S&S announces Aotearoa New Zealand office
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Simon & Schuster Australia has announced the establishment of a new Auckland office and a dedicated sales and marketing team in Aotearoa New Zealand. The new team is scheduled to...
Victorian Community History Awards winners announced
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
The winners of the Victorian Community History Awards have been announced. Winning titles in each category are: Victorian Premier’s History Award ($5000) Letters to a Critic: Alan McCulloch's World of...
Arnott’s ‘Dusk’ wins Indie Book Awards 2025 Book of the Year
Monday, 24 March 2025
Robbie Arnott's Dusk (Picador) has been named Book of the Year in the Indie Book Awards 2025. Category winners also announced include: Fiction Dusk (Robbie Arnott, Picador) Nonfiction Three Wild Dogs...
Emma Lowe named LBF director
Monday, 24 March 2025
In the UK, Emma Lowe has been announced as the new director of the London Book Fair (LBF). Former director Adam Ridgway was appointed last year to succeed Gareth Rapley....
BookPeople conference program announced
Monday, 24 March 2025
BookPeople has announced the program for its 2025 conference, which will run 14–16 June in Brisbane. Aimed at booksellers, the conference program includes panels, practical sessions, and keynotes – with...
NZ Booklovers Awards 2025 winners announced
Monday, 24 March 2025
The winners of the 2025 NZ Booklovers Awards have been announced. The winning titles are: Best Adult Fiction Book The Space Between (Lauren Keenan, Penguin) Best Lifestyle Book Kai Feast: Food...
Melbourne Books acquires Cochrane art book
Monday, 24 March 2025
Melbourne Books has acquired world rights to Living Art: Papua New Guinea by Susan Cochrane. According to the publisher, the book will feature over 400 full-colour images of Papua New Guinean artists...
Two Carter crime series optioned for television
Monday, 24 March 2025
Tasmania-based crime author Alan Carter's Cato Kwong series and Nick Chester series (both Fremantle Press) have been optioned for television by Magnetic Stories. Production company Magnetic Stories launched last week...
MWF releases full 2025 program
Friday, 21 March 2025
Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) has launched the full program for its 2025 festival, the first under new festival director Veronica Sullivan, to be held in venues across the Melbourne CBD and...
UQP acquires Kemp debut novel ‘Soft Serve’
Thursday, 20 March 2025
UQP has acquired world rights for Soft Serve, the debut novel of playwright and actor George Kemp. The novel is 'set over one day almost exclusively in a regional McDonald’s as...
Atria acquires Koay romantasy debut
Thursday, 20 March 2025
Atria Books Australia has acquired world rights for romantasy novel A Curse Carved in Ink by Tzeyi Koay, in a two-book, six-figure deal with Charlotte Trumble at Simon & Schuster...
IPEd announces ‘Rosie’ shortlist
Thursday, 20 March 2025
The Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) has announced the shortlist for the 2025 Rosanne Fitzgibbon Editorial Award. The shortlisted editors are: Kimberley Davis for Under the Weather: A Future Forecast...
Brooks memoir tops chart at 2025 Adelaide Writers’ Week
Thursday, 20 March 2025
Attendance at Adelaide Writers’ Week (AWW) – which ran 1–6 March 2025 as part of the Adelaide Festival – broke records in its 40th year, according to the festival. Themed...
Spotify launches indie author platform
Thursday, 20 March 2025
Streaming platform Spotify has announced a new short-form genre publishing initiative 'specifically targeting self-published authors', reports Publishers Weekly. 'This is a global program, and any author with an English-language short-form...
Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2025 winners announced
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
The Wheeler Centre has announced the winners of the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (VPLAs). Nukgal Wurra author-artist Wanda Gibson has won the overall Victorian Prize for Literature, worth $100,000,...
ABIA 2025 books shortlists announced
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Books+Publishing, in partnership with the Australian Publishers Association, has announced the 2025 book award shortlists for the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs). The shortlisted titles in each category are: Audiobook...
Laura Elvery recommends
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Australian Gospel by Lech Blaine – a book that is completely fascinating, heartbreaking, measured and fair. There’s a pace and a clarity in Lech’s writing that is so refreshing.
Macmillan signs Blabey in seven-book deal
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Macmillan has acquired rights to seven new titles from internationally bestselling author Aaron Blabey. The deal, worth eight figures, encompasses seven titles in two new middle-grade series, to be published...
BorrowBox: ‘User experience is everything’
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
In the lead-up to the 2025 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs), Books+Publishing is in conversation with the event's major sponsors about the status of the industry, what excites them about the...
Larrikin House acquires Mather picture book
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Larrikin House has acquired world rights to Otto's INKcredible First Day of School by Rory H Mather, with illustrations by Rebel Challenger. The story follows Otto, an octopus who sprays...
MidnightSun acquires Burge sequel ‘Dirt Trap’
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
MidnightSun has acquired world rights to Dirt Trap by Michael Burge. A sequel to Burge’s rural noir debut, Tank Water, Dirt Trap is set two decades on from the events...
Beer’s ‘Thunderhead’ optioned for film
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Thunderhead (Sophie Beer, A&U) has been optioned by LateNite films, in a film and television deal negotiated by Annabel Barker Agency. Beer’s first middle-grade novel, Thunderhead draws on the author’s own...
Baker wins 2024 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
In the UK, Harriet Baker has won the £10,000 (A$20,365) Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award for Rural Hours (Allen Lane), a biography of Virginia Woolf,...
A&U acquires Wallace debut novel ‘Ash’
Wednesday, 19 March 2025
Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired world English (ex NZ) rights to debut novel Ash by Louise Wallace, in a deal brokered by Martin Shaw at Shaw Literary. North American...
Laura Elvery on ‘Nightingale’
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Brisbane-based writer Laura Elvery (Ordinary Matter) makes her novel debut with Nightingale (UQP, May), a fictional reimagining of the life of Florence Nightingale. Books+Publishing reviewer Kate Dunphy describes it as...
Bundyi acquires two Morison novels
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Simon & Schuster imprint Bundyi Publishing has acquired world rights to two novels by Judi Morison. Morison’s debut, Secrets, ‘touches on many of the issues we are still grappling with...
American Library Association condemns ‘White House assault’ on library services agency
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
In the US, the American Library Assocation (ALA), EveryLibrary, ‘and other organisations and individuals have rushed to defend’ the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), an organisation the Trump...
Local authors on 2025 British Book Awards shortlists
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Local authors Madeleine Gray, Oliver Jeffers and Sarah A Parker have been shortlisted as part of the 35th British Book Awards (also known as The Nibbies). Works by Gray and...
Text acquires ‘Snake Talk’
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Text Publishing has acquired world rights for Snake Talk: How the World’s Ancient Serpent Stories Can Guide Us by Tyson Yunkaporta and Megan Kelleher. The publisher describes Snake Talk as an...
QBD Books to open Greensborough store, adds Kepler Analytics technology
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Bookselling chain QBD Books will open a new store at Greensborough Plaza in the northeast of Melbourne on 22 March. The new store will be the first QBD store to...
