Showing all posts in the books category

Debut Writers Over 50, a literary award for mature authors

26 April 2023

Jenny Brown Associates, a literary agency based in Edinburgh, Scotland, announced the launch of a literary prize for emerging authors aged fifty and over, the Debut Writers Over 50 award, at this year’s London Book Fair. Speaking at the event, which was held last week, agency associate Lisa Highton said when it comes to starting out as a writer, youth should not be a prerequisite:

“The bestseller lists are full of debut novelists who are older, but the perception is that you have to be young when your first book comes out,” says literary agent Lisa Highton of Jenny Brown Associates. “But being a debut is not just about being a shiny, sparkly, young person. The reason we launched the award was to say to people over 50 yes, you too can be a shiny, sparkly, new writer – just older.”

This is a great initiative. I’m not sure how many literary awards cater for mature authors, but there sure seems to be plenty aimed at youth writers, and people aged under thirty-five. And that’s fine. Emerging younger writers need to be encouraged, since it’s difficult to become established in an industry dominated — usually — by, you know, older, big name authors, or those with several books to their name.

While the Debut Writers Over 50 award is for unpublished novelists residing in the United Kingdom, it’s good to see people commencing writing careers later in life being recognised. Submissions for the inaugural award close at the end of next month. A shortlist will be published on 27 July 2023, and the winner will be named on 26 August 2023, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

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The 2023 BookPeople Book of Year shortlist

21 April 2023

It’s been a busy several days for literary awards. Since last Friday, shortlists for The Age Book of the Year, the International Booker Prize, the Australian Book Industry Awards, and the Australian Book Design Awards, for book cover design, have been published.

And to cap off the week, the 2023 BookPeople Book of Year shortlist was announced earlier today. Six books have been selected in three categories: kids, adult non-fiction, and adult fiction. The following six titles are on the adult fiction shortlist:

The BookPeople Book of Year awards honour new Australian book releases, which have been selected by Australian Booksellers Association members as their favourite hand-sells of the last year. The winners in each category will be named on Sunday 19 June 2023.

Nice to see Willowman on the fiction list, I think everyone else has had at least one listing previously. Oh, and another accolade for Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow. Incredible, hey?

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Night at the Last Bookstore, this could be a film idea also

21 April 2023

A sleepover in a bookshop, especially one that is reputed to be haunted, sounds like a fun way for bookworms to spend the night. That’s what happened recently at the Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, when the bookshop made fourteen sleepover spots available every night for two weeks, earlier this month. Julia Carmel, writing for the Los Angeles Times, described the experience:

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I signed up for one of the first ever sleepovers at California’s largest new and used bookstore. I had vague hopes of staying up until sunrise, reading and exchanging slumber party-esque gossip with strangers, all while surrounded by the highly-Instagrammed book tunnel and book sculptures that fill the former bank building.

I don’t know if this ever happens in Australia, but it’s something local bookshops ought to consider. Decent size stores, that have the book-tunnel and horror vault intrigue of the Last Bookstore would be needed. There’s surely options, but at the moment I’m thinking of the Harry Hartog bookshops.

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The rise and rise of Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

19 April 2023
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, book cover

Cold Enough for Snow (Giramondo Publishing), by Melbourne based Australian author Jessica Au, is a heart-warming story of a young woman and her mother, who holiday in Japan together.

A young woman has arranged a holiday with her mother in Japan. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches chosen for their art and architecture, eat together in small cafes and restaurants and walk along the canals at night, on guard against the autumn rain and the prospect of snow. All the while, they talk, or seem to talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother’s family in Hong Kong, and the daughter’s own formative experiences. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken?

But Au’s debut novel has had run of success that authors — both new and established — could only dream of. Since being published in February 2022, Cold Enough for Snow has won a slew of awards. Gongs so far include the 2020 Novel Prize, of which it was the inaugural recipient, and the 2022 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction.

Au’s book also cleaned up at the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, collecting both the Fiction award, and the Victorian Prize for Literature, valued together at A$125,000. The novel has also been shortlisted in the fiction categories of the 2022 Queensland Literary Awards, and the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Cold Enough for Snow was also shortlisted for the fiction award in the 2022 Age Book of the Year.

Literary award longlist listings meanwhile include the 2022 Indie Book Awards, 2023 Dublin Literary Award, and the 2023 BookPeople Nielsen award. These are incredible achievements, and are all the more remarkable given the page count barely exceeds one hundred. Compelling stories do not need to be of epic proportions.

But Cold Enough for Snow’s winning streak may not be over just yet. Today, the title was included in the shortlist of the Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year category in the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs). The winners of the ABIAs will be announced in late May. We can only be left wondering: what’s next for Au’s debut work of fiction?

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2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) shortlists

19 April 2023

Another day, another literary award shortlist announcement, this time it’s the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) shortlists. All up, seventy-one books have been shortlisted across fourteen categories, including Audiobook of the Year, Biography Book of the Year, several Children’s and The Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, with five titles selected in two fiction categories:

Literary Fiction Book of the Year

General Fiction Book of the Year

The ABIAs are pretty close to Australia’s equivalent of the Oscars (or Logies), but for books rather than movies. Accordingly, winners will be named at a ceremony on the evening of Thursday 25 May 2023, in Sydney.

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The 2023 International Booker Prize shortlist

18 April 2023
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, book cover

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, book cover.

