 19 years of operation. In 2009, the store moved into new premises in Main Street, Croydon, and added an ABC Centre. The business currently...
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Tuesday, 19 February 2013
The shortlist for the 2012 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets has been announced. The nine poems shortlisted are:
‘The Ether Comes’ (Dusk Dundler)
‘Augury?’ (Luke Fischer)
‘The Watchmaker’s Wrath’ (Myles Gough)
...
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Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) and Harlequin Escape are the latest local publishers to make electronic advance reading copies of their books available through NetGalley.
The US-based NetGalley allows registered readers, including booksellers, librarians and reviewers, to access digital proofs of pre-publication titles from publishers in Australia, the US, the UK and...
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Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Sales
Nonfiction—Austlit has sold Tay Bridge Disaster: The People’s Story (Robin Lumley) to the History Press in the UK in conjunction with the Abner Stein Agency.
Children’s—Scholastic has licensed US rights to Good Night, Sleep Tight (Mem Fox & Judy Horacek); and German language rights to Melu (Kyle Mewburn, illus by...
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Monday, 18 February 2013
Australian children’s publisher Ice Water Press has been placed into receivership and is no longer trading.
Insolvency recovery firm Grant Thornton was appointed as the receiver for the company on 24 January and is now managing the company’s assets.
Ice Water Press managing director Jane Curtain confirmed to Books+Publishing that 12 employees finished in their...
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Monday, 18 February 2013
The finalists for the 2013 Tasmanian Literary Prizes have been announced.
The shortlisted titles in each of the categories are:
Tasmania Book Prize ($25,000) for the best book with Tasmanian content
1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia (James Boyce, Black Inc.)
...
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Monday, 18 February 2013
Napkins bearing 300-word micro stories are currently available at Riverbend Books & Teahouse, along with several other bookstores and cafes around Brisbane, as part of a flash fiction napkin project.
Organiser and QUT humantities graduate Sue Wright said she was inspired to create the Tiny Owl napkin story project after seeing paper napkins covered...
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Monday, 18 February 2013
Big Nate’s sloppiness is getting out of control and has gotten his best friend into trouble. Will Big Nate clean up his act or flip out? Young readers are clearly enjoying Big Nate Flips Out (Lincoln Peirce, HarperCollins), which is at the top of the highest new entries chart this week. On top...
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Friday, 15 February 2013
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has completed its review of the proposed merger of Penguin and Random House, clearing the merger of the two publishers ‘unconditionally’.
Thomas Rabe, chairman and CEO of Random House parent company Bertelsmann, said in a statement on 14 February that both publishers ‘are very...
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Friday, 15 February 2013
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has launched a new service offering ebook conversions and direct sales through its website.
ASA executive director Angelo Loukakis told Books+Publishing that the Authors Unlimited project was conceived after an ASA survey two years ago found that over a thousand of its members had backlist titles...
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Friday, 15 February 2013
Simon & Schuster Australia has launched a new online community for readers of commercial women’s fiction, called The Sweet Escape.
The website, which officially launched on 14 February to coincide with Valentine’s Day, features information about international and Australian S&S books, as well as lifestyle, beauty and travel guides with contributions...
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Thursday, 14 February 2013
Reading Time, the quarterly journal produced by the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA), is unlikely to continue in its printed form in 2014, the organisation has confirmed.
The decision was made at the CBCA’s annual general meeting in November 2012. The CBCA Victorian Branch reported in its newsletter that ‘Reading Time...
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Thursday, 14 February 2013
Publicist and literary agent Benython Oldfield from Zeitgeist Media Group has been appointed as festival publicist for the 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF).
SWF said in a statement that Oldfield started in the role at the beginning of February. Oldfield has close to 20 years’ experience in media and publishing, and...
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Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Ebooks sales accounted for 18% of overall sales at Hachette Australia in 2012, compared to 12% in 2011.
Hachette Australia managing director Matt Richell told Books+Publishing that ‘as with many other Australian publishers, it was a challenging year for Hachette Australia in terms of print sales in 2012’, although ebook sales...
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Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Australia’s inaugural children’s laureates Alison Lester and Boori Monty Pryor will attend the first international children’s laureate summit at this year's Bologna Children’s Book Fair.
The event, to be held on 25 March, will be hosted by Sweden’s first children’s laureate Johan Unenge, with Ireland’s current children’s laureate Niamh Sharkey and former laureate...
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Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Christchurch writer, book judge and former librarian Bill Nagelkerke has won the 2013 Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal and Lecture Award.
The award recognises Nagelkerke’s contribution to New Zealand writing for children and young adults during his time as children’s librarian at the Christchurch Children’s Library, and as an author and children’s...
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Wednesday, 13 February 2013
‘Literary commentators often bemoan that there is not enough interest in the Australian classics. As publishers we have accepted the responsibility to bring these books back to the fore’—HarperCollins publishing director Shona Martyn announces the launch of A&R Australian Classics
...
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Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Sales
Fiction—HarperCollins has sold German translation rights to Amber (Deborah Challinor); Spanish translation rights to Destined to Feel and Destined to Fly (Indigo Bloome); Polish translation rights to Destined to Feel (Indigo Bloome); UK English language ebook rights to Fifty Bales of Hay (Rachael Treasure); and Polish translation rights to Split...
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Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Margaret Dunkle, children’s librarian, bookseller, author, reviewer and life member of the Victorian branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA), has died in Ubud, Bali, aged 91.
Virginia Lowe, committee member of CBCA Victoria (virginia@createakidsbook.com.au), writes in the CBCA News:
‘Margaret was one of the moving forces in children’s literature in...
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Tuesday, 12 February 2013
New Zealand novelists Hamish Clayton and Tanya Moir are the recipients of the 2013 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, reports Booksellers New Zealand.
Clayton and Moir will each receive NZ$20,000 (A$16,300) and spend five months in residence at the Sargeson Centre, which is adjacent to the University of Auckland.
Clayton, author of...
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Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Writing Australia has announced the shortlist for this year’s Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award.
The shortlisted manuscripts are:
The Great Divide (Rex Hunter)
In Camera Obscura (Chrissy Collins)
The Things We Tell Ourselves (Lucy Treloar).
The winner of this year’s...
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Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) Books has changed its name to Bauer Media Books, following the sale of parent company ACP Magazines to Bauer Media Group in the second half of 2012.
The publisher said in a statement this week that all ACP Books titles, including the Australian Women’s Weekly (AWW) cookbook...
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Tuesday, 12 February 2013
HarperCollins is launching a new series of Australian classics called A&R Australian Classics.
The series, which combines ‘traditional and contemporary’ literature from writers such as Miles Franklin, George Johnston, Eleanor Dark and Thomas Keneally, will launch in March with 12 titles, each priced at $14.99. The titles will also be available as...
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Tuesday, 12 February 2013
The Queensland Writers Centre (QWC) has relaunched its Writers on Rafts appeal to help raise funds for Queenslanders who have been adversely affected by Cyclone Oswald and recent flooding across the state.
Writers on Rafts was originally launched in 2011 to raise money for the Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal in...
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Monday, 11 February 2013
Darren Busuttil has replaced Ian Ashmore as managing director of Parragon Publishing Australasia.
Busuttil, who was previously sales and marketing manager for Parragon in Australia and New Zealand, was appointed to the position in November 2012. Busuttil told Books+Publishing that Ashmore was dismissed from the company in October for ‘serious financial...
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Monday, 11 February 2013
A number of booksellers across the country are gearing up for Valentine’s Day on 14 February by showcasing books that appeal to the heart, with many turning to social media to offer Valentine’s Day recommendations—and to have a bit of fun.
Shearer’s Bookshop in Sydney is running a Valentine’s Day social media...
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Monday, 11 February 2013
Diet books are doing well on the charts this week. Your Best Body by Michelle Bridges (Viking) is number one on the highest new entries chart and number two on the fastest movers chart, while I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson (Macmillan) is number two on the bestsellers chart and number three on the...
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Friday, 8 February 2013
Asialink at the University of Melbourne has announced the recipients of its 2013 Arts Residencies.
The recipients of the Arts Management residencies related to writing, and the projects they will work on, are:
Chris Gallagher, India: Gallagher will work with New Delhi-based company Teamwork to help present...
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Friday, 8 February 2013
Rolf Wilkens, managing director of the Swinburne University Bookshop in Melbourne, has joined the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) Committee of Management.
The ABA said in a statement that Wilkens replaces former committee member Jane Caton, who retired from her role as managing director of The Co-op towards the end of 2012....
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Thursday, 7 February 2013
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has launched an advisory service to help its members prepare for contract negotiations and develop a strategy to improve their contracts.
The ‘one-on-one phone consultation service’, which is provided through publishing consultant Alex Adsett, is only open to ASA members and is priced at $75 for 15 minutes,...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Chris Bowen has been appointed as the new Federal Minister for Small Business, the fourth Small Business Minister to be appointed in the role in the past 18 months.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the appointment on 2 February following the resignation of two Cabinet members. The resulting Cabinet reshuffle sees Bowen...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Nielsen BookScan’s Australian retailer panel has undergone some changes in recent months.
The panel, which supplies sales data for Nielsen BookScan’s retail book sales charts, now includes WH Smith, which joined the panel in January 2013. However, it no longer includes Fishpond after the online retailer left the panel in November 2012.
The full list of...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) has announced that Jane Caro will deliver the keynote address at this year’s ABA Conference.
ABA CEO Joel Becker told Books+Publishing that Caro will be ‘addressing how the retail environment is radically altering, and offering her finely honed perspectives on how bookselling can survive and thrive...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Applications for the Australian Publishers Association’s (APA) Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship for 2013/14 are now open, and will close on Friday 5 April 2013.
The biennial fellowship is open to Australia-based editors with ‘considerable experience of the editor’s role, working either in-house or freelance’.
The successful applicant will undertake a research project...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Melbourne bookseller Readings has opened up a pop-up bookshop at the newly established School of Life in the inner-city suburb of Collingwood.
The pop-up store, which is open on Friday evenings and on the weekend, will operate on a three-month trial basis for the duration of the school’s summer program.
Readings’ marketing...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Penguin has released a new range of classics, with each book’s cover displaying a different letter of the alphabet.
Drop Caps is a series of 26 hardback classics, each featuring on its cover a specially commissioned illustrated letter of the alphabet by US Type Directors Club member Jessica Hische. The designer...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Perth resident Robert Edeson has won the 2012 T.A.G. Hungerford Award for his unpublished manuscript Weaverfish.
Edeson received a $12,000 cash prize and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press. His manuscript was selected from 48 entries by a panel of judges that included writingWA chair Delys Bird, WA writers Susan Midalia and...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
WritingWA has launched two new literary awards to support emerging writers in regional areas of Western Australia.
The writingWA Awards, which are being offered in partnership with Curtin University and the State Library of Western Australia, consist of two annual prizes: the Curtin University Prize for Fiction and the State Library of...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
‘One of the most basic things for editors to keep in mind when planning to move into digital publishing is to actually—at least occasionally—read ebooks’—Momentum publisher Joel Naoum offers some tips on ebook editing in a recent blog post.
...
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Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Sales
Fiction—Hachette has sold Turkish language rights to Wildflower Hill (Kimberley Freeman).
Nonfiction—Hachette has sold Latvian language rights to Opening the Door of Your Heart (Ajahn Brahm); and audio rights to My Mother Warned Me About Blokes Like Me (Boris Mihailovic). Black Inc. has sold world English language rights (ex ANZ)...
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Tuesday, 5 February 2013
The Auckland Writers & Readers Festival has announced its schools program for 15-16 May.
