Magabala Books has announced it will create a new cadetship for First Nations publishing professionals. The cadetship program will provide on-the-job training, professional development and... Read more

Lip magazine has announced the shortlist for the 2020 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. The shortlisted stories are: ‘Plant Life’ by Tanya Vavilova ‘Arrow’ by... Read more

A number of authors and publishing industry figures including Marcia Langton, Scott Pape and Karen Williams are among the recipients of this year’s 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Meanwhile, the ASA has called for an extension of the federal government’s JobKeeper program, amid a ‘slow and long’ fallout from Covid-19 for authors and illustrators. Textbook ‘streaming’ service Perlego—first established in the UK in 2016—has launched in Australia and New Zealand.

United Publishers of Armidale—a collaboration between children’s book publishers Christmas Press and Little Pink Dog Books—is the latest recipient of an Australia Council Resilience Fund grant, while a number of literary organisations and writers have received Create NSW funding.

The shortlists for the Booksellers’ Choice 2020 Book of the Year Awards have been announced, as have shortlists for the REAL Awards, the Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award and NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

In the US, three of the Big Five publishers have pledged to increase diversity in their workplace and the books they publish, following a day of collective action taken by publishing staff to protest systemic racism in the industry. Meanwhile, Hachette, Simon & Schuster and Bloomsbury became the latest publishers to skip Frankfurt’s physical event.

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Two years after the Wheeler Centre established its The Next Chapter writers scheme, books by two of its inaugural fellows—Adam Thompson and Evelyn Araluen—have been acquired by the University... Read more

Bundjalung artist Charmaine Ledden-Lewis was the recipient of the 2019 Kestin Indigenous Illustrator Award, which offered a mentorship and the opportunity to illustrate Bruce Pascoe’s... Read more

Acquisitions Fiction Sally Bird at Calidris Literary Agency has sold world rights to Elodie Cheesman’s debut novel to Pan Macmillan. Lyn Tranter at Australian Literary... Read more

Suzanne Collins’ ‘Hunger Games’ prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is spending its second consecutive week in the top spot on the Australian bestsellers chart following... Read more

Devastated when her son is convicted of negligent homicide, Erica Marsden cuts all ties to her former life and retreats to a lonely coastal hamlet... Read more

Man in Armour is a slice-of-life novel about Charles, a successful cog in the machine of the financial sector who has climbed his way up... Read more

Lili Wilkinson is a versatile, intelligent writer, and takes the psychological thriller to new heights in The Erasure Initiative. Cecily wakes up on a self-driving... Read more

The first foray into picture books for Bruce Pascoe (author of the wildly successful Dark Emu) is deceptively straightforward: a frightening separation (don’t worry, there’s... Read more

From Jane Jolly and Sally Heinrich, creators of One Step at a Time and Papa Sky, comes Mama Ocean, a picture book about the sparkling... Read more

‘Good organising looks like a document that 1100 people worked on together: messily, but semi-democratically. This was publishing people doing what publishing people do: we went through draft after draft after draft. Who’s better equipped to build collective power than publishing workers?’—Farrar, Straus & Giroux assistant editor Danny Vazquez on the day of collective action taken by over 1000 US publishing staff to protest systemic racism in the industry.

Books+Publishing is partnering with US trade news magazine Publishers Weekly to provide our subscribers with exclusive access to the weekly digital edition of PW magazine.... Read more

Margot Lloyd has been appointed senior editor at the University of Queensland Press, starting 6 July. Previously, Lloyd was publisher at Wakefield Press, where she... Read more

Adrian Hardingham has been appointed manager of Unity Books Wellington. Previously, Hardingham held roles at Readings and Abbey’s bookshops. He replaces Tilly Lloyd in the... Read more

The publishers of The Barefoot Investor and The Barefoot Investor for Families, and the Australian Booksellers Association and Nielsen BookScan, are thrilled to see Scott Pape recognised in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours with a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his ‘service to the community, and to financial education’.

Robbie Egan, CEO, Australian Booksellers Association, said: ‘Congratulations to Scott Pape for receiving an OAM in this year’s round of honours. Australian booksellers have sold thousands of copies of his no-nonsense guides to money and investment. I have witnessed my own kids develop an interest in superannuation, index funds, and budgeting with their incomes, all because of The Barefoot Investor. Australians are now far more inclined to think about and openly discuss money, and what was once a taboo subject is now commonplace conversation. Our financial literacy has improved dramatically, and Scott Pape has driven this change with his bestselling books. Index funds have never been more interesting!’

Jim Demetriou, CEO, HarperCollins Australia, said: ‘Scott Pape’s books are an extraordinary piece of positive social engineering, inspiring and enabling millions of Australians to educate themselves and their children about the importance of financial security. Beyond the bestseller lists and phenomenal contribution to booksellers’ bottom lines, this legacy, acknowledged in this OAM, reminds us that the very best books can change lives. Congratulations, Scott.’

Lucy Raymond, Senior Editor, Wiley, said: ‘Congratulations to Scott Pape, The Barefoot Investor, for the OAM awarded for service to the community and to financial education. His common sense and practical advice has inspired millions of people to get in control of their finances and make money an acceptable and recommended conversation topic for couples, young families and across the generations. Words and phrases such as Smile, Splurge, Mojo and Barefoot Date Nights are now part of the lexicon for many Australians. Beyond his bestselling books, Scott’s advocacy for widespread access to sound financial advice has provided a pathway for many to develop a more positive relationship with money.’

According to Nielsen BookScan, the leading provider of search, commerce, consumer research and retail sales analysis services for the book industry, The Barefoot Investor for Families (HarperCollins) has sold an average of 15 copies every hour since its release date in September 2018, with the first week of sales seeing Australians buy hundreds of copies every hour. The record-breaking first week of sales for Pape’s follow-up title to the original The Barefoot Investor (Wiley) saw an average of 444 copies per hour sold as measured through the Nielsen BookScan Australia retail panel. To date, The Barefoot Investor for Families has sold 228,500 copies and is now in Australia’s Top 20 highest selling nonfiction titles, and is the 10th highest-selling Australian-authored nonfiction title since Nielsen BookScan records began in December 2002.

Pape’s first book, The Barefoot Investor, published 22 November 2016, has sold over 1.3 million copies to date, making it the second bestselling title in Australia, the bestselling Australian-authored title and the top-selling nonfiction title since Nielsen BookScan records began in December 2002. Within the personal development genre, Pape is Australia’s all-time bestselling author.

Anecdotes about pets and what they do with rugs, hot-air balloons, garden pots; how they deal with translocations and household disasters; and in pursuit of... Read more