Hazard to leave Hachette, BookPeople conference program, translators losing work to AI

Headlining this week’s news, Hachette Australia and New Zealand announced that group publishing director Fiona Hazard is leaving the role ‘to pursue other opportunities’. In other local news, BookPeople has announced the program for its 100th-anniversary conference and trade exhibition; and ISBN data has revealed that there has been a deceleration in the number of new publishing entities entering the Australian market since the start of the pandemic—but the number of new titles published annually has remained stable.

In awards news, the State Library of Queensland announced the shortlist for this year’s black&write! Writing Fellowships; and the longlists—and, as of last night, the shortlists—for the BookPeople Book of the Year awards have been announced.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the longlist for this year’s Ondaatje Prize has been revealed; and Book Brunch and the Bookseller reported that a Society of Authors survey found a quarter of illustrators and over a third of translators have lost work due to generative AI.

Category: This week’s news