International authors appearing at the event include US author Libba Bray, UK-based author Patrick Ness, UK science writer Ben Goldacre, Scottish-Nigerian poet and novelist Jackie Kay and Samoan fantasy author Lani Wendt Young.
Australia’s Oliver Phommavanh will...
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Tuesday, 5 February 2013
Murray St Leger has been appointed deputy chief executive of Copyright Agency and Viscopy, effective immediately.
St Leger, a former managing director of McGraw-Hill Australia, has been working as a publishing consultant in the UK since 2010. He was also previously a member of the board of the Australian Publishers Association (APA),...
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Tuesday, 5 February 2013
The Most Beautiful Books—Australia and New Zealand (MBBANZ) award program is now open for submissions, organiser Stuart Geddes announced on Twitter.
MBBANZ, which was established to ‘recognise excellence and innovation in contemporary book design and production in Australia & New Zealand’, is calling for submissions ‘from designers, publishers or printers, but also by...
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Tuesday, 5 February 2013
A memorial to celebrate the life of Roger Horton will be held at 2pm on Sunday 17 February at Scribe Publications, 18-20 Edward St, Brunswick.
Scribe’s publisher, Henry Rosenbloom, writes: ‘Roger’s loss is being felt very deeply by me and by all his workmates at Scribe. Like his many friends in the...
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Tuesday, 5 February 2013
Jan Ormerod, Australian author and illustrator, has died aged 67.
Sarah Foster, managing director and publisher of Walker Books, writes:
‘One of the first things Jan Ormerod ever said to me was “You always look at people’s shoes first—I do that too”. An odd thing to say to someone you have just met...
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Monday, 4 February 2013
The full line-up for the 2013 Reading Matters conference, run by the State Library of Victoria’s Centre for Youth Literature, has been announced.
International guests attending the YA books event, which runs from 30 May to 1 June, are US author Libba Bray (The Diviners, A&U), Gayle Forman (Just One Day, Random House) and graphic novelist Raina...
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Monday, 4 February 2013
Mary Masters has been appointed as the new general manager of the Small Press Network (SPN), replacing Zoe Dattner, who announced her decision to step down from the position in early December.
Masters, who begins in the new role on 5 February, has worked in the publishing industry for more than nine...
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Monday, 4 February 2013
Former MasterChef host Sarah Wilson’s diet book I Quit Sugar (Macmillan) is at the top of the highest new entries chart this week. After Wilson developed a weight problem and mood disorder from eating over 30 teaspoons of sugar per day, she kicked the habit and wrote this step-by-step diet and...
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Friday, 1 February 2013
A number of books by Australian and New Zealand authors are featured in the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Best Fiction for Young Adults list for 2013. They are:
Graffiti Moon (Cath Crowley, Pan Macmillan)
...
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Friday, 1 February 2013
The Wheeler Centre has released its first program for 2013, kicking off the year with its Gala Night of Storytelling based around Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.
The annual event, which will be held on Saturday 9 February at the Melbourne Town Hall, will feature 11 Australian writers each delivering...
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Thursday, 31 January 2013
Roberta Ivers has been appointed in the newly created position of managing editor at Simon & Schuster Australia.
Managing director Lou Johnson told Books+Publishing that Ivers will assist head of publishing Larissa Edwards in developing and managing the local publishing program, which relaunched at the beginning of 2012.
‘Bert is very highly...
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Wednesday, 30 January 2013
The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) and Leading Edge Books have announced that the two organisations will hold their annual conferences over the same weekend in June at the Hilton Adelaide, with a joint trade exhibition to be held on Sunday 16 June.
The ABA and Leading Edge Books said in a...
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Wednesday, 30 January 2013
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is undertaking an ‘informal review’ of the proposed merger of Penguin and Random House.
The ACCC is currently seeking ‘comments ... from interested parties’ about the proposed merger, which was announced by Penguin and Random House parent companies Pearson and Bertelsmann in October 2012. Interested...
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Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate) has won the 2012 Costa Book of the Year Award.
Mantel was presented with the £30,000 (A$45,147) award at a ceremony in London on 29 January, after winning the novel category of this year’s Costa Book Awards earlier this...
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Wednesday, 30 January 2013
The Sydney Review of Books, an online journal devoted to long-form literary criticism, has been launched.
The pilot site, which can be found at www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com, was launched with reviews of Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (A&U), The Burning Library by Geordie Williamson (Text) and The World Last Night by MTC...
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Wednesday, 30 January 2013
‘It’s not going to save book shops or anything but you need to be able to demonstrate to your customers that you are up to date with what’s happening in the wider world’—Mary Ryan’s Bill Concannon explains his decision to install an ebook kiosk in Mary Ryan’s Milton store.
...
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Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Roger Horton, sales manager at Scribe Publications, has died.
Scribe writes: ‘Scribe Publications is devastated to announce that our dear colleague and sales manager, Roger Horton, passed away unexpectedly over the long weekend. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with Roger’s family and loved ones.
‘We ask for your forbearance at this very...
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Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Jan Ormerod, Australian author and illustrator, has died aged 67.
Hardie Grant Egmont and Little Hare write:
‘Jan Ormerod grew up in the fifties, in a series of small towns of Western Australia, with three older sisters. As a child she drew constantly and compulsively, inspired by the beautifully drawn annuals from England....
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Tuesday, 29 January 2013
The shortlists for the 2013 Australian Independent Bookseller Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted titles in each category are:
Fiction
Nine Days (Toni Jordan, Text)
Lost Voices (Christopher Koch, Fourth Estate)
Questions of Travel (Michelle de Kretser, A&U)
...
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Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Author and former journalist Ita Buttrose has been selected as the 2013 Australian of the Year.
Buttrose, author of A Passionate Life (Viking) and A Guide to Australian Etiquette (Penguin), received the honour on 25 January at Parliament House in Canberra. Buttrose was honoured for her ‘brilliant and groundbreaking media career’ as...
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Tuesday, 29 January 2013
The American Library Association (ALA) has announced its 2013 awards for children’s and young adult literature, including the Caldecott, Newbery, Printz and Morris awards.
The winner of this year’s Caldecott Medal for a children’s picture book is This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen (Candlewick Press). The Caldecott honour books...
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Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Several Australian authors were among those recognised in this year’s Australia Day Honours.
UK-based writer and broadcaster Clive James was made an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO) for ‘distinguished service to literature through contributions to cultural and intellectual heritage, particularly as a writer and poet’. James...
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Tuesday, 29 January 2013
ABC Shops across Australia will run a promotion around ABC TV children’s program Giggle and Hoot for the month of February, the retailer has announced in a statement.
As part of ‘Giggle-cious Month’, ABC Shops will run in-store activities on Sunday 10 February, Sunday 17 February and Sunday 24 February. On these days stores will be...
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Tuesday, 29 January 2013
In the ninth ‘Captain Underpants’ book, Tippy Tinkletrousers shows up on a post-apocalyptic Earth and appears to be crushed to death by Zombie Nerds George and Harold. In the 10th book, Captain Underpants and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers (Dav Pilkey, Scholastic), readers find out whether or not Tippy survives the incident....
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Friday, 25 January 2013
Coming off the back of a relatively strong Christmas in 2011, close to 60% of booksellers surveyed in Bookseller+Publisher’s annual post-Christmas survey have reported a drop in sales this year.
Bookseller+Publisher received feedback from representatives of more than 200 bookshops around Australia, with 59% of booksellers reporting that sales were down this Christmas...
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Friday, 25 January 2013
This Christmas period has seen another drop in sales volume and value. According to Nielsen Bookscan, sales were down 4.5% in value and 2.7% in volume over the 13 weeks to 29 December 2012, compared to the same period in 2011. Adult fiction was the best-performing category, recording just a 2.2% drop in...
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Friday, 25 January 2013
Despite a generally lukewarm response to the fiction on offer from booksellers in our pre-Christmas survey, many respondents reported that fiction titles outperformed the traditional Christmas favourites of biographies and cookbooks this year.
In fiction, Bryce Courtenay’s Jack of Diamonds (Viking) held on to the number one spot, just ahead of literary favourites Bring...
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Friday, 25 January 2013
Gone are the days when the majority of Australian booksellers only sold books in-store. A large majority of booksellers who responded to our survey (82%) reported selling books online, either through their own retail website or as part of a chain that sells books online. Eighteen percent of booksellers said they...
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Friday, 25 January 2013
Almost all the publishers surveyed by Bookseller+Publisher this year have reported a ‘good’ or ‘okay’ Christmas, though only a couple (Penguin, Simon & Schuster) have reported that sales were up on last year. Several publishers reported that sales were about the same, and even more reported that sales were down. One major...
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Friday, 25 January 2013
Pan Macmillan’s digital imprint Momentum has launched a range of science-fiction, romance and erotic classics, each priced at $1.99.
There are currently seven titles in the Momentum classics range: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs in the science-fiction category; Pamela by Samuel Richardson and...
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Friday, 25 January 2013
While booksellers were generally positive about the availability of titles this year, many were disappointed to run out of copies of Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals. ‘Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals was an amazing seller. It would have been nice to have more of them,’ said Peter Baker-Williams from the Tangled Garden in Echuca, Victoria. Penguin’s...
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Friday, 25 January 2013
Much-loved Australian children’s books author and illustrator Jan Ormerod has died in the UK.
Ormerod died from a stroke on 23 January after battling cancer. Her daughter Laura announced the news via Jan’s blog.
Hardie Grant Egmont and Little Hare said in a statement today that all staff ‘were deeply saddened to...
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Friday, 25 January 2013
Booktopia will reveal the top 10 results of its poll of ‘Australia’s favourite novelists’ at midday today.
The online bookseller has been counting down the results over the past week, with authors such as Helen Garner, Kate Grenville, Matthew Reilly and Mem Fox making it into the top 20. The list can be...
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Thursday, 24 January 2013
Cassie Marsden will join Bloomsbury Australia as marketing manager for adult trade books next month.
Bloomsbury Australia managing director Louise Sherwin-Stark told Bookseller+Publisher that Marsden will begin in the role on 4 February. Marsden replaces Elizabeth Hayter, who has relocated to Singapore.
Sherwin-Stark said Marsden is ‘returning to her publishing roots’...
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Thursday, 24 January 2013
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has announced that its grants initiative for children’s book illustrators will run again this year.
In a statement on its website, the ASA said that it has secured funding from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts to run the program again in 2013....
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Wednesday, 23 January 2013
The Myer Foundation has launched two stipends valued at $50,000 each to support biography writing in Australia.
The Merlyn Myer Biography Stipend, an initiative of the Sidney Myer Fund, is open to Australian authors engaged in a major biography under commission from an Australian publisher. Commissions must be contracted on or after...
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Wednesday, 23 January 2013
The Leading Edge Books group has several new faces following the departure of general manager Simon Milne in November 2012.
In late November 2012, George Papadopoulos was appointed general manager of the Leading Edge Books group, adding to his responsibilities as general manager of Leading Edge Video and Music groups. Papadopoulos has...
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Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Please note that, due to the public holiday next Monday in lieu of Australia Day on the Saturday, the Weekly Book Newsletter will be published on Thursday 31 January.
The deadline for classifieds and job advertisements is therefore 12 noon Wednesday 30 January.
...
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Wednesday, 23 January 2013
‘The word “Bookshop” just didn’t fit comfortably with the great choice of products we now offer’—Campus retailer The Co-op explains its decision to rename the business on its blog.
...
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Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Sales
Fiction—HarperCollins has sold Polish translation rights to The Reluctant Mage (Karen Miller).
Nonfiction—HarperCollins has sold US edition and UK edition rights to Shackleton (Tim Jarvis); and Bulgarian ebook and audio rights to Before Your Kids Drive You Crazy, Read This! (Nigel Latta).
