S&S acquires Affirm, Booktopia trading again, Books+Publishing to produce 2025 ABIAs
Simon & Schuster Australia (S&S) and Affirm Press announced this week that Affirm will become part of S&S; Booktopia’s website is up and running once more, following the sale of the business and its related assets to digiDirect owner Shant Kradjian; and the Australian Publishers Association has announced Books+Publishing will produce the 2025 Australian Book Industry Awards.
In other local news, the Sydney Morning Herald reported local author Dan Moon is suing Shawline Publishing in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, claiming he is owed thousands in unpaid royalties.
Looking ahead to 2025, the State Library of Queensland has called for proposals from Australian publishers to partner with the organisation in delivering the black&write! project for 2025; while BookPeople announced its 2025 conference will take place in Brisbane/Meanjin.
In awards news this week, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Janine Williams was named the inaugural recipient of the $30,000 Lynley Dodd Children’s Writers Award; while Meg Arnold, store manager of the Booragoon/Garden City Dymocks bookstore took out the top award at the bookselling chain’s conference gala dinner; and Varuna, the National Writers’ House announced the five recipients of its 2024 First Nations fellowships.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Society of Authors has written to tech companies, demanding they have the consent of authors before using their work in the development of artificial intelligence, and Lex Croucher won the 2024 YA Book Prize for Gwen & Art Are Not in Love (Bloomsbury YA).
In (book) acquisition news this week, Allen & Unwin has acquired world rights to Corey Tutt’s children’s titles Caution! This Book Contains Deadly Reptiles (illus by Ben Williams) and Before It Was Called Science, the follow-up to The First Scientists (Hardie Grant Explore); Affirm has acquired world rights to self-help book Master Your Relationship Anxiety by Georgie Collinson; and National Library of Australia Publishing has acquired All Out! Pink Bans and Blue Collars by comics-journalist Sam Wallman.
Elsewhere in bookish news, The Conversation published a list of 50 ‘best Australian books of the 21st century’, taking a single recommendation each from 50 contributors, in answer to the much-discussed New York Times list that featured no Australian books (topping the list of recommendations was Alexis Wright, for Praiseworthy and Carpentaria, followed by Helen Garner’s How to End a Story, Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of Travel, and Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance). Also in the Conversation, Jenny Grigg wrote on the book design implications of the ‘misleading’ cover of Hannah Grace’s explicit enemies-to-lovers romance novel Icebreaker.
Meanwhile, Millie Reid, vice president of Albany Pride, has launched a petition against a call for book banning from a fringe group in the WA township; Ventura Press founder Jane Curry and author Seana Smith have started a podcast called The Publisher and the Writer and the Big Issue has launched its 20th fiction edition, featuring 14 writers selected from 808 submissions.
Category: This week’s news
