Hardie Grant staff to negotiate EBA, Cox to leave Dymocks and more

Hardie Grant staff are going to enter negotiations for an EBA with their employer. Once achieved, it will be the second union-negotiated EBA in Australian publishing history, after PRH staff’s EBA was approved last year.

Steve Cox will step down from his role as Dymocks retail division managing director after eight years in the role. Also making news this week, new stats from the ASA rates tracker show more than half of authors are paid below standard rates for appearances; the first authors have been announced for this year’s NT Writers Festival, with Miranda Tapsell, Trent Dalton and Behrouz Boochani all set to appear in the Top End; and five Australian titles have been selected for a major exhibition on nonfiction picture books, to be held during this year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

A rave review in Slate has led to a US book deal for NZ author Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book, while Jen Craig’s Stella-longlisted novella Panthers and the Museum of Fire has also sold to the US, five years after its original publication.

In awards news, Readings announced the shortlist for their seventh annual Children’s Book Prize; Magabala and the Australia Council launched a residency for First Nations writers in Broome; and Boundless festival was honoured at the 2019 Sydney Music, Art & Culture Awards.

Overseas, the full board of the Romance Writers of America has resigned due to an ongoing controversy over bias and transparency, and HarperCollins is creating a new standalone Irish publishing division.

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Category: This week’s news