Children’s—Scholastic has licensed Canadian rights to the ‘Three Doors’ trilogy (Emily...
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Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Nikki Crowther, former manager of New Zealand Book Month, has died.
The Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) writes:
‘Nikki Crowther died on Saturday after a short illness. Nikki contributed so much to PANZ and the book trade while she lived in NZ for two years.
‘She managed the NZ Book Month promotion superbly by...
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Tuesday, 22 January 2013
José Borghino, manager of industry representation at the Australian Publishers Association (APA), has been appointed policy director of the International Publishers Association (IPA).
Beginning on 11 March and based at the IPA’s headquarters in Geneva, Borghino’s responsibilities will include ‘enriching IPA’s lobbying activities towards international organisations and NGOs, as well as consulting...
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Tuesday, 22 January 2013
The Co-op Bookshop has rebranded with the name The Co-op and a new logo.
In a blog post, the retailer said that the rebranding ‘heralds a whole new era and better reflects what we do’. ‘Back in 1958, the students who founded us just wanted a cheaper way to get textbooks. Now,...
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Tuesday, 22 January 2013
The Mary Ryan’s bookstore in Milton, Queensland, has installed an in-store kiosk that allows customers to purchase ebooks from its Booki.sh-powered ebookstore.
The kiosk, which was installed on 15 January, was made for the store by a company called Launchpad. It consists of an iPad attached to a stand that has the Mary Ryan’s...
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Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Random House Australia has appointed consultancy firm Zuni to help the company develop its digital strategy.
Random House marketing and publicity director Brett Osmond told Bookseller+Publisher that the company’s work with Zuni will involve ‘reviewing, examining and testing our current approach to digital marketing to ensure we are being as effective...
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Tuesday, 22 January 2013
The New South Wales Writers’ Centre has announced that author and former NewSouth Books publisher Jane McCredie has joined the centre in the role of executive director.
McCredie began in the role on 21 January, replacing former executive director David Ryding, who left the centre in 2012 to join the Australia Council...
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Monday, 21 January 2013
After 21 years of bookselling, Brisbane’s Coaldrake’s Bookshop has closed its doors, with its final day of trading on Sunday 20 January.
The bookstore, which is located at The Barracks in Paddington, Brisbane, announced on its Facebook page on Friday that is was closing ‘because of tough trading conditions over the last...
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Monday, 21 January 2013
Three Australian books have been included in the 2013 Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities list produced by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).
The Australian titles included in the 2013 list are:
The Invisible Hero (Elizabeth Fensham, UQP)
Whisper...
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Monday, 21 January 2013
When Robert Jordan died in 2007 before finishing the final book in his epic fantasy series ‘The Wheel of Time’, Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish the series. Sanderson expanded Jordan’s final book into three books: The Gathering Storm (2009), Towers of Midnight (2010) and the 14th and final book in the series, A...
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Friday, 18 January 2013
Zora Sanders will take over the role of editor of Melbourne-based literary journal Meanjin in March.
Current editor Sally Heath, who joined Meanjin at the start of 2011, is stepping down from the position. Heath will remain involved with Meanjin in the role of executive publisher, and will continue in her...
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Friday, 18 January 2013
A Lonely Planet Hub has opened in the Dymocks bookstore in George St, Sydney. Situated on the mezzanine level of the store, the Hub is a ‘shop-in-shop’ that carries Lonely Planet travel guides and books, as well as a selection of BBC Worldwide merchandise, books and DVDs. From April, it will also include a range...
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Thursday, 17 January 2013
The independent New Zealand bookstores that sell Kobo ebooks and devices have received strong support from their customers since introducing the products to their stores, according the Booksellers New Zealand CEO Lincoln Gould.
‘With corporate members, Whitcoulls and Paper Plus also selling Kobo products, New Zealand has really become Kobo country,’...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Penguin Books Australia will publish a limited edition set of 12 of its ‘Popular Penguins’ books with pink covers in March to help raise money for the McGrath Foundation.
The publisher said in a statement that $1 from the sale of each of the ‘Pink Popular Penguins’ will be donated to...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Hachette Australia has announced that Robert Watkins, previously marketing manager for Hachette imprints Hodder and Headline, has been appointed to the newly created role of commissioning editor for adult books.
Watkins, who left Hachette in November 2012 to take on the role of store manager at Sydney bookstore Better Read Than Dead,...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
HarperCollins Australia has announced that Michelle Bansen will join the company in the role of local sales and marketing manager for Victoria at the end of January.
HarperCollins said that Bansen, who is currently members services officer at the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA), will start in the role on 29 January,...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Random House Australia has announced that a new Dan Brown thriller will be published on 14 May.
Inferno, which will be published in hardcover at $45 and will also be available as an ebook, is a follow-up to The Lost Symbol, and sees the return of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who has...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Shaun Symonds has been promoted to general manager of Nielsen Book Australia.
Nielsen said in a statement that Symonds, who has been the head of BookScan Australia for the past seven years, will take on responsibility for the BookScan and BookData businesses.
Symonds’ promotion follows the departure in December 2012 of Rae Smyth, who...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Independent Sydney bookstore Sunset Books and ABC Centre will close by the end of February.
Owner Greg Field told Bookseller+Publisher that, with the ‘retail model under pressure’, he has made the decision to close the store. ‘As much joy as bookselling has brought me, it’s getting harder to make a living as...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Chapter Two Books, a secondhand bookstore located in Stirling in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia, is up for sale.
Owner Nick Patrick told Bookseller+Publisher that he and his partner Kate Treloar have run the shop for five years, but are selling the business to work closer to home in Adelaide’s CBD and to spend more time...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
‘So the list price for Dan in Oz is $45, but only A$28.40 in the US ... “Global pricing” has a way to go, clearly’—Readings’ head book buyer Martin Shaw responds on twitter to news of Dan Brown’s new novel, Inferno, which will be published globally in May.
...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Sales
Fiction—Text has sold Czech, Portugese and Slovakian rights to The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion); and Mexican rights to A Love Letter From a Stray Moon (Jay Griffiths).
Children’s—Hardie Grant Egmont and Little Hare have sold Korean and Taiwanese rights to Snap! (Janet A Holmes & Daniella Germain); simplified Chinese rights to...
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Niki Aravanis, a former staff member at the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA), has died aged 45.
Robyn Huppert, on behalf of the ABA, writes:
‘It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of our friend and former ABA colleague Niki Aravanis after a prolonged illness.
‘Niki joined the ABA...
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Tuesday, 15 January 2013
New Zealand educational publisher Wendy Pye was made a Dame Companion in the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2013 New Year Honours earlier this month.
Pye, who founded Wendy Pye Publishing in 1985, was recognised for her services to business and education. Wendy Pye Publishing publishes early learning materials for...
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Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Penguin Books Australia’s Lantern imprint has a new look, thanks to a relaunched website and a new quarterly emagazine, Lantern Quarterly.
The Lantern website was relaunched in November 2012. ‘It’s been such a labour of love for the Lantern team and we feel that the new site captures the essence of...
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Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Random House Australia has acquired the rights to an ebook and print book version of Dandelion, a popular anti-bullying app for children that was created by Sydney writer and creative director Galvin Scott Davis.
Random House will publish the Dandelion ebook on 15 March, followed by a hardcover picture book on 1...
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Monday, 14 January 2013
Independent Melbourne bookstore Book Bonding will open a second store in Gisborne in regional Victoria next month.
Natasha Boyd, who owns the Book Bonding business in Niddrie in Melbourne’s north west with her husband Mark Neicho, told Bookseller+Publisher that the Gisborne store will open on 4 February, with an official opening...
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Monday, 14 January 2013
Topping the bestsellers chart this week are Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals (Jamie Oliver, Michael Joseph) in first place and The Third Wheel (Jeff Kinney, Puffin) in second. Readers continue to be drawn to film tie-in books with J R R Tolkien’s The Hobbit (HarperCollins) moving up to third place and Yann Martel’s Life...
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Friday, 11 January 2013
UK bookselling chain WH Smith has opened a dedicated children’s store in the international terminal at Melbourne Airport.
The store, which opened on 15 December, is WH Smith’s first store under its new children’s brand Zoodle. The store is 120 sqm in size, with approximately one quarter of the store dedicated...
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Thursday, 10 January 2013
Melbourne-based publisher Text Publishing has announced that it will publish books in the UK and in North America for the first time next month.
Text said in a statement that it will launch publishing programs in these markets with its popular Text Classics series. The Text Classics list will launch with six titles in the UK...
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013
The Independent Booksellers Network (IBN) in Victoria officially closed at the end of 2012, more than 30 years after the cooperative of independent booksellers was first established.
The IBN, which was formerly known as Independent Booksellers Victoria, also closed its charitable trust and announced that the proceeds of the trust, which...
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013
The Readings Foundation has announced the recipients of its 2013 round of grants. The charitable organisation, which is funded by Readings Bookshop, aims to support projects ‘that specifically target literacy outcomes for children and adults’ as well as professional development for writers.
The 2013 grant recipients are:
The Wheeler...
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013
Bookseller+Publisher is kicking off the new year with a new publication and a new name.
Bookseller+Publisher Daily, which will launch on Monday 14 January, will feature the latest local news each morning, as well as a round-up of interesting developments overseas.
The Daily newsletter is not a replacement for the Weekly Book Newsletter...
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013
The editorial team that produces Bookseller+Publisher and the Weekly Book Newsletter has undergone some changes in 2013.
Editor-in-chief Matthia Dempsey commenced maternity leave in January 2013. Her role will be filled by Andrea Hanke, who has been editor of Bookseller+Publisher since 2010.
Eloise Keating, who joined the editorial team as a journalist...
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013
The Australian Book Group (ABG) has moved its distribution to Woodslane and its sales representation will make the same move in March.
ABG said in a statement that it has moved its warehousing and customer service from the Landmark warehouse in Drouin, Victoria, to Woodslane’s facilities in Warriewood, New South Wales. Woodslane...
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013
OPUS Group has announced the sale of a number of its assets as part of a restructure that is designed to reduce the company’s debt.
In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange on 3 January, OPUS said that buildings and land in Marysborough in regional Victoria have been sold, and the pre-tax...
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013
An online-only children’s bookshop has launched in Australia.
The Kids’ Bookshop launched ‘softly’ in November 2012 and made its first sale a few days later, owner Graham Gill told Bookseller+Publisher.
Based in Victoria, the online bookshop is run by Gill, who has a background in IT, and manager Erin Wamala, who has worked...
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013
‘We are particularly focused on building direct relationships with readers’—Random House marketing and publicity director Brett Osmond explaining the publisher’s new monthly book club with radio station Smooth FM.
...
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013
Creative Minds is a six-part documentary series about Australian artists or those who have contributed to Australian cultural life. Originally screened on SBS, each program explores an artist’s life story and the influences that inform his or her work. Artists featured are Bill Henson, Geoffrey Rush, Kate Grenville, Elena Kats-Chernin, Robyn Archer...
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Tuesday, 8 January 2013
The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards finalists have been announced.
Australian and New Zealand finalists include:
Authors category
Chef: Origin: The Food of Ben Shewry by Ben Shewry (Murdoch Books).
Cuisines category
Foreign: Cooking from the Heart: A Jewish Journey Through Food by Gaye Weeden & Hayley...
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Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Random House Australia has partnered with radio station Smooth FM to launch a new monthly book club that will involve book giveaways, author interviews and an online forum.
The book club, which has been called Cathy’s Book Club after Smooth FM presenter Cathy Dinn, who will host the club, kicked off this month....
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Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Writers Victoria has announced that director Roderick Poole has left the organisation.
