Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, Australia Day Honours recipients announced; VPLAs shortlists revealed; Michael Gifkins Prize ends

In this week’s news, the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund has announced the 42 Australian literary and creative organisations that will share in $754,769 in its most recent funding round. Meanwhile, the 2025 Adelaide Writers’ Week program was announced; Text Publishing announced the end of the Michael Gifkins Prize for unpublished manuscripts in Aotearoa New Zealand; Sweatshop Literacy Movement and NewSouth Publishing announced Australia’s first literary program for Pasifika-Australian writers; and Rakuten Kobo released its report on 2024 Australian digital reading trends based on ebook and audiobook reading data on its platform, reflecting strong local interest in suspense, mystery and crime, and a dip in celebrity stories among its bestseller lists.

In awards news this week, the shortlists for the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards were revealed; several authors, publishers and literary workers were recognised in the annual Australia Day Honours; Lucia Osborne-Crowley was shortlisted for the 2025 Gordon Burn Prize for her book The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell (A&U); Creative Australia announced the shortlist for the 2025 Asia Pacific Arts Awards, with several literary organisations and authors among those listed; and in the United States, the Audio Publishers Association announced the finalists for the 2025 Audie Awards for audiobooks and spoken word entertainment, with a local author and voice actor among those named.

Turning to rights news, the University of Queensland Press sold world English (ex ANZ) and audio rights to Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie to Oneworld Publications; and Hardie Grant Books acquired world print and ebook rights to Thai: Anywhere and Everywhere, the debut cookbook from MasterChef Australia 2024 winner Nat Thaipun, through Ben Liebmann of Understory.

In US awards news, the American Library Association announced the winners of its 2025 Youth Media Awards and the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence. Staying in the US, RBmedia reported a ‘record-setting performance’ in 2024, with romantasy and audiobooks tied to streaming adaptations as key sales drivers.

Meanwhile, in the UK, OUP announced ‘kindness’ as the Oxford Children’s Word of the Year for 2024.

And worldwide, readers are borrowing more ebooks, audiobooks, and digital magazines, OverDrive told Publishers Weekly.

Around the bookish internet, several commentators responded to news of Text Publishing’s acquisition by Penguin Random House. Alice Grundy wrote for the Conversation that this news – of the third acquisition of an independent Australian press by a multinational in under six months – is part of a ‘worrying trend’: ‘What will worry authors and readers alike is the potential for more conglomeration, leading to greater homogenisation and an impoverished choice of local titles on offer.’ With a similar tone, Kelly Burke wrote for the Guardian of ‘fresh concerns for the health of the Australian novel’ in the wake of this news: ‘industry insiders were in almost unanimous agreement the sale was a sign of the rocky times book publishers are facing’.

And, writing for ArtsHub on a different subject, Thuy On shared key findings from the publication’s survey of local writers on the changes they would like to see in the publishing industry, noting themes such as care and due diligence, broader distribution, more innovation and promotion, transparency and accessibility, and addressing the pigeonholing of culturally and linguistically diverse writers.


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Category: This week’s news