Text Publishing will launch a series of ‘Australian Classics’ with 30 titles in May. The books, which contain new introductions from various well-known writers, will be priced at $12.95, with 28 of the 30 launch titles to be available as $12.95 ebooks too.

Text publisher Michael Heyward told Bookseller+Publisher ‘we set the price for Text Classics at $12.95 because we want readers to surrender to their impulse to curl up at last with The Women in Black or A Difficult Young Man.’

‘In a world of virtual infinite availability, curatorship is everything in publishing and bookselling. That’s why we are rushing back to the future in which the independent bookstore on the corner will thrive. We all want people we trust to help us make our choices in life, and especially so with books because a huge part of the pleasure of reading is the pleasure of talking about the book afterwards with our friends. Great booksellers all know this and that’s why they take the curatorship of their bookshops so seriously.

A signature series like the Text Classics, in which every book has been handpicked, will allow booksellers to offer their readers something new and something trusted in a collectible edition which is going to be pretty close to the cheapest thing in the bookstore.’

As for the design, Heyward said design director Chong Weng Ho ‘was part of the discussion from the start. ‘We wanted the covers to be like light bulbs in a dark room,’ said Chong. ‘We wanted readers to be cheered up by a good prospect. We wanted to give them art.’

The full list of launch titles is:

• The Commandant (Jessica Anderson, intro by Carmen Callil)
• Homesickness (Murray Bail, intro by Peter Conrad)
• Sydney Bridge Upside Down (David Ballantyne, intro by Kate De Goldi)
• A Difficult Young Man (Martin Boyd, intro by Sonya Hartnett)
• The Australian Ugliness (Robin Boyd, intro by Christos Tsiolkas)
• The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse (John Clarke, intro by John Clarke)
• Diary of a Bad Year (JM Coetzee, intro by Peter Goldsworthy)
• Wake in Fright (Kenneth Cook, intro by Peter Temple)
• The Dying Trade (Peter Corris, intro by Charles Waterstreet)
• They’re a Weird Mob (Nino Culotta, intro by Jacinta Tynan)
• Terra Australis (Matthew Flinders, intro by Tim Flannery)
• My Brilliant Career (Miles Franklin, intro by Jennifer Byrne)
• Cosmo Cosmolino (Helen Garner, intro by Ramona Koval)
• Dark Places (Kate Grenville, intro by Louise Adler)
• The Watch Tower (Elizabeth Harrower, intro by Joan London)
• The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (Fergus Hume, intro by Simon Caterson)
• The Glass Canoe (David Ireland, intro by Nicolas Rothwell)
• The Jerilderie Letter (Ned Kelly, intro by Alex McDermott)
• Bring Larks And Heroes (Thomas Keneally, intro by Geordie Williamson)
• Strine (Afferbeck Lauder, intro by John Clarke)
• Careful, He Might Hear You (Sumner Locke Elliott, intro by Robyn Nevin)
• Stiff (Shane Maloney, intro by Lindsay Tanner)
• The Middle Parts of Fortune (Frederic Manning, intro by Simon Caterson)
• The Scarecrow (Ronald Hugh Morrieson, intro by Craig Sherborne)
• The Dig Tree (Sarah Murgatroyd, intro by Geoffrey Blainey)
• The Plains (Gerald Murnane, intro by Wayne Macauley)
• The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (Henry Handel Richardson, intro by Peter Craven)
• The Women in Black (Madeleine St John, intro by Bruce Beresford)
• An Iron Rose (Peter Temple, intro by Les Carlyon)
• 1788 (Watkin Tench, intro by Tim Flannery).

The National Year of Reading 2012 (NYR2012) initiative will be officially launched on 14 February. The year-long campaign is about teaching children to read, helping readers rediscover the joys of reading, and creating a national reading culture.

The initiative was founded by various libraries and library associations, and brings together government, media, and the bookselling and publishing communities as well as community groups, with more than 100 organisations signed on as partners. Funding partners include the federal Office for the Arts, the federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, the Copyright Agency Limited, the Australia Council for the Arts and the Sidney Myer Fund. Dymocks, Walker Books, Scholastic, Creative Kids Tales and Disney are also official partners.

Author and actor William McInnes is the NYR2012 patron, and is joined by 18 national ambassadors. State and territory ambassadors have so far been announced for New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, with more expected to be announced soon.  A complete list of ambassadors can be seen here.