Poole finished in his position on 30 December 2012 after spending two-and-a-half years as director. He joined the organisation in 2010 and led the organisation through its change from the Victorian Writers’ Centre to Writers Victoria, which involved changes to the company’s logo, tagline,...
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Tuesday, 8 January 2013
The film tie-in edition of J R R Tolkien’s The Hobbit (HarperCollins) is in sixth place on the bestsellers chart this week, while another film tie-in edition, Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Canongate), is in ninth place. The top three bestsellers in the lead-up to Christmas remain at the top of the bestsellers chart, with...
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Friday, 4 January 2013
The category winners for the 2012 Costa Book Awards have been announced.
The winners in each category are:
Novel
Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel, Fourth Estate)
First novel
The Innocents (Francesca Segal, Vintage)
Biography
Dotter of her Father’s Eyes (Mary &...
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Wednesday, 19 December 2012
After what almost all agree was one of the toughest years in the trade in a long time, expectations for booksellers going into Christmas 2012 are moderate: 62% of those surveyed said that their sales to date are ‘close to expectations’, with only six percent reporting that they are doing better...
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Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Overall, sales in the 10 weeks to 8 December 2012 are down one percent in value and 5.5% in volume, compared to the pre-Christmas period last year. The average selling price is down a further six percent on last year to $18.95.
‘The top ten are doing better,’ reports Shaun Symonds from...
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Wednesday, 19 December 2012
The most common response from booksellers when asked about their bestselling titles this Christmas was just one word: Jamie. Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals (Jamie Oliver, Michael Joseph) has been at the top of the bestseller chart in Australia for several weeks, and according to Nielsen BookScan, has been responsible for a...
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Wednesday, 19 December 2012
While booksellers were generally positive about supply this year, there were, as ever, some grumbles about key titles going out of stock (in particular, Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals), slow deliveries, damages and issues with couriers.
Several booksellers observed that while supply was slow, it met with their expectations based on previous years’...
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Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Online sales ‘about the same’ for bricks-and-mortar stores
As was the case in 2011, most bricks-and-mortar bookstores surveyed reported selling print books online, either as part of a chain with a retail website that sold print books (61%) or as an independent store with its own retail website (17%). Ten percent said...
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Wednesday, 19 December 2012
The majority of publishers surveyed by Bookseller+Publisher have reported that sales are flat or down on last year, with only a couple reporting an increase in sales. With a few exceptions, almost all of the major publishers are expecting an ‘okay’ Christmas.
The majority of the publishers also believe that the Christmas...
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Wednesday, 19 December 2012
While most booksellers are expecting an okay Christmas, what this means for the bottom line is unclear. Booked at North Adelaide owner Sue Roberts expressed a common sentiment among survey respondents when she observed that ‘the dollar value of sales is up, but margin is down and expenses are generally higher...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Collins Booksellers has opened a new company-owned bookstore at the Royal North Shore Hospital in St Leonards, Sydney.
The store officially opened on 12 December to coincide with the official opening of the redeveloped hospital. The New South Wales government has spent approximately $1.13 billion on the hospital’s redevelopment.
Collins Booksellers CEO Daniel...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Ebook platform Copia has confirmed that it will provide ebooks for bookselling chains QBD and Co-op Bookshop.
Mathew Barlow, vice president of business development for Copia Interactive, told Bookseller+Publisher that the two chains have signed with Copia and will ‘soft launch’ Copia-powered ebookstores ‘soon’.
Copia will supply ebooks for the QBD and...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
The growth in the number of writers’ festivals around the country is ‘placing even more stress’ on the Australia Council for the Arts Literature Board’s promotion grants, said chair Sophie Cunningham in her final report for the year.
In announcing the successful applicants for program, promotion, publishing and Creative Australia festival...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
The new national board of management of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) met for the first time at the organisation’s 2012 annual general meeting at the end of November.
Tasmania’s representative on the board Angela Briant was also elected as CBCA national president at the meeting. She replaces Julie...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Bookworld has been working with brand consultancy Interbrand Australia on its recent branding and Christmas marketing campaigns, reports Design Week.
The design news website reports that Interbrand was asked to create a ‘compelling and engaging experience’ based around the question, ‘Have you ever wondered where the characters go when you close a...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Hachette Australia has announced that Justin Ractliffe, currently sales and marketing manager for children’s books at Random House Australia, has been appointed to the role of Hodder and Headline sales and marketing director.
Ractliffe will join Hachette on 15 January. He takes over the role from Matt Richell, who will replace Malcolm Edwards as...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
The prize money for the Miles Franklin Literary Award will increase to $60,000 in 2013, up from $50,000 this year.
The Trust Company, as trustee of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, announced the increase in a statement this week. Head of philanthropy and community at the Trust Company Simon Lewis said the...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
This issue of the Weekly Book Newsletter will be the last for 2012.
The first issue for 2013 will be published on 9 January. Any material submitted online or emailed to the Weekly Book Newsletter during the holiday period will be held for publication in the first issue next year.
The Weekly Book...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Notions Unlimited Bookshop in Chelsea, Victoria, which specialises in science-fiction, fantasy and horror books, has created a range of YouTube videos to promote the store.
The videos include a clip about the bookstore being an ‘equal opportunity employer’ by hiring a zombie bookseller, a clip that humorously describes a typical customer at the store, and a clip about...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Co-op Bookshop has acquired six outlets at Victoria University in Melbourne’s Western suburbs, which increases the chain’s total number of stores to 52 across Australia.
‘We’re delighted to take over the running of these well-established locations, and build on the key role they play in the University community,’ said Co-op Bookshop...
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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
‘We get the sense that shoppers are browsing online rather than visiting the shop. There is less spontaneous spending and less traffic. Prepared for a frantic late rush (and hoping for it too!)’—The Little Bookroom’s Leesa Lambert reflects on her store’s pre-Christmas sales in the Bookseller+Publisher Booksellers Pre-Christmas Survey. Booksellers can share their views (publicly or...
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Tuesday, 11 December 2012
An overview of Bookseller+Publisher’s reviews pages over the past year reveals some interesting statistics about the Australian publishing industry.
In total, 239 Australian and New Zealand originated titles published in 2012 were reviewed in Bookseller+Publisher, either in Bookseller+Publisher magazine or on the website www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au. Of these, 90 titles were adult fiction,...
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Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Independent Brisbane bookseller Riverbend Books has opened a temporary pop-up store in the same street as the well-known bookstore.
Riverbend owner Suzy Wilson told Bookseller+Publisher that the store, which is located on Oxford Street in Bulima, will be open until Christmas. ‘I employ a young girl in the Teahouse whose Dad owned the real estate...
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Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Several authors are featured in the 20 Most Influential Female Voices of 2012 list, published by online news site Daily Life.
The list, selected from more than 2000 nominations, includes academic and author Germaine Greer; crime writer Tara Moss; columnist and editor Anne Summers, whose books include The End of Equality: Work, Babies...
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Tuesday, 11 December 2012
As an update to last week’s Chistmas closing list, please note these additional entries and amendments.
Last day...
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Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Bookseller+Publisher is currently conducting its annual pre-Christmas survey of booksellers and publishers.
Please take a few minutes to complete the survey online.
Booksellers
If you are a bookseller, please complete the survey here.
Publishers/distributors
If you are a publisher or distributor and the appropriate person to comment on behalf of your company, please complete...
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Monday, 10 December 2012
The People Smuggler: The True Story of Ali Al Jenabi by Robin de Crespigny (Viking) has won this year’s Human Rights Literature Award.
The People Smuggler was selected from a shortlist of four books, which also included Am I Black Enough for You? by Anita Heiss (Bantam), The Boy Who Wouldn’t Die...
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Monday, 10 December 2012
Melbourne-based writer Maria Tumarkin has been awarded one of the 2013 Sidney Myer Creative Fellowships, worth $160,000 over two years.
As one of the seven Sidney Myer Creative Fellows, Tumarkin will receive a grant of $80,000 each year for two years. The grants are ‘unrestricted’ and are not tied to specific...
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Monday, 10 December 2012
Finch Publishing is celebrating its 20th birthday this year.
The Sydney-based publisher, which employs ‘three-and-a-half very hardworking people’, held a party in August to mark the occasion. ‘But more importantly,’ said founder Rex Finch, ‘as a celebratory gesture we are releasing The Bumper Book of Parenting (Ages 2-6) featuring extracts from...
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Monday, 10 December 2012
Auckland University Press is celebrating 50 years in publishing this year.
The scholarly publisher has no plans for a big party. Instead, it has launched a new website and logo and run a competition for readers to win 50 of its best releases from the past 50 years.
Auckland University Press...
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Monday, 10 December 2012
BBC Worldwide is considering ‘strategic options’ for Lonely Planet, including outside investment or a potential sale, reports the Guardian.
While the BBC declined to comment about the speculation, the Guardian reports that the organisation ‘is understood to favour pursuing the sale of a stake in the business’. The BBC Trust would...
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Monday, 10 December 2012
David Musgrave has won first place in the 2012 Newcastle Poetry Prize for his poem ‘Coastline’.
Musgrave was presented with the $12,000 award at a presentation ceremony in Newcastle in October. Musgrave has made the shortlist for the prize on a number of occasions and won first place in 2008.
Mark...
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Monday, 10 December 2012
On Christmas Eve, detective Alex Cross is at home in Washington DC decorating the tree with his family, when he receives a phone call that puts celebrations on hold: a corporate lawyer and drug dealer is holding Cross' children, his ex-wife, her new husband and a neighbour at gun point. Merry Christmas, Alex Cross...
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Friday, 7 December 2012
Australia has lodged a complaint against Amazon EU’s application for the .book internet domain, which is says restricts other entities from using the same domain and could have a ‘negative impact on competition’.
As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) released information about applications for...
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Friday, 7 December 2012
Bill Gammage has won the 2012 Australian Capital Territory Book of the Year Award for The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (A&U).
Gammage’s book was selected from a shortlist of four books for the $10,000 award. The other titles shortlisted for the award were: Good Living Street: The...
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Thursday, 6 December 2012
The Australia Council for the Arts has announced that Jill Eddington has been appointed as director of the Literature Board.
The Australia Council said in a statement that Eddington will start in the role in January. She replaces Susan Hayes, who is retiring. Hayes’ last day at the Australia Council will...
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Thursday, 6 December 2012
Clayton Wehner, co-owner of online bookstore Boomerang Books and ebookstore Booku, has joined the management committee of the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA).
The ABA said in a statement that it is ‘delighted’ to welcome Wehner to the committee, describing him as a ‘self-taught internet entrepreneur’ with ‘a wealth of skills and...
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Thursday, 6 December 2012
Bundaberg-based author and festival convener Sandy Curtis has won the 2012 Johnno Award, presented by the Queensland Writers Centre (QWC) for outstanding contributions to writing in Queensland.
Curtis has written six romance books, the most recent of which is Fatal Flaw (Clan Destine Press). She is also a creative-writing teacher and the convenor of...
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Thursday, 6 December 2012
The Small Press Network (SPN) has announced that general manager Zoe Dattner will step down from her role in January.
The SPN said in a statement that Dattner and the board ‘came to the decision that now was a good time to open up the role to a new candidate’ following...
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Thursday, 6 December 2012
Penguin Books Australia has launched a one-day seminar for aspiring writers of commercial fiction, called the Penguin School of Popular Writing.
The seminar, which will be held on 19 January at Penguin’s offices on Collins St, Melbourne, includes a mini-masterclass in writing and information on how to get published, with a...
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Thursday, 6 December 2012
NonfictioNow, a new conference on nonfiction writing, was held at RMIT University in Melbourne between 21-24 November.
