Penguin Random House Australia (PRH) has acquired ANZ rights to The Matchmaker by debut Pakistani–Australian author Saman Shad via Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown. It is the first local adult commission from PRH commissioning editor Radhiah Chowdhury. The Matchmaker is a romantic comedy about love, marriage and ‘mistaking your own identity’, set in Sydney’s South-Asian…

Pearly Woe is not your average 10-year-old. She can speak 27 languages, talk to and understand most animals and, in this tale, travels to Antarctica. However, this is no holiday. Pearly and her faithful friend Pig (a pig) are representatives of the Adventurologists Guild and need to find Pearly’s missing parents—all the while trying to…

Sally Piper’s 2018 novel The Geography of Friendship (UQP) will be adapted for television as a six-part series. Dollhouse Pictures, a creative collective and independent production company founded by actress Rose Byrne alongside Krew Boylan, Jessica Carrera, Shannon Murphy and Gracie Otto, has partnered with Aquarius Films to develop the work for television, in a…

US production company New Regency has acquired the film and television rights to Meg Mason’s 2020 novel Sorrow and Bliss in a deal brokered by Casarotto Ramsay and HarperCollins Australia. According to HarperCollins, New Regency, whose production credits include the Oscar-winning films The Revenant, 12 Years a Slave and Birdman, acquired screen rights in a ‘competitive auction’. The…

The Australian book market posted strong results throughout the Covid-affected years of 2020 and 2021, and has continued this growth in 2022, with overall sales for the year to 18 June up 4.1% year-to-year, for a total of A$544 million. Coming after two years of consecutive growth in 2020 (up 7.8%) and 2021 (up 2.5%),…

by Think Australian Despite the disruption that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the Australian book industry this year, overall sales figures are looking surprisingly healthy. For the first eight months of 2020, adult fiction sales were up 12% in value compared to the same period in 2019, and children’s, YA and educational sales were…

Among recent fiction acquisitions by Australian publishers are literary speculative fiction books, a plethora of debut authors, and more poetry and short story collections. HarperCollins Australia has acquired ANZ rights to The Visitors by Jane Harrison, in a highly competitive auction brokered by Danielle Binks of Jacinta di Mase Management Literacy Agency. Based on Harrison’s…

Australian publishers Affirm Press, EK Books, Magabala Books, Starfish Bay and Wilkins Farago have been shortlisted in this year’s Bologna Prize for Best Children’s Publisher of the Year in the Oceania category. For Affirm Press, EK Books and Magabala it is the second shortlisting in a row. The winners will be announced at the fair….