AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Australian newspaper The Age published an interesting article about British author Mal Peet this weekend. Peet hates the title of “young-adult writer” and vehemently opposes comments about books being too ambitious, philosophical or complex for a teenage novel.  “It’s like saying teenage fiction is a feast of the second best; because your readers are young [...]

Cute idea from a library in Australia – Library staff have selected a range of books and wrapped them up for a surprise introductions this weekend. Drop by the library on Saturday and you could meet your perfect match – literary match that is. With only scintillating phrases and words on that wrapping to hint [...]

I was surprised to learn that in Australia, if a book doesn’t become available within 30 days of publication overseas, a bookseller can ignore territorial copyright and parallel import it.  Such a rule provides incentive to publishers to make foreign books quickly available in Australia and gives a flexibility to booksellers that other countries don’t [...]

David Malouf has won Australia’s newest and richest literary prize of $110,000 for his work The Complete Stories. It is given by the Western Australian state government to the best work of fiction primarily about Australia and Asia. The interesting bit about the award is that it is state funded but doesn’t necessarily go to [...]

For all our Australian friends the line-up for this years Byron Bay Writers Festival (July 25-27) has been announced… as always it looks like quite the event.

Geraldine Brooks has just picked up some hardware at the Australian Industry Book Awards. She recieved both Book of the Year and Literary Fiction Book of the Year for People of the Book, who’s heroine is Australian rare-book expert Hanna Heath who is offered the job of analysing and conserving the famed Jewish volume and [...]