Alison Barker, project manager for NonfictioNow, told Bookseller+Publisher that about 400 people attended the conference, with another 400 people attending the public evening events that ran in partnership with the Wheeler Centre and Radio National.
Keynote speakers...
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Random House Australia has announced that it will launch a digital-first imprint for Australian romance titles called Random Romance.
The publisher said in a statement that the imprint will launch with five titles in February 2013. The five titles include three novellas (One Little White Lie by Loretta Hill and Breaking...
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Murdoch Books has announced that distribution of its titles will move from Harper Entertainment Distribution Services (HEDS) to United Book Distributors (UBD) in January.
The move follows the acquisition of Murdoch Books by Allen & Unwin in October. A&U titles have been distributed by the Pearson-owned UBD since 2009.
Murdoch Books...
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Simon & Schuster Australia managing director Lou Johnson has joined the Federal Government’s Book Industry Collaboration Council (BICC).
Johnson replaces Penguin Australia CEO Gabrielle Coyne on the council and as the chair of the council’s Distribution Expert Reference Group (ERG). As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, Coyne stepped down from the roles...
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Tim Winton’s novel Cloudstreet (Penguin) has been voted by readers as the number one Australian book to read before you die, in a competition held by the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club.
The results were announced during a special show on 4 December, with regular panellists Jennifer Byrne, Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger joined...
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Readings has seen a tenfold increase in sales of the books shortlisted for the inaugural Small Press Network (SPN) Most Underrated Book Award in November, according to books division manager Martin Shaw.
As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, the four titles shortlisted for this year’s award—The Cook by Wayne Macauley (Text), The Dark Wet...
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
The Mary Ryan’s bookstore in Toowoomba, Queensland, has reverted to company ownership after operating as a franchise for five years.
Mary Ryan’s CEO Bill Concannon told Bookseller+Publisher that Mary Ryan’s took ownership of the store after its franchise agreement expired in November. The bookstore was established in 2004 and operated as...
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
The Co-op Store Awards were announced at the bookselling chain’s Store Managers Conference in November.
The following awards were presented for outstanding achievements in 2012:
RESET award for excellence in customer service: Colleen Freestone, The Co-op Bookshop Ipswich
CLASS award for excellence in merchandising:...
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Bookseller+Publisher is currently conducting its annual pre-Christmas survey of booksellers and publishers.
Please take a few minutes to complete the survey online.
Booksellers
If you are a bookseller, please complete the survey here.
Publishers/distributors
If you are a publisher and the appropriate person to comment on behalf of your company, please complete the survey here.
If you...
Read more...
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Next week’s Weekly Book Newsletter (12 December) will be the last for 2012.
The first Weekly Book Newsletter for 2013 will be 9 January 2013.
Any news or advertisements for the final Weekly Book Newsletter of the year should be sent to wbn@thorpe.com.au by 12 noon next Tuesday 11 December.
...
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Wednesday, 5 December 2012
‘Without a doubt, we are in a dogfight. Make no mistake, publishing juggernauts like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are demolishing the Australian writing and publishing industry’—Copyright Agency chair and CEO of Hardie Grant Publishing Sandy Grant speaking at the Copyright Agency AGM last week.
...
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Tuesday, 4 December 2012
The Federal Government has released an interim response to the recommendations made by its Low Value Parcel Processing Taskforce earlier this year, giving ‘in principle’ support for the recommendation to lower the current low value threshold (LVT) for collecting goods and services tax (GST) on goods purchased from overseas suppliers.
However, the...
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Tuesday, 4 December 2012
Fairfax newspapers featured a number of publishing industry professionals in its ‘Top 100’ influential and inspirational people lists in its Sydney and Melbourne magazines published in December.
In the Age supplement Melbourne Magazine, Lisa Dempster is recognised for her new position as Melbourne Writers Festival director, Sophie Cunningham for her appointment as...
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Tuesday, 4 December 2012
Affirm Press is moving to a new office this month.
The Melbourne-based publisher, currently located at 1 Jacksons Road in Mulgrave, will relocate to a converted warehouse at 28 Thistlethwaite Street in South Melbourne.
‘It’s a schmick pad that we’ll be sharing with a few other companies,’ publisher Martin Hughes told...
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Tuesday, 4 December 2012
Last day of business
...
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Tuesday, 4 December 2012
Notorious Nineteen (Hachette), Janet Evanovich’s latest mystery featuring New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, is at the top of this week’s highest new entries chart. The top four titles on the bestsellers chart remain the same this week, with The Third Wheel: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Jeff Kinney, Puffin) in first place,...
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Monday, 3 December 2012
The winners of this year’s New South Wales Premier’s Literary and History Awards were announced on 30 November at the State Library of New South Wales.
In the Premier’s Literary Awards, Kim Scott won Book of the Year and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction for That Deadman Dance (Picador), taking...
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Monday, 3 December 2012
George Megalogenis has won this year’s Walkley Book Award for The Australian Moment: How We Were Made for These Times (Viking).
Megalogenis received the award during the Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism at Parliament House in Canberra on 30 November.
As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, The Australian Moment was one...
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Monday, 3 December 2012
Former ABC Radio National presenter Ramona Koval will host the Monthly Book, an online book show on the Monthly website, from early 2013.
‘Since I left the ABC just a year ago to write some new books, I’ve been overwhelmed by the many requests for news of my return to talking about...
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Monday, 3 December 2012
The Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF) is calling for submissions from creative organisations and networks to run collaborative events during the 2013 festival.
The ampers&nd project is aimed at organisations such as writers groups, small presses, student collectives, performers and artists, rather than individuals, and is designed to ‘augment the festival’s diverse program...
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Saturday, 1 December 2012
Click here to see the Weekly Book Newsletter for 5 December 2012.
...
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Friday, 30 November 2012
Booksellers located within Westfield shopping centres across the country will be among the retailers offering special deals to shoppers on Saturday 1 December as part of the Westfield ‘Super Saturday’ event.
All ABC Shops located in Westfield centres are offering a 10% discount to customers who spend $50 or more in...
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Friday, 30 November 2012
The winners of the NSW Premier’s Awards will be announced tonight at a ceremony at the State Library of NSW.
This year two Miles Franklin Literary Award winners are competing for the $40,000 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. Anna Funder’s All That I Am (Penguin) and Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance (Picador)...
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Friday, 30 November 2012
EL James has approved a Fifty Shades of Grey ‘party game’, to be released in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and the UK in December.
The game’s maker Imagination said in a statement that it would be ‘available pre-Christmas at Big W in Australia and various retail outlets in New...
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Friday, 30 November 2012
Changes to the Board of the Copyright Agency were announced at its AGM on Wednesday 28 November.
Publisher director Rodney Martin stepped down from his role, having served his maximum term on the board, while newly elected publisher director Eleanor Curtain, director and publishing director of Eleanor Curtin Publishing, joined the...
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Thursday, 29 November 2012
Jane Gleeson-White has won this year’s Waverley Library Award for Literature for her book Double Entry (A&U).
Gleeson-White was presented with the $20,000 award, known as ‘the Nib’, at an event in Sydney on 28 November. Her book was chosen from a shortlist of six titles, which also included: The People...
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Thursday, 29 November 2012
Us and Them: On the Importance of Animals, Anna Krien’s March 2012 Quarterly Essay (Black Inc.) has won the inaugural 2012 Voiceless Media Prize for print.
The award was announced on 28 November, together with the winners of the broadcast award, 7.30 reporter Sarah Dingle and producer Lesley Robinson, for their report...
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Thursday, 29 November 2012
Wayne Strudwick and Craig Simpson are joint winners of the first prize in the inaugural Voiceless Writing Prize.
Strudwick and Simpson will split the $15,000 prize, which was announced on the 28 November. Strudwick won for ‘Caged’, which ‘tells of the horror one boy faces when he encounters the suffering of thousands...
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Thursday, 29 November 2012
Riverbend Books and the Avid Reader, both based in Brisbane, held their annual Christmas party together on Monday night, using it to share staff knowledge on the books in their Christmas catalogue.
‘Fiona [Stager, owner of Avid Reader] and I provide wine and pizza and Hachette and Penguin were very generous...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
The sale of McGraw-Hill Education to US private equity group Apollo Global Management will include the publisher’s Australian and New Zealand operations.
A spokesperson for McGraw-Hill Education in the US confirmed this to Bookseller+Publisher, saying that ‘the sale includes all units of McGraw-Hill Education’.
As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, McGraw-Hill Cos...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
The Copyright Agency distributed ‘a record $141.6 million’ to its members in 2011/12, according to its annual report, released ahead of its AGM to be held today.
Of this, payments to authors and publishers were worth $114,618,382. The agency also paid $26,674,729 to collecting societies in Australia and overseas, and $351,340 to...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Simon & Schuster has announced that it will work with Author Solutions, the self-publishing business acquired by Penguin in July, to operate a separate publishing business called Archway Publishing.
Managing director of Simon & Schuster Australia Lou Johnson told Bookseller+Publisher that although S&S does not ‘currently have country-specific platforms, aspiring Australian...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) has announced that Tina Raye will join the foundation in the role of Indigenous program manager in January.
Raye will be based at the ILF offices in Redfern, Sydney. She replaces former program manager Debra Dank, who left the foundation in July to take up a...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Island magazine has secured $60,000 funding for 2013 from Arts Tasmania.
Editor Dale Campisi told Bookseller+Publisher that the publication ‘will survive to see another year as we have secured funding for our 2013 artistic program ... for projects beginning 1 January 2013’.
As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, Arts Tasmania announced in 2011 that it...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
A cookbook thief posing as a restaurant worker has targeted several Melbourne bookstores in the past week, and has been spotted at the Avenue Bookstore in Elsternwick and Readings stores in Carlton and Hawthorn.
The shoplifter has been described as ‘mid-thirties male, white, some tattoos, short dark hair, stocky build, about 5’6,...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Specialist online and bricks-and-mortar bookseller Pitstop is for sale.
The bookseller, which specialises in motoring books and media, is currently based in Perth. However, owner and general manager Peter Lyster said that as 75% of the business is online and mail order, it ‘could be transferred anywhere’.
Lyster, writing in Bookseller+Publisher...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
The winners of this year’s Kids Reading Oz Choice (KROC) Awards, the children’s choice book awards for the Northern Territory, have been announced.
The winning titles are:
Picture storybooks
Very Cranky Bear (Nick Bland, Scholastic)
Fiction for younger readers
Billie B Brown: The Birthday...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
The short story ‘Shadows’ by Josephine Pennicott has won the 2012 HarperCollins First Prize in this year’s Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Awards.
Pennicott’s story ‘about obsession, grief and the power of words and perception’ won the $1000 prize, the author’s second, following her 2001 win for ‘Birthing the Demons’.
Under the...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
‘Not to have a new Bryce Courtenay novel to work on will leave a hole in my publishing life. Not to have Bryce Courtenay in my life will be to miss the presence of a very special friend.’—Penguin’s Bob Sessions reflecting on his long-standing relationship with Courtenay, who died this week.
...
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Bryce Courtenay, bestselling Australian author, has died aged 79.
Penguin Australia, on behalf of Christine Courtenay, writes:
‘It is with sadness Penguin Group (Australia) wish to advise that Bryce Courtenay AM passed away peacefully at 11:30pm on Thursday 22 November in Canberra with his wife Christine, son Adam and his beloved pets Tim,...
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Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Playwright and author Greg McGee has been awarded the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship for 2013.
The Fellowship provides the winner with a residency of at least six months in Menton, France, where Mansfield lived and wrote during the latter part of her life, and NZ$75,000 (A$59,000).
McKee, who uses the pseudonym Alix Bosco, is...
