Author Notes #18 (April 2025)
Reading initiatives, author auctions for Palestine, Global Book Crawls, questionable emails, NaNoWriMo collapses, and more!
Welcome to this month’s Author Notes! It’s been a busy publication month for me, but there’s been so much happening in the publishing and writing world that I’ve ended up with more notes than ever!
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I also have a number of events coming up in May, and I’d love you to join me for one of these evening conversations about my new novel and my writing career. Booking links are on my website, and I’ve listed more details at the end of this newsletter.
And now, on to the notes!
1.
Books Create Australia is a brilliant initiative which has been launched in the run-up to the 2025 Australian election, urging candidates to invest in the future of our industry, and to back Australian authors and Australian stories. Those behind the initiative (see below) argue that fair policies and investment are vital as author earnings fall, AI disrupts our sector, reading rates decline, school libraries are cut, and business costs rise. In response, they have invited authors and illustrators to use our voices and ask our local candidates to take certain measures to support the industry. I’ve added my notes below on how authors might respond practically to these propositions:
Invest in reading: make sure our local MPs are aware of which authors, libraries and bookshops they need to support in our local area.
Guarantee support for libraries: include support for libraries in letters to MPs, and make sure we champion libraries regularly during our outreach/social media.
Back Australian stories and publishers: Easy for us! Read and spruik Aussie authors and publishers.
Ensure AI is fair: I suggest it’s best to support larger bodies like the ASA in this fight, but also to mention it as a pressing need in any correspondence with our MPs.
Fund Australian authors: Be aware of grants possibilities and spread the word.
Grow our local bookshops: try to visit and support our local bookshops, follow them on social media and regularly share the word about what they’re up to.
Sustain our literary life: read widely and don’t miss an opportunity to talk about why books are so essential to our culture!
Overall, I love this vision for Books Create Australia, which is a joint initiative of the ASA, the Australian Publishers Association, Australian Library and Information Association, BookPeople and Australia Reads. I’ll be trying my best to walk the talk on this one!
2.
In another promising piece of news, the forthcoming literature funding body Writing Australia will be funded in the 2025–26 Federal Budget, with the organisation set to commence operations on 1 July. This funding was announced as part of a $22.3 million overall increase in funding to Creative Australia, bringing its total funding allocation to $312.0 million. (This was announced in Books & Publishing, 27 March 2025). At the present time I can’t find too much information to share with you beyond this announcement, so we’ll come back to this one!
3.
NanoWriMo, the annual challenge for writers to complete a rough draft of a novel during November, is being discontinued after 25 years due to lack of financial support and community backlash. I didn’t actually realise NaNoWriMo was an organisation, I thought it was more of a viral hashtag! The announcement was posted on Reddit, but even with its demise there’s nothing to stop authors from continuing to set themselves this challenge, is there?
4.
The Australian Business Journal produced a piece on the top 9 Rising Australian Authors to watch in 2025, and it’s a great introduction to an emerging set of non-fiction authors across the fields of business, communication, leadership and mental health. Great to see older authors being flagged here too, and the respect for their experience and wisdom.
5.
Last week various cities around the world participated in the Global Book Crawl, guiding people around independent bookshops in different locations. Did you take part? I really hope this idea continues and grows as I LOVE the way these fun initiatives champion our local bookshops and encourage reading. Check out the website here and the list of participating places here. Props to Ireland for fully embracing this, and Australia did pretty well too (I’m hoping Perth, my hometown, might get involved next year)! There were crawls from Iceland to Kygryzstan to Fiji and Guatemala, what a great way of connecting the world through books and stories!
6.
The ASA (Australian Society of Authors) has launched their updated ASA's Book Industry Directory, a comprehensive and invaluable online directory of the major players in the book industry. In the directory you will find publishers and their submission guidelines, literary agents, literary festivals, magazines, podcasts, book influencers, competitions, grants, prizes, book publicity services, and much more. Such a valuable resource.
7.
Authors & Artists for Palestine – an online fundraising auction
The situation in Gaza is terrible beyond words, with more than 51,000 people killed, including more than 18,000 children, and 1.9 million people displaced. In March 2024, the OzKidLit fundraising auction for Gaza, organised by Karen Ginnane and Zewlan Moor, raised nearly $40,000 to provide food, clean water and medical supplies to Palestinians in need.
Karen, Zewlan and Sarah, with support from Readers & Writers Against the Genocide and Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) and officially endorsed by Omar Sakr and Randa Abdel Fattah, have decided to hold another online fundraising auction, this time embracing the whole literary and arts community. The fundraiser will run for one week from Wednesday 7 May and all money will be donated to established charities: Medecins Sans Frontieres, UNRWA, Olive Kids and Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. We already have some incredible items on offer – writers retreats/accommodation, signed book packs, tickets, writing critiques, school visits and artworks that will be up for auction through the AirAuctioneer website.
