S&S announces new CEO, new Aus imprint; Hachette 2024 results; 2025 VIPs announced
It’s been a big week at Simon & Schuster (S&S), with the announcement of a new imprint, Atria Australia, the acquisition of new fiction from Bri Lee, and the appointment of Perminder Mann as CEO of S&S International as Ian Chapman steps away from the role. In other industry news, Creative Australia has announced the 12 participants in this year’s Visiting International Publishers (VIPs) program, Ocean Reeve Publishing has declared bankruptcy, and Beejay Silcox is departing her role as artistic director of the Canberra Writers Festival after two festivals.
On the topic of festivals, further details have been announced about Newcastle Writers Festival, which will run 4–6 April, and Whitsundays Writers Festival, which will run 12–14 September.
This week we also share the results of the Books+Publishing Christmas survey of publishers and what they expect from the year ahead, following on from booksellers’ responses last week.
In awards news, the 2025 Peter Porter Poetry Prize was awarded to Meredith Stricker, the Tasmanian Literary Awards has announced this year’s shortlists, while the Australian School Library Association released the 2025 longlists for the Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (DANZ) Children’s Book Award.
Australian authors have also been represented in international awards, with Alexis Wright’s Tracker longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Nonfiction and Malcolm Knox’s The First Friend longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
Acquisition announcements include HarperCollins with historical fiction from Alli Parker, Atlantic Books acquiring a debut novel from Clare Stephens, Hachette publishing local editions of two Peter Papathanasiou crime novels, and Keeperton announcing print editions of founder TL Swan’s The Miles High Club series.
In international news, Hachette parent company Lagardère reported on its 2024 results, with Hachette Australia CEO Louise Stark noting the local success of the Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros. Meanwhile, the 2025 Novel Prize, run by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK), Giramondo (ANZ) and New Directions (US) was won by Ruins, Child, a debut novel from Giada Scodellaro.
In the UK, the longlists for the Carnegie Medal for Writing and the Carnegie Medal for Illustration have been announced, Gloria Bailey MBE has been named the 2025 recipient of the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award, and Sana Chebaro has succeeded Eoin Purcell as head of Amazon Publishing in the UK and Germany. Following up on last week’s story about Jerusalem’s Educational Bookshop, Saqi Books is partnering with a network of like-minded industry professionals to launch a campaign celebrating the rights to read and to sell books freely under the banner #BooksellingIsNotACrime.
In the US, Faber has launched a US division; Grove Atlantic has launched the new imprint Atlantic Crime to consolidate its crime titles; and Grand Central Publishing has launched Da Capo, an imprint dedicated to books about music. Meanwhile two separate groups of independent publishers have launched cooperatives to share resources and cut costs: The Stable Book Group and The Publishers Cooperative.
Finally, Publishers Weekly reports that ‘sales of five classic dystopian novels jumped’ in the US in the week ending 25 January. President Donald Trump was inaugurated in the same week. Titles that saw increased sales included Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), 1984, Animal Farm (both by George Orwell), The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood), and The Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler).
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Category: This week’s news