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Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Australian Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt has introduced a private member’s bill calling for an amendment to the Fair Work Act to protect casual workers, reports Inside Retailing. However, small business would be excluded from the amendment, because Bandt said there was a place for casual labour in the workforce. ‘The...
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Tuesday, 27 November 2012
The seventh book in Jeff Kinney’s ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ series The Third Wheel (Puffin) has gone straight to the top of the Nielsen bestsellers chart and highest new entries chart. Kinney’s book has pushed Jamie Oliver’s latest cookbook offering Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals (Michael Joseph) down one notch from last week...
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Tuesday, 27 November 2012
The New Zealand Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement were announced on 26 November in Wellington.
Albert Wendt was awarded the prize for fiction, Sam Hunt was awarded the prize for poetry, and Greg O’Brien took out the prize for nonfiction.
Wendt, who was born in Samoa, is active in fostering literature among Pacific...
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Tuesday, 27 November 2012
The owners of the Melbourne property that houses Lonely Planet are advertising to sell the property.
Colliers International, on behalf of Trilogy Capital Group, is currently seeking expressions of interest for the four-level building, which is located in Footscray in Melbourne’s west. The building is approximately 7374 sqm in size and includes...
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Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Publishers and distributors are asked to advise the Weekly Book Newsletter of their Christmas closing dates by 5pm this Friday 30 November.
A full list will appear in the Weekly Book Newsletter on Wednesday 5 December, listing each company’s last day of business before Christmas and their first day of business in the new...
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Monday, 26 November 2012
Text has acquired ANZ rights in Janet Frame’s previously unpublished novel In the Memorial Room.
The novel by the late author ‘draws on her own experiences in Menton, France as a Katherine Mansfield Fellow’.
‘It is a wonderful social satire, a send-up of the cult of the dead author, and—in the best...
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Monday, 26 November 2012
The Australia Council for the Arts has announced the guests attending the 2013 Visiting International Publishers (VIP) Program, to be held during the Sydney Writers’ Festival in May.
The visiting international guests for 2013 are:
Frédérique Polet, editorial director, Foreign Literature, Presses de la Cite in France
...
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Monday, 26 November 2012
Online bookseller Booktopia has signed with Ingram’s CoreSource ebook platform and plans to begin selling ebooks through the platform by the end of the year.
Booktopia CEO Tony Nash told Bookseller+Publisher that Booktopia expects to switch its ebook business from Google to Ingram in the next month. He said customers who...
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Monday, 26 November 2012
Tony Birch has won this year’s Melbourne Prize for Literature Civic Choice Award for his novel Blood (UQP).
Birch was named as the recipient of the $5000 award on 23 November. Members of the public voted for the award on the Melbourne Prize website and at a public exhibition at Federation...
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Monday, 26 November 2012
The Small Press Network (SPN) plans to launch a year-long roadshow in 2013 that will involve events in each state.
SPN general manager Zoe Dattner told Bookseller+Publisher that the network is in the process of securing funding for the roadshow, which will kick off with an event in Sydney in February....
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Monday, 26 November 2012
The winners of the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) NSW Rep of the Year Awards were announced in Sydney on 23 November.
Stephanie Hoy from Random House won the metro and the overall award, while Melinda Rae from Scholastic picked up the country award.
Also nominated were:
Michelle Ashman, A&U
...
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Monday, 26 November 2012
Australian author Margo Lanagan is among the authors whose books have been selected by Publishers Weekly for its annual ‘best books’ of the year.
Lanagan’s Sea Hearts (A&U), published as The Brides of Rollrock Island in the US, was chosen in the best children’s fiction category. ‘Lanagan brings dark, wonderful depth...
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Friday, 23 November 2012
Much-loved Australian author Bryce Courtenay has died aged 79.
Courtenay died at his home in Canberra on Thursday 22 November. The bestselling author had been suffering from terminal gastric cancer.
Courtenay’s publisher Penguin issued a statement on behalf of Courtenay’s wife Christine on 23 November. Christine thanked Bryce’s family and friends ‘and all...
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Friday, 23 November 2012
Jo Chandler has won the inaugural Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing for her piece ‘Storm front’, published in her book Feeling the Heat (MUP).
Chandler has won a $7000 cash prize. Two runners-up, Ashley Hay for ‘The Aussie mozzie posse’ (Good Weekend) and Peter McAllister for ‘The evolution of...
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Thursday, 22 November 2012
The Australia Council for the Arts has awarded Indigenous writer and poet Herb Wharton the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.
The $50,000 award is presented annually to recognise ‘the achievements of eminent writers who have made outstanding and lifelong contributions to Australian literature’. In previous years the award...
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Thursday, 22 November 2012
The Leading Edge Group has told Bookseller+Publisher that it is ‘business as usual’ for the group following the announcement that it is in ‘preliminary merger discussions’ with Armidale Investment Corporation (AIK).
Leading Edge Group secretary David Mills said in a statement on 19 November that AIK is currently pursuing the merger...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Online booksellers participating in the Click Frenzy 24-hour sales event have reported record sales, despite the website’s failure.
The Click Frenzy website, which was intended to direct customers to online retail bargains, crashed soon after the sale began at 7pm AEDT on Tuesday night.
Booktopia CEO Tony Nash told Bookseller+Publisher that Booktopia...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Online bookseller Booktopia has launched a new website with a redesigned Booktopia logo.
Booktopia CEO Tony Nash told Bookseller+Publisher that Booktopia has received ‘amazing, humbling and inspiring’ feedback from customers about the new site, which went live on 15 November. ‘The site looks great, is easy to use and has actually...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Amanda Wildsmith from Hardie Grant and Anthony Pizzinga from Random House were named joint winners of Victorian Sales Rep of the Year Award at the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) Victorian branch Christmas Party last night. This is the second year in a row that Pizzinga has won the award.
Also nominated for the award were:
Maria...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
The 2012 Crime and Justice Festival was held over the weekend in its new home on Collins St, Melbourne, having previously been located at Abbottsford convent.
Festival organiser Mary Dalmau of Reader’s Feast Bookstore told Bookseller+Publisher that the standout event was Ian Rankin’s attendance—‘especially given that Mr Rankin is the international patron...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Recent changes to Facebook’s news feed algorithm could mean that messages posted by company pages will reach fewer customers.
Facebook has confirmed that changes to its ‘Edgerank’ news feed algorithm in September has reduced the reach for pages that get complaints. The company said that the change ‘will impact different pages differently depending...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Several weeks after Collins Booksellers’ flagship store, Hill of Content Bookshop in Melbourne, celebrated its 90th birthday, the Collins family and friends gathered at Melbourne’s Abbottsford convent this month to celebrate the franchise network’s 90th birthday.
To celebrate the occasion, Collins Booksellers also voted on its favourite 90 books. The top 10 was...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
The Future of Writing Symposium took place at Sydney’s Macquarie University on 13-14 November. The second day, which focussed on the future of publishing, featured several presentations by Australian publishers.
In a session on storytelling in the digital world, Momentum publisher Joel Naoum spoke about publishers who are pushing the limits of what a...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
University of New South Wales (UNSW) Press has celebrated 50 years in publishing this year.
‘Every day we publish a new book is worth a celebration,’ chief executive Kathy Bail told Bookseller+Publisher when asked about the publisher’s party plans.
The publisher celebrated the anniversary with a small party for ‘friends and colleagues’ earlier...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
The Copyright Licensing New Zealand (CLNZ) Educational Publishing Awards were announced on 15 November at a ceremony in Auckland.
The winners in each category are:
Best Book or Series in Primary Publishing
School Journal Part 4 Number 2 2011 (ed by Susan Paris, Learning Media)
Best Book or Series in...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
‘It’s not a question of clout—more of practicalities. It means that we’ll have more chance of overcoming the ANZ rights-splitting problem that I and other Australian publishers have been complaining and campaigning about for many years’—Scribe’s Henry Rosenbloom speaking about his decision to open a UK office in 2013.
...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Ian Pearce, director and floor manager of Fullers Bookshop from the mid-1950s until 1982, has died in Hobart aged 90.
...
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Tuesday, 20 November 2012
Independent Melbourne-based publisher Scribe Publications has announced that it will expand to the UK next year.
Scribe said in a statement that it will establish an office in the UK ‘in the new year’ and plans to publish between 20 and 30 books a year in the UK. The publisher’s UK print sales...
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Tuesday, 20 November 2012
New Zealand-based online retailer Fishpond has confirmed to Bookseller+Publisher that it is no longer participating in Nielsen BookScan panels in Australia and New Zealand.
Fishpond promotions manager Dean Oelofse told Bookseller+Publisher that the business has decided to withdraw from the panels as it no longer wishes to share sales data with...
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Tuesday, 20 November 2012
The winners of the 2012 Canberra’s Own Outstanding List (COOL) Awards have been announced.
The winning titles are:
Picture Storybooks: The Terrible Plop (Ursula Dubosarsky & Andrew Joyner, Viking)
Fiction Younger Readers: Tashi and the Golem (Anna Fienberg, Barbara Fienberg & Kim Gamble, A&U)...
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Tuesday, 20 November 2012
The Australia Council for the Arts has announced that CEO Kathy Keele will step down from her role at the end of the year.
The Australia Council said in a statement on 19 November that the council will now commence a search for a new CEO. Executive director of arts funding...
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Tuesday, 20 November 2012
The winners of the 2012 Kids Own Australian Literature Awards (KOALAs) have been announced.
The winning titles are:
Picture Storybooks: Fearless in Love (Colin Thompson, illus by Sarah Davis, ABC Books)
Fiction for Younger Readers: Tashi and the Golem (Anna & Barbara Fienberg, illus by Kim Gamble,...
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Monday, 19 November 2012
Kobo’s Malcolm Neil has taken on responsibility for the ebook provider’s vendor relations in the Asia Pacific region.
Neil is now Kobo director of vendor relations for the Asia Pacific, a role which includes his previous role of director of vendor relations in Australia and New Zealand. Neil told Bookseller+Publisher that Kobo...
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Friday, 16 November 2012
Amanda Lohrey is the winner of the 2012 Patrick White Literary Award.
Lohrey was presented with the award in Sydney on 16 November. This year’s award is worth $23,000, up from $18,000 in 2011.
The annual award was established by Patrick White with the proceeds of his 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature...
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Friday, 16 November 2012
Approximately 100 booksellers and publishers attended this year’s Australian Campus Booksellers (ACBA) Conference in Brisbane from 13-16 November.
ACBA president and general manager of Vic Books in Wellington, New Zealand, Juliet Blyth told Bookseller+Publisher that there was ‘a high level of positivity from the booksellers in the room about their futures’ at this...
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Friday, 16 November 2012
Reader’s Feast Bookstore, antiquarian bookseller Kay Craddock and the Melbourne Athenaeum Library have joined forces to launch a new initiative in Collins Street, Melbourne, called the Readers’ Walk.
Described as ‘an alliance between three pillars of Melbourne’s literary community’, the Readers’ Walk project will involve literary events at each of the three...
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Thursday, 15 November 2012
Dymocks will undertake ‘a new marketing approach to make books the preferred gift choice at Christmas’, according to the managing director of its new advertising agency Razor.
Razor managing director Jonathan Hopkins said his company, which has also worked with Hachette, was ‘thrilled to add such an iconic Australian brand to our...
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Thursday, 15 November 2012
The Australia Council has announced new grants of up to $40,000 ‘to support a small number of two-way creative partnerships between artists working in Australia and Asia’.
The grants will be awarded for collaborations between an Australian and Asian artist. Under the criteria, a presentation ‘can be a publication of new...