The 2023 International Booker Prize shortlist was announced earlier this evening (east coast of Australia time) at the London Book Fair, and includes these six titles:

  • Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated from Catalan by Julia Sanches
  • The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated from French by Richard Philcox
  • Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated from French by Frank Wynne
  • Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
  • Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim
  • Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey

The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for the finest single work of fiction from around the world which has been translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The winner will be named in London on Tuesday 23 May 2023.

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Sales of paper books surge in the United Kingdom in 2022

18 April 2023

Paper, or physical, books are by no means relics of a bygone era, if sales thereof in the UK last year are anything to go by. Six hundred and sixty nine million books were purchased in 2022. Against a population of sixty seven million people, that equates to about ten books per person.

A Year in Publishing, a look at the state of the book market by trade body the Publishers Association, found that sales were up 4% from 2021 in 2022, 669m physical books were sold in the UK, the highest overall level ever recorded.

UK book exports also increased by eight percent, with Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman, topping the list of books sent out of the country. To date, there are now five books in the Heartstopper series — which has spawned a Netflix TV show — with a sixth, and final, title on the way.

Meanwhile in Australia, nearly seventy one millions books were purchased in 2022, an increase of about eight percent on 2021, according to Nielsen BookData figures. I’m not sure what quantity of books sold were physical, but it seems bookshops had a good year, so I’m guessing a lot were paper.

It’s to be hoped bookshops in Australia (and elsewhere, of course) are doing well again, after a difficult few years. While it’s purely anecdotal, I saw that Dymocks, a large Australian bookseller, is opening a brand new store in the Sydney suburb of Bondi Junction in June. Saying re-opening a bookshop is probably more accurate, as the company did have a shop there, which closed several years ago. While opening one bookshop does not a trend make, the move can only be a good sign.

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The Age Book of the Year awards 2023 shortlists

14 April 2023

The Age Book of the Year awards 2023 shortlists were announced this afternoon. The awards are split into two sections, one for fiction, and the other for non-fiction.

The shortlisted titles for the fiction award are:

The shortlisted titles for the non-fiction award are:

The winners of each category — who will be announced on Thursday 4 May 2023, at the opening of the Melbourne Writers Festival — will receive a prize of ten thousand dollars.

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Is the Australian publishing industry is based on a hunch?

13 April 2023

Katherine Day writing for The Conversation:

“The entire industry is based on hunches,” says literary agent Martin Shaw, who was head book buyer at Readings for 20 years before he became an agent. “More than half the books you publish either lose money or don’t make money. And that’s true — week in, week out, year in year out — whether you’re a small, medium or big publisher,” claims Henry Rosenbloom, founder of Scribe Publications, which has been acquiring books since 1976. This can be a heartbreaking reality for the in-house staff. “I’ve personally spent months editing books, and you publish the book and no one’s interested,” Henry adds.

I wonder how the publishing industry could not be based on hunches. Unless you’re publishing a big-name, well established (and even then nothing’s ever guaranteed) author, how does anyone know how a new book might be received?

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Recently published Australian fiction, April 2023

11 April 2023

It’s been a while since I wrote about recent fiction releases by Australian authors, so here’s a quick round up of a few titles that have arrived on bookshop shelves in the last little while.

The Last Love Note, by Emma Grey, book cover

The Last Love Note, by Emma Grey, an author living near Canberra, is the story of a woman, Kate Whittaker, looking for love following her husband’s death. Based in part on Grey’s own experiences after her husband died, her protagonist struggles to get on with life.

Kate has a son to raise, while holding down a demanding job, and contending with a domineering mother, along with her best friend who is trying to find her a match. Then Kate learns that her boss knows a secret about her past…

The Bell of the World by Gregory Day, book cover

The Bell of the World is the sixth novel from Victorian author, poet, and musician Gregory Day, and is set during early to mid-twentieth century in a rural coastal town called Ngangahook. Sarah Hutchinson, a troubled young woman, returns to Australia after a stint at an English boarding school, to live with her uncle Ferny.

Sarah and Ferny bond over music, poetry, and reading. But their way of life is threatened when local town’s people propose building a bell tower, the chimes of which would surely disrupt the harmonies created by nature.

Resistance, by Jacinta Halloran, book cover

Resistance is the latest novel by Melbourne based author Jacinta Halloran, a former doctor and board member of Australian literary award, the Stella Prize. Nina is a family therapist with a reputation for listening to everything her clients tell her.

But her latest case may be her most challenging. A couple who stole a car and drove into the outback have been ordered to be counselled by her. But something’s not quite right about this couple who are reluctant to see her, and before long Nina begins to fear for the safety of their two children.

We Only Want What's Best, by Carolyn Swindell, book cover

We Only Want What’s Best, is the debut novel of Sydney based writer and stand-up comedian Carolyn Swindell, and is set on a flight between Australia and Los Angeles. Bridget is taking her daughter Becky to Disneyland to perform in a dance recital. Accompanying them is Simone and her daughter, Zahra.

Bridget, who isn’t completely comfortable making the long flight, becomes further unsettled when she finds potentially exploitative photos of Zahra, and other dance troupe girls, on Simone’s phone. The two women struggle to contain the rising tension between them, lest it overwhelms them before the flight lands.

Things She Would Have Said Herself, by Catherine Therese, book cover

Things She Would Have Said Herself, is new fiction from Australian author Catherine Therese, and tells the story of Leslie Bird, the quick tempered matriarch of her family. And while Leslie loves being a wife and mother, there’s a problem: she can’t stand her husband or children.

Despite the difficulty of her role, Leslie does her best to conceal the pain she feels, and the losses she has suffered. But the pressure of organising and hosting Christmas lunch for her extended family, may cause everything to unravel in spectacular fashion.

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