So how can you get involved?

Our Story

NYR2012 is searching for eight books that represent Australia – one from each state and territory. You can vote on shortlists for each state and territory at your local library or bookshop, or by visiting the ABC website here. But be quick – voting closes on 6 January. The winning books will be announced on 14 February.

The Reading Hour

The Reading Hour will take place on Saturday 25 August 2012 between 6-7pm, and is designed to promote the idea that everyone can benefit from reading for at least an hour a week. Special events will be held in bookshops, libraries and schools to mark the occasion and the Disney Channel will run a dedicated NYR2012 program. More information about the event will be announced on 14 February.

Are We There Yet?

Starting in the Northern Territory in February, primary school children will be able to enter a competition by creating postcards, letters, drawings and photos about their home town or a special place they have visited in Australia. The competition is based on Alison Lester’s book Are We There Yet? (Viking).

Creative Reading Prize

Teenagers can get involved by participating in the National Year of Reading Creative Prize, an extension of the Creative Reading Prize run by the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria. Participants nominate one book they think their peers should read in 2012 and then provide an argument about why the book should be read in the form of a creative response. Visit Inside A Dog to see how the competition has been run in previous years.

As well as these new projects, NYR2012 will also be showcasing existing projects and organisations that promote reading and literacy across Australia, including the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, the Australian Literacy & Numeracy Foundation, and the Smith Family. For more ways to get involved, visit www.love2read.org.au.

Tis the season for ‘best of’ lists, and whether you get your tips from the New York Times, Goodreads or local booksellers/tastemakers such as Jon Page and David Gaunt, this year there are plenty to choose from.

From the local booksellers:

The good folk at Readings have devised multiple ‘best of’ lists, including the intriguingly titled ‘best overlooked books of 2011’, as well as the ‘bestselling ebooks of 2011‘; Pages & Pages’ has compiled its best books of 2011 (owner Jon Page has also nominated his top five reads for 2011 – if you follow him on Twitter these should be self-evident); Gleebooks’ David Gaunt has shared his favourite titles of the past year; Oscar & Friends has announced its staff picks for 2011; several Shearer’s booksellers have blogged about their top picks; and The Women’s Bookshop in New Zealand has compiled its favourite titles for 2011.

From the overseas booksellers:

Barnes and Noble has named its best books for 2011, including a category for ‘quirky, beautiful, different’ titles.

From the media:

The New York Times has released its annual ‘100 notable books’ and ‘10 best books’ lists; Flavourwire has compiled a list of ‘the most criminally overlooked books of 2011′; and there are more ‘best of’ lists from the Guardian, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Salon, NPR and Kirkus Reviews. In local media, the SMH/Age has asked a selection of writers to name their favourite reads of the past year; as has the New Zealand Listener. The Australian has released its Books of the Year over five pages starting here (paywall). The Huffington Post compiled a list of the best food books of 2011 as did the blog Brain Pickings.

From social media:

The winners of the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards have also been announced, with over 600,000 votes cast.

In May this year, the Sydney Story Factory was officially launched. The factory is a not-for-profit centre designed to help children and young adults, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, with writing.

The centre is getting ready to open its writing centre and shop—the Martian Embassy—in Redfern in 2012. Pilot programs are being held in local schools in this area, and this week the factory is holding an art exhibition and auction called Judge a book, buy its cover.

The exhibition showcases work by local artists who have recreated the covers of books selected from a list of Sydney’s 50 favourite books (as voted by readers of the Sydney Morning Herald). There’s 25 new book covers: from classics such as Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, to contemporary favourites like Tim Winton’s Dirt Music and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. To see the artworks, click here. To see the complete list of 50 books, click here.

The Sydney Story Factory was founded by Sydney Morning Herald journalists Catherine Keenan and Tim Dick, and is inspired by similar projects in the United States. A number of Australian writers support the centre, including Geraldine Brooks, Markus Zusak, Peter FitzSimons, Anna Funder, Leigh Sales, James Bradley, Tom Keneally, Malcolm Knox, Gail Jones, Mardi McConnochie, Debra Adelaide and Michael Robothom.

To find out more about the Sydney Story Factory, visit www.sydneystoryfactory.org.au.