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Thursday, 15 November 2012
The State Library of Victoria will hold its 10th annual Reading Matters conference from Thursday 30 May to Saturday 1 June 2013.
The conference, which focuses on children’s and YA books and publishing, includes a student day for children aged from five to 10 and features international and local authors.
The...
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Thursday, 15 November 2012
The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) is predicting that Christmas sales in the retail sector will increase 3.9% on the same period last year.
The association predicts retail consumers will spend $41.2 billion between 14 November and 25 December, up from $39.7 billion for the same period in 2011, reports Inside Retail....
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Wednesday, 14 November 2012
‘The wasteland of publisher expectations’—Kobo’s Malcolm Neil referring to ebook prices above $15, during a session at the Small Press Network’s Independent Publishers Conference.
...
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Wednesday, 14 November 2012
The Turning Page Bookstore in the Blue Mountains, NSW, is no longer selling ebooks.
The independent bookstore launched its ebookstore in December 2011 with local platform provider Booki.sh. However, owners Annie Sharkey and Alan Crooks told Bookseller+Publisher that the 11-month trial has not proven commercially successful.
‘We were constantly deluged with offers...
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Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Leesa Lambert, owner of Melbourne children’s bookshop The Little Bookroom, has joined the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) committee of management, filling an existing vacancy.
The ABA said in a statement that Lambert’s ‘commitment to the book industry and specialist retail experience is a welcome addition to the committee’.
As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher,...
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Wednesday, 14 November 2012
The Co-op Bookshop has confirmed that it has acquired the Edith Cowan University bookshops.
‘We’re absolutely delighted to soon have a presence at Edith Cowan University and we look forward to the development of strong relationships with students and staff both on campus and beyond for many years to come,’ said...
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Wednesday, 14 November 2012
The Small Press Network, the rebranded Small Press Underground Networking Community, is already planning for the 2013 Independent Publishers Conference following a successful inaugural event in Melbourne last week.
General manager Zoe Dattner told Bookseller+Publisher that the conference will ‘absolutely’ be held next year and talks are underway with various parties interested in...
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Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Matilda’s Books in Mount Waverley, Victoria, is due to close in a few months time, after 22 years. Julie McInnes, who has owned the bookstore for five years, announced the sale of the bookshop several months ago, but in the absence of any buyers has decided to not continue the shop...
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Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Author and academic Emmett Stinson announced that he will be editor of a new format of The Journal of Publishing during the Small Press Network Independent Publishers Conference. Stinson said the journal will be peer reviewed and have some scope for industry contributions.
The Journal of Publishing, which began at Monash...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) has moved into new offices.
The publisher, which was formerly housed, along with the literary journal Meanjin, in Grattan Street, Carlton, in Melbourne, has moved ‘up the road to Argyle Place South, still in Carlton, overlooking the Piazza on Lygon Street’, marketing and publicity manager Terri King told...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Independent Distribution Solutions (IDS), a distribution arm of Christian book and music distributor CMCA, finished trading at the beginning of this year.
Former IDS director and CMCA board member John Muys confirmed to Bookseller+Publisher that the business, which was launched by CMCA in 2009, stopped trading in January.
‘We had to...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Thorpe-Bowker has officially launched the My Identifiers platform in Australia, replacing the Australian ISBN Agency.
Thorpe-Bowker general manager Gary Pengelly launched the platform at the inaugural Independent Publishers Conference in Melbourne on 9 November. The platform had been available to Australian users for two months prior to the launch.
My Identifers is...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
A spokesperson for the Click Frenzy promotion has confirmed that the Co-op Bookshop will participate in the online promotion.
As reported by Bookseller+Publisher last week, the Click Frenzy promotion is a 24-hour online-only sale, run by Power Retail and modelled on the Cyber Monday promotion in the US. Participating retailers will offer...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
A new online literary journal will be launched in early December.
The Sydney Review of Books (SRB), modeled on the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, will feature long-form literary criticism, which will appear on the website on a regular basis rather than in discrete issues. The...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
SPUNC (the Small Press Underground Networking Community) has announced it will rebrand to Small Press Network.
General manager Zoe Dattner told Bookseller+Publisher the rebrand was something the organisation had been discussing ‘for a couple of years now’.
Dattner said the original SPUNC acronym ‘was strategically important in our fledgling years to draw people’s...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Simon & Schuster has announced several staff changes.
Kate Cubitt has been promoted to sales director with ‘overall responsibility for ANZ sales strategy and strategic management of all product’ including Simon & Schuster and its ‘client publishers’, while national account manager Sharon Bryant has been promoted and ‘now has responsibility for all...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Peter Kirby has retired from the Constant Reader bookshop after 33 years.
Kirby has sold the business, located in Crows Nest, New South Wales, to store manager Jay Lansdown, who told Bookseller+Publisher he would be ‘continuing the traditions of the Constant Reader, including the popular Writers at Stanton program’.
Lansdown said he looked...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
A number of books by Australian and New Zealand authors have been longlisted for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Books by Australian authors on the longlist are:
What the Family Needed (Steven Amsterdam, Sleepers)
Estuary (Sam Bunny, Bay Owl Press)
...
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Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Penguin Australia CEO Gabrielle Coyne has stepped down from her position on the Federal Government’s Book Industry Collaborative Council (BICC).
A spokesperson for the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education told Bookseller+Publisher that Coyne, who joined the council following its establishment in June, stepped down from the role...
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Monday, 12 November 2012
Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears (A&U) has won this year’s Colin Roderick Award.
Deputy executive director of the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies at James Cook University Don Gallagher told Bookseller+Publisher that Mears’ sister Karin Pridgeon accepted the $10,000 award and the H T Priestley Medal on her behalf at a...
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Monday, 12 November 2012
The shortlist for this year’s Human Rights Literature Award has been announced.
The shortlisted titles are:
Am I Black Enough For You? (Anita Heiss, Bantam)
The Boy Who Wouldn’t Die (David Nyuol Vincent & Carol Nader, A&U)
Don’t Go Back to...
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Monday, 12 November 2012
The Perth Writers Festival (PWF) has announced the writers appearing at the festival, running from 21-24 February at the Crawley campus of the University of Western Australia.
Margaret Atwood will visit PWF, as previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher. Other international guests include Egyptian novelist and political commentator Ahdaf Soueif, English fantasy author China...
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Monday, 12 November 2012
Anne O’Brien has been appointed as festival director of Auckland Writers & Readers Festival (AWRF) beginning 1 January.
O’Brien has worked as artistic director at AWRF since December 2011 and has previously managed Wellington’s Writers & Readers Week and not-for-profit organisation Women in Film and Television.
Anne Rodda previously resigned from the position of general...
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Friday, 9 November 2012
Wayne Macauley has won the inaugural Most Underrated Book Award for his novel The Cook (Text).
The award, sponsored by Kobo, was announced at the Wheeler Centre on 8 November as part of the Small Press Network (SPUNC) Independent Publishers Conference.
Macauley, who participated earlier in the night in the debate Truth is Stranger Than...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
Alex Miller has won the 2012 Melbourne Prize for Literature, presented every three years to a Victorian author ‘whose body of published or produced work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature, as well as to cultural and intellectual life’.
Miller was presented with the $60,000 award at a special...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
The nominations for the 2013 CILIP Carnegie Medal and the 2013 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal have been announced.
Australian authors Morris Gleitzman and Margo Lanagan have been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, presented to the writer of an outstanding children’s book. Gleitzman is longlisted for After (Penguin) and Lanagan for The Brides...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
Online bookseller Bookworld has launched a ‘Bookworld Price Guarantee’ for its loyalty club members, offering to beat Amazon’s prices by 10%.
Under the promotion, which was launched on 1 November, Bookworld promises members of its Citizen loyalty program that if they ‘find a book on Amazon cheaper than the Citizen price’...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has told Bookseller+Publisher that it is ‘aware’ of the proposed merger between Penguin and Random House.
An ACCC spokesperson said that ‘if the ACCC decides a public review is required, details will be posted on the [ACCC] website’. ‘The ACCC reviews mergers and acquisitions...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
‘Global English-language rights will become more and more prevalent, as will simultaneous worldwide publishing. Where this leaves author tours, writers festivals and associated marketing, which until now has been staggered with territory-by-territory release dates, is a key problem’—former Bookseller+Publisher publisher Tim Coronel, in a speech on the future of the Australian...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
Online booksellers Booktopia and Bookworld are among approximately 100 Australian retailers that will participate in a 24-hour online-only promotion this month.
Click Frenzy is run by Power Retail and is modelled on the Cyber Monday promotion in the US. Participating retailers will offer once-off promotions for 24 hours beginning at 7pm Australian...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
Simon & Schuster Australia is celebrating its 25th anniversary next Tuesday with an ‘intimate party’ in Sydney as well as a visit from S&S UK chief executive and managing director Ian Chapman.
Simon & Schuster Australia was launched in 1987 as a division of Prentice Hall Australia, with Simon & Schuster Inc...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
Random House Australia has announced that it will be using the NetGalley platform ‘as a way of providing electronic advanced reading copies’.
The publisher’s sister companies in the US and UK also use the platform. Random House said NetGalley has more than 2000 ‘registered professional readers’ in Australia, with close to 40,000 in...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
The winners of the 2012 Young Australian’s Best Book Awards (YABBAs) have been announced.
The winning titles are:
Fiction Years 7-9: Phoenix Files: Arrival (Chris Morphew, HGE)
Fiction Older Readers: The 13-Storey Treehouse (Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton, Pan)
Fiction...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance has announced the shortlist for the Walkley Book Award.
The shortlisted titles are:
Mine-Field: The Dark Side of Australia's Resources Rush (Paul Cleary, Black Inc.)
The People Smuggler: The True Story of Ali Al Jenabi (Robin de Crespigny,...
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Thursday, 8 November 2012
Approximately 135 writers, editors and agents attended the inaugural GenreCon in Sydney over the weekend.
The conference for Australian genre writers, run by the Queensland Writers Centre, was held at Rydges Parramatta from 2-4 November.
GenreCon convenor Peter Ball told Bookseller+Publisher that the conference ‘had a really strong attendance across the board...
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Wednesday, 7 November 2012
Reader’s Feast bookshop in Melbourne has announced the program for its annual Crime and Justice Festival.
This year’s festival will run from 16 to 18 November, with events taking place at the bookstore itself, as well as at the nearby Melbourne Athenaeum Library and Collins Street Baptist Church.
The festival was previously hosted...
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Wednesday, 7 November 2012
Varuna, the Writers’ House, has announced that Jansis O’Hanlon will join the writers’ centre in the role of chief executive officer.
O’Hanlon, who will begin in the role at the end of this month, has worked in arts management for more than 15 years, and has previously chaired the board of...
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Monday, 5 November 2012
The shortlists for this year’s New South Wales Premier’s Literary and History Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted titles for book-related categories of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards are:
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000) and nominees for the People’s Choice Award
All That I Am (Anna Funder,...
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Monday, 5 November 2012
The Stella Prize has announced that Megan Quinlan has been appointed to the role of prize manager.
The Stella Prize team said in a statement that Quinlan has ‘many years of experience within the book industry’ and has previously worked as a bookseller, an editor at the Monthly and as a publicist...
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Monday, 5 November 2012
Robyn Ewing of Sydney University has been named the recipient of this year’s Lady Cutler Award for Distinguished Services to Children’s Literature.
The award, which is sponsored by Peribo and awarded by the New South Wales branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia, will be presented at a special dinner...
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Monday, 5 November 2012
The organisers of the SPUNC Independent Publishers Conference, being held in Melbourne on 8 and 9 November, have announced that Peter Donoughue will replace Thomas Minkus as keynote speaker.
