Johnson wins inaugural Australian Fiction Prize, Black Friday sales up on last year, Internet Archive copyright case ends
Peter Rose, editor and CEO of the Australian Book Review, is set to step down from the role in 2025, after 23 years leading the publication.
In another change, the State Library of Queensland has announced a new agreement with UQP to publish titles from its black&write! First Nations–led writing and editing program from 2026, following a call for expressions of interest earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Black Friday saw book market sales up 4% on the same time last year, according to results from Nielsen BookData; and Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh has responded to a petition asking for Federal Parliament to introduce fixed-price laws for books in Australia.
In residencies and grants news, Jessie Tu has been awarded Creative Australia’s 2025 BR Whiting Studio Residency in Rome; Varuna announced the 2025 Affirm Press Fellowship recipients; and in Aotearoa New Zealand, Copyright Licensing New Zealand (CLNZ) announced recipients of its Contestable Fund Grants.
There were also some changes to development programs announced this week: The Australian Book Review announced a new science writing fellowship; while the Australian Society of Authors is running ‘a smaller iteration’ of its award mentorship program next year, following the end of Copyright Agency funding.
In awards news this week, author Katherine Johnson won the inaugural Australian Fiction Prize for her unpublished manuscript A Wild Heart; Michael Debenham’s Drowning for Beginners won the 2024 Ampersand Prize for children’s and YA debut fiction; and the Institute of Professional Editors announced the 2025 Rosie longlist.
Overseas, Publishers Weekly reported on the end of the Internet Archive copyright case, which followed a decision by the organisation not to pursue an appeal in the US Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, in the UK, historian Joya Chatterji won the 2024 Wolfson History Prize for Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century (Vintage); and the Publishers Association released its annual workforce survey report.
In rights news this week, University of Queensland Press sold North American and UK rights to The Nightmare Sequence, a collection of illustrated poetry by Omar Sakr and Safdar Ahmed, to Nightboat Books and the87press respectively, and world English (ex ANZ) rights to Someone Like Me: An Anthology of Nonfiction by Autistic Writers (co-edited by Clem Bastow & Jo Case) to Verve Books UK; Allen & Unwin acquired ANZ rights to Rebecca Starford’s novel The Visitor; Fremantle Australia optioned the rights to a range of works from Paul Jennings for development of a ‘deliciously frightful’ new television series; two Anh Do series—WeirDo and Wolf Girl—are being adapted to screen; digital-first publishing house Storm acquired world English language rights (ex ANZ) to seven novels by Fiona McIntosh; and Simon & Schuster acquired world rights to a memoir by paramedic Sally Gould, with the working title Frog: A Memoir of Life and Death on the Frontline.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in publishing-related writings, ArtsHub put some questions to outgoing Affirm Press publishing director Martin Hughes, and Julian Novitz wrote for the Conversation on the ‘disruption’ of book publishing by technology companies (especially in relation to generative AI): ‘Greater speed and broader access may be laudable aims for these publishing innovations. But they will also likely lead to greater disposability—at least in the short term—for both publishing professionals and the books themselves.’
Category: This week’s news
