Hachette withdraws police memoir; Groom appointed Writing NSW CEO; CWF 2023 program announced

Wednesday, 12 July 2023 Books+Publishing

Hachette Australia has withdrawn a memoir by retired former officer Christophe Glasl after Victoria Police raised concerns about its accuracy; Writing NSW has announced the appointment of Sophie Groom as CEO; and the Canberra Writers Festival 2023 program has been announced.

A research project investigating the role of digital media in promoting Australian women authors has received funding in the latest round of Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project grants; Wakefield Press will publish an anthology of works by First Nations writers, supported by funding from the Australia Council for the Arts; Affirm will take on sales and distribution of UK independent publishing house David Fickling Books; the Monthly has launched a new books podcast, Read This; and in awards news Hayley Scrivenor’s Dirt Town (Macmillan) has won the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for debut fiction in the UK Crime Writers’ Association 2023 Dagger Awards.

In international news, sales of books in Germany fell 1.9% in 2022 compared to the previous year; UK independent publishers are generating more than half their revenue from overseas; and in the US, book sales in the first half of the year were down 2.7% compared to the same period last year according to data from Circana BookScan.