US-based Minkus, vice president emergent media and English-language markets for the Frankfurt Book Fair, has had to cancel his attendance at the conference...
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Friday, 2 November 2012
Authors Kim Scott and Anita Heiss are among the state and territory finalists for the 2013 Australian of the Year Awards.
Scott is one of four finalists from Western Australia in the running for the overall Australian of the Year Award. Scott has won the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice—in 2000 for...
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Wednesday, 31 October 2012
The shortlist for the 2012 Waverley Library Award has been announced.
The shortlisted titles are:
The People Smuggler (Robin de Crespigny, Viking)
Double Entry (Jane Gleeson-White, A&U)
Sarah Thornhill (Kate Grenville, Text)
Kinglake-350 (Adrian Hyland, Text)...
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Wednesday, 31 October 2012
‘I tried for four years to get more money for publishers. At times it was like banging your head against a wall’—Susan Hayes reflects on her time as director of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts ahead of her retirement in December.
...
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Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Random House Australia and New Zealand have told booksellers that it will be ‘business as usual’ for Random House and Penguin until the companies’ plans to merge have been approved and finalised.
The publisher sent a letter to Australian and New Zealand booksellers on 30 October explaining the proposed merger of...
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Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Books in Print, TitlePage and several other data services hosted by Bowker in the US (the parent company of Thorpe-Bowker in Australia) have been disrupted by Hurricane Sandy, which has caused significant damage to the New York and New Jersey regions where Bowker is based.
The situation at Bowker remains unclear, with...
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Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Susan Hayes will retire from her position as director of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts in December.
Hayes told Bookseller+Publisher that her last day at the Australia Council will be 19 December. She said she is hoping to stay involved with the literature community and has...
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Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Robert Watkins will join independent Sydney bookstore Better Read Than Dead as store manager and buyer next month.
Watkins told Bookseller+Publisher that he finishes in his current role of marketing manager for Hachette Australia imprints Hodder & Headline on 31 October. His first day at Better Read Than Dead will be 5...
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Tuesday, 30 October 2012
The program for the 2013 Adelaide Festival, to be held between 1 and 17 March 2013, has been launched.
Next year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week will be held between 2 and 7 March. Among the international authors who will participate in the week are: Edward St Aubyn (UK), Kevin Powers (US), Tom...
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Monday, 29 October 2012
Australian authors Michelle De Kretser, Benjamin Law and Kirsty Murray have joined Indian poet Sudeep Sen, novelist and critic Chandrahas Choudhury and journalist and fiction writer Annie Zaidi on Asialink’s first Bookwallah train tour through India.
Described as a roving writers festival, the Bookwallah takes the six authors, along with a portable, pop-up...
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Monday, 29 October 2012
Pearson and Bertelsmann have announced that they will merge the Penguin and Random House businesses.
Bertelsmann said in a statement on Monday 29 October that the new business will be called Penguin Random House. Bertelsmann will own 53% of the new company and will have five representatives on the company’s board. Pearson will...
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Monday, 29 October 2012
Leading Edge Books has announced that it will close its New Zealand Books Group at the end of the year.
Leading Edge Books general manager Simon Milne said in a statement that the New Zealand business, which currently supports 19 independent bookstores, will close after Christmas. ‘We have had a wonderful...
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Monday, 29 October 2012
The Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF) has announced some of the authors and illustrators who will participate in its 2013 School Days program, to be held between 20 and 23 May 2013.
Among the authors and illustrators participating in the Primary School Days sessions are New Zealand author Brian Falkner, Sally Rippin, Jackie...
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Monday, 29 October 2012
HarperCollins parent company News Corporation has indicated it is interested in acquiring Penguin, reports the Sunday Times.
News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch is reported to have indicated that he will make a ‘substantial cash offer’ of around £1 billion (A$1.55 billion) for the Pearson-owned company. The Sunday Times...
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Friday, 26 October 2012
In the UK, Pearson has confirmed that it is discussing ‘a possible combination of Penguin and Random House’ with Bertelsmann.
Pearson said in a statement that the two publishers ‘have not reached agreement and there is no certainty that the discussions will lead to a transaction’. ‘A further announcement will be...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Apple has confirmed to Bookseller+Publisher that titles from Harlequin, HarperCollins and Hachette New Zealand are now available on the Apple iBookstore in New Zealand.
It has been widely reported today that Apple has expanded its iBookstore—including paid local content—into New Zealand and a number of Latin American countries.
As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher,...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
UK-based secondhand bookseller World of Books has launched an Australian website.
World of Books Australia officially launched on 22 October. The business sources secondhand books from charities in the UK and sells them online via the World of Books websites and other online marketplaces, including ebay and Amazon. World of Books...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
HarperCollins has announced that it will roll out a new global publishing software system in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand during the next financial year.
The new Global Product Manager system has been developed in partnership with software company Publishing Technology and is based on Publishing Technology’s Advance...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
The State Library of Victoria’s Centre for Youth Literature has announced the winners of the 2012 Gold and Silver Inky Awards.
The Gold Inky winner (for an Australian book) is Shift by Em Bailey (Hardie Grant Egmont). Bailey will receive a $2000 cash prize.
The Silver Inky winner (for an International book) is The Fault...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Kill the Morans: The Real Story of the Moran Crime Crew by Bert Wrout and Brett Quine (Five Mile Press), which was due to be released on 22 October, has been recalled in Victoria due to 'legal developments'.
A number of Melbourne booksellers told Bookseller+Publisher that they were contacted late last week...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Apple has removed Krissy Kneen’s erotic fiction novel Triptych (Text) from the iBookstore.
Kneen told Bookseller+Publisher that Text received an email from iBookstore Publisher Support informing the publisher that the book 'has been ticketed for having prohibited explicit or objectionable content'. The email included a list of prohibited explicit content.
Text's sales and marketing director Kirsty Wilson told Bookseller+Publisher that Text...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Exisle Publishing owner Benny St John Thomas has stepped down as sales and marketing director to focus on the publisher’s rights sales, taking on the role of rights director in August this year.
Announcing the move on her blog, Thomas said she was looking forward to spending more time pursuing new markets...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Melbourne’s Hill of Content Bookshop celebrated its 90th birthday on 18 October with a reception for staff, customers and friends.
The Bourke Street bookshop was established by A H Spencer in 1922 when Melbourne was going through a period of recession and gangsters such as Squizzy Taylor were known to haunt the...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
From 2013, the public will be able to vote for any New Zealand book published within the eligible timeframe for the NZ Post Book Awards people’s choice award.
Previously, the public were only permitted to vote for books that had been named finalists.
The change is among several announced by chair of...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Mary Sangster of the Children’s Bookshop Christchurch has been elected chair of the board of Booksellers NZ, replacing Hamish Wright of Wright’s Bookshop, who has completed his four-year term as chair but will remain on the board as a director. Chris Lumsden of Wanaka Paper Plus has been elected deputy chair,...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Phaidon Press has announced it has been acquired ‘from Richard Schlagman by the Leon D Black family’, but has not revealed terms of the acquisition.
Schlagman, who acquired the publisher in 1990, said owning the business ‘has been an enormous privilege’. ‘The decision for me to part with Phaidon was not...
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Wednesday, 24 October 2012
‘The main reason we wanted to try it was essentially to see what would happen—an experiment’—Momentum publisher Joel Naoum in the Sydney Morning Herald, explaining why the Pan Macmillan imprint is publishing its first serialised ebook in February.
...
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Tuesday, 23 October 2012
Online bookseller Booktopia has announced that it has added another 500sqm to its premises in Lane Cove in Sydney, bringing its office and distribution centre spaces to a combined total of 4000sqm.
Booktopia CEO Tony Nash told Bookseller+Publisher that the company has taken over the top floor of the building where...
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Tuesday, 23 October 2012
AustLit’s database BlackWords: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Writers and Storytellers celebrated its fifth birthday at the Avid Reader bookshop with author readings on 19 October. The BlackWords Symposium was also held the following day at the University of Queensland Art Museum.
BlackWords was launched in 2007 as a subset of the AustLit database...
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Monday, 22 October 2012
Leading Edge Group has announced that Leading Edge Books general manager Simon Milne is leaving the group to join HarperCollins Australia in the newly created role of marketing communications director.
Leading Edge Group said in a statement that Milne, who is also marketing and communications manager for the group, will finish in his current roles on...
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Friday, 19 October 2012
Collins Booksellers has announced that Alisa Coy has been promoted to the role of national franchise manager.
Coy will begin in the role on 29 October and will report to chief operations officer John Preston. Coy replaces Lucie Pepeyan, who finished in the role at the end of August. As previously reported...
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Friday, 19 October 2012
The longlist for the 2012 Walkley Book Award has been announced.
The longlisted titles are:
Broadcast Wars: The Money, the Ego, the Power Behind Your Remote Control (Michael Bodey, Hachette)
Mine-Field: The Dark Side of Australia’s Resource Rush (Paul Cleary, Black Inc.)
...
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Friday, 19 October 2012
The Bridport Prize, the UK writing competition open to all nationalities, has announced a shorlist.
Australian and New Zealand writers appearing on the shorlist in each category are:
Poetry shortlist
Marg Ranger, NZ
Kate Camp, NZ
Roland Leach, WA
...
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Thursday, 18 October 2012
The Stella Prize, Australia’s equivalent of the UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, will be awarded for the first time in April 2013.
Entries are now open for the $50,000 prize, which will be presented for the best work of literature by an Australian woman published in 2012. Works of fiction and nonfiction...
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Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Hilary Mantel has become the third author to win the Man Booker Prize twice, after she was announced the winner of the 2012 award for her novel Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate).
The novel, which is a sequel to her 2009 Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall, was announced as the winning...
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Wednesday, 17 October 2012
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage (A&U) has won the 2012 Victorian Prize for Literature, worth $100,000.
Gammage, who has spent the past 12 years working on the book, accepted the award from Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards dinner in Melbourne...
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Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Wilkins Farago publisher Andrew Wilkins writes:
The 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair ended on Sunday 14 October with organisers reporting 281,753 visitors over the five days of the fair, which featured 7400 exhibitors from over 100 countries. While overall attendances were up slightly by 0.6%, visits to the trade days were down by...
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Wednesday, 17 October 2012
In the US, federal judge Harold Baer has dismissed the Authors Guild lawsuit against digital repository HathiTrust, ruling that HathiTrust’s book scanning project falls within ‘fair use’ exemptions of copyright law, reports Publishers Weekly.
Baer labelled the scanning program as an ‘invaluable contribution to the progress of science and cultivation of...
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Wednesday, 17 October 2012
The Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF) has announced that Sam Twyford-Moore will take over the role of festival director from Lisa Dempster, who announced in April that she would be stepping down.
‘A writer and presenter with several festivals and events under his belt, Sam Twyford-Moore has worked for the NSW Writers’ Centre...
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Wednesday, 17 October 2012
In a two-week long coordinated promotion, readers of the Australian newspaper will be given the opportunity to download 12 HarperCollins ebooks titles for free through Kobo and Collins Booksellers.
The ‘Australian Selection’ promotion was launched on Saturday 13 October and will run until Friday 26 October. Each day—except for Sunday 14...
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Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Get Reading! project director Cheryl Akle has collaborated with website Mamamia to create a new online book show called The Book Circle.
The monthly program, which can be viewed on the Mamamia website, will feature Akle and a range of guests talking about ‘all things books and reading including a featured...
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Wednesday, 17 October 2012
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) has raised $515,000 this year to fund efforts to improve literacy levels and the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Australians living in remote areas.
ILF executive director Karen Williams told Bookseller+Publisher that before Indigenous Literacy Day (ILD) on 5 September, the foundation had raised $425,000. She...