Welcome to The Clennett Report
Everything Books and Publishing Australia
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Hello everyone 😄
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The Australian independent booksellers have announced the winners for 2026 ‘s Indie Book Awards. One of our very own editors has won an award!
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Book of the Year: Wild Dark Shore / Charlotte McConaghy
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Non-fiction: Always Home, Always Homesick / Hannah Kent
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Debut Fiction: When Sleeping Women Wake / Emma Pei Yin
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Illustrated Nonfiction: Wild by Design / Tim Pilgrim
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Children’s: Silverborn / Jessica Townsend
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Young Adult: Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire / Amy Doak
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Hachette has cancelled the US release and withdrawn the UK edition of Shy Girl by Mia Ballard after speculation that AI has been used in the creation of the book. The author has said that when the book was previously self-published, an editor she hired previously had used AI to assist with the editing without her knowledge. Many reviews on Goodreads and Reddit have shown comments from reviewers that have suspected that the book was written with AI. Most of these comments have come from this video that has prompted a lot of this discourse and also because the author was involved in a scandal of sorts when her self-published cover artwork featured an original painting that had not been used with permission.
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The new Reaching Australian Readers report has been released. The full report can be read here but some key findings are:
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Targeted strategies are most effective
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Strategies worked best when readers could fit the message into their own routines
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The more that a strategy made someone confident to read, the more successful it was
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1) capture attention, 2) feel relevant, 3) prompt reflection on how it fits into the readers life, 4) make them feel confident about finding/reading books, 5) make reading feel achievable
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Different strategies work best for different reading journeys
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Practical, low-effort tactics resonated
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Baseline intentions strongly shape how people respond
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140 Australian bookshops have signed up for the inaugral Global Book Crawl. This year 12 seperate book crawls will take place. Everyone who participates will recieve a free audiobook from Libro.FM and there will be exclusive Penguin Personas Collectible Cards, tote bags and other promotions at different locaions. It takes place 20-26 April.
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Newcastle Writers Festival kicks off today and runs all weekend. The full program can be seen here.
Books in the Media
National
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Black Bag / Luke Kennard (Fiction)
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Enough Said / Alan Bennett (Biography)
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Griefdogg / Michael Winkler (Fiction)
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Judy Blume: A life / Mark Oppenheimer (Biography)
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Minor Black Figures / Brandon Taylor (Fiction)
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Permanence / Sophie Mackintosh (Fiction)
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Python’s Kiss: Stories / Louise Erdrich (Fiction)
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Ruins, Child / Giada Scodellaro (Fiction)
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The News from Dublin / Colm Tóibín (Fiction)
NSW, VIC, WA
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The Cross Thieves / Alan Fyfe (Fiction)
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Joan Crawford / Scott Eyman (Biography)
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Judy Blume: A life / Mark Oppenheimer (Biography)
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Kin / Tayari Jones (Fiction)
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Look After Your Feet / Rosalie Ham (Fiction)
QLD
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The Cross Thieves / Alan Fyfe (Fiction)
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The Hobart Hotel / Mary-Lou Stephens (Fiction)
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Joan Crawford / Scott Eyman (Biography)
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Judy Blume: A life / Mark Oppenheimer (Biography)
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Kin / Tayari Jones (Fiction)
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The Last of Earth / Deepa Anappara (Fiction)
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Look After Your Feet / Rosalie Ham (Fiction)
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So, I Met This Guy… / Alexandra Potter (Fiction)
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The Winter Warriors / Olivier Norek (Fiction)
SA
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The Hobart Hotel / Mary-Lou Stephens (Fiction)
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The Last of Earth / Deepa Anappara (Fiction)
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So, I Met This Guy… / Alexandra Potter (Fiction)
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The Winter Warriors / Olivier Norek (Fiction)
TAS
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The Last of Earth / Deepa Anappara (Fiction)
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The Nocturnals / Frances Whiting (Fiction)
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So, I Met This Guy… / Alexandra Potter (Fiction)
Information gathered from Books+Publishing, The Guardian
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Featured Blog Posts
The Cathartic Memoir – I’ve journeyed from contempt to enthusiasm
Why write and publish a memoir? Will anyone be interested?
If I was running a 45 minute training session for indie authors what would be on the curriculum?
Here an experienced indie author publisher shares 4 topics every aspiring self-publisher needs to know.
Self-publish your book by raising funds through crowdfunding
You can fully finance you project (and more) if you apply the necessary effort.
Is Goodreads good for authors?
Estimated reading...
What is typesetting?
Estimated reading...
Social media marketing for authors
Social media...
Have you got the book hierarchy blues?
Estimated reading...
The economics of selling your book
Estimated reading...
What 99.9% of authors don’t know.
Estimated reading...
Three tips for drafting your own work
Estimated reading...