If you are interested in contributing, please contact them at: authorsartistsforpalestine@gmail.com
I’ll be offering feedback and critique of a submission letter to agents/publishers and up to 3000 words of sample material - and the winning bid will also pay for me to do the same for an emerging author who is struggling financially.
8.
Have you received an email like this recently?
Warm greetings from London.
I am [name], writing to you on behalf of [name], a distinguished literary magazine based in London, UK. Our magazine is dedicated to featuring bestselling, award-winning, and exceptional novelists and fiction writers like yourself. We are keen to conduct an interview with you about your career and works. If this is not the appropriate channel to reach you, please let us know. Otherwise, if you are interested in participating, kindly respond, and I will furnish you with further details.
For more information about our publication, feel free to explore [name] magazine website.
If so, please be aware that this is a new author-focused phishing style email, where you’ll fill in interview question, but then be asked to pay money for the interview to be posted. I’ve had a couple so far, from Mosaic Digest and the Novelist Post, but the websites seem to have numerous names, and they do look quite authentic, perhaps because some authors pay up. But… Please don’t pay other people to use your words and time for their own financial gain!
I repeat:
Please don’t pay other people to use your words and time for their own financial gain!
SHORT NOTES AND SHOUT OUTS:
Vale Kerry Greenwood, who died recently, aged 70. I haven’t got to Kerry’s books, but my daughter and I have spent many happy hours watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries on TV.
The ABIA Awards are coming up on 7 May - congratulations to everyone shortlisted, and good luck!
The Age Book of the Year shortlists have also just been announced here.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR AUTHORS:
The Bundyi Prize
The team are on the lookout for creative, compelling and original works of adult fiction that celebrate First Nations voices. The prize will be awarded to an outstanding unpublished manuscript by an emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writer (a writer who maybe have appeared in anthologies and literary journals but is yet to have a full length manuscript published). Please see Official Rules for the terms and conditions to enter this contest and follow @BundyiPublishing on Instagram for more information.
Entries close: 23:59:59 AET on 30 June 2025, and the winner will receive a cash prize of AUD$10,000 sponsored by Simon & Schuster Australia, which includes manuscript development with a First Nations editor. The winner will also have the opportunity to receive a standard book publishing contract with the Bundyi Imprint in relation to their Manuscript, in eBook, print and/or other format
AND FINALLY…
Do you have google alerts on your books and any topics of interest? I have quite a few, as it helps me easily keep track of anything major, and sometimes it brings up some really lovely and unusual things. Lately I got a notification that my 2011 book Beneath the Shadows is on the shelves at the South Kenya University Library. I wonder how it made it all the way there!
I get such pleasure from these kinds of understated but entirely meaningful moments. We really can never know all the places our words can travel, or the different lives our books will have when they set off on their own journeys. And I love that we just have to let go and see what finds its way back to us. There’s a beautiful kind of peace in that.
Until next time, happy writing!
PS If you haven’t signed up already, please subscribe to Story Matters to continue getting weekly posts from me, as I now write there on alternate weeks.
EVENTS COMING UP IN MAY:
I’m about to embark on a whole new series of events in May, in WA and NSW, to chat about When She Was Gone and writing life in general - so if you’re free, I’d love to see you at one of these:
5 May at 6.45 pm: Event at AH Bracks Library with Anita Heiss
Location: AH Bracks Library, Corner Stock Road and Canning Highway, 431 Canning Hwy, Melville, WA 6157
BOOKINGS HERE
Join Anita Heiss and me for a very special evening of conversation about our latest books. Anita’s latest novel Dirrayawadha is another groundbreaking historical story about resistance, resilience and love during the frontier wars. I’ll be discussing my new psychological suspense story When She Was Gone. If you are a lover of compelling stories well told, this an opportunity too good to miss!
Brought to you in partnership with Dymocks Booksellers. Tickets: $10. Bookings essential.
7 May at 6 pm: Oberon Library (Blue Mountains), NSW
Location: Oberon Library, 74A Dart St, Oberon, NSW 2787
BOOKINGS HERE
I’ll be visiting Oberon Library to chat all about When She Was Gone. Come join us for a fun evening talking about my latest thriller!
8 May at 6.30 pm: In conversation with Anna Downes at Better Read Than Dead, Sydney, NSW
Location: Better Read Than Dead, 265 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042
BOOKINGS HERE
Join us to celebrate the release of When She Was Gone! I’ll be in-conversation with amazing bestselling crime fiction author Anna Downes. Bookings essential. Ticket only: $5. Ticket & Book: $40
25 May at 10 am: York Festival (WA)
Location: The Rookery, York, WA
BOOKINGS HERE
York Festival is an intimate series of conversations with some of WA’s most compelling writers. Across two days, explore the stories behind the stories, ask questions, and connect with the minds shaping our literary landscape.
Purchase a Day Pass ticket and get access to all sessions plus workshops on that day. Thanks to our friends at Barclay Books, you can even pick up titles onsite and get them signed between sessions!
I too had no idea NaNoWriMo was an actual thing, not just a hashtag!