Presidential royalties
President Obama's income as a published author has declined over the past couple of years, but he still managed to earn $477,000 in 2014. He gets $400,000 a year as leader of the free world and his tax return shows that most of his income on top of that figure comes from sales of his books, Dreams From my Father, The Audacity of Hope, and Of Thee I Sing. In 2009, he earned $5.5 million - a chunk of that came from winning the Nobel Prize for Peace - but that dipped to $662,000 in 2012, and $503,000 the following year. However, with a presidential election next year, and plenty of free time looming after that, he'll be able to get back to earning the big money by writing a memoir. After all, when Bill Clinton left office he received a reported $15 million advance for My Life.
To Booktown and beyond
The first weekend of May is going to be literary whopper in central Victoria, what with the Clunes Booktown Festival and the nearby Newstead Short Story Tattoo. At the Booktown a host of booksellers will offer secondhand, collectible and specialist titles - every sort of book under the rainbow. Writers such as David Day, Hannie Rayson, Clare Wright and Michael Mori will be talking about their work. See clunesbooktwon.com.au. Up the road at Newstead, the tattoo (the official "fringe events" activity of Clunes Booktown) arts-music-storytelling event will feature Christos Tsiolkas, Joe Dolce, Clementine Ford, MTC Cronin, Gary Foley, Kirsten Krauth and Neil Boyack. newsteadtattoo.org
Swooping on a prize-winning book
Someone once said that the character Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones is like that of a bird of prey so perhaps it's no surprise that Lena Headey, who plays the voracious Queen in the TV adaptation of George R. R. Martin's fantasy series, has bought the film rights to H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald's award-winning memoir of dealing with her grief on the death of her father by plunging into the world of goshawks. In September last year, Headey tweeted her enthusiasm for the book, telling her followers to "read this. Don't steal it. Buy it and read it".
Shortlists for the big industry awards
Shortlists for this year's Australian Book Industry Awards have been announced. General fiction: Lost & Found, Brooke Davis; Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty; Laurinda, Alice Pung; Life or Death, Michael Robotham; The Rosie Effect, Graeme Simsion. Literary fiction: Amnesia, Peter Carey; Foreign Soil, Maxine Beneba Clarke; Golden Boys, Sonya Hartnett; The Golden Age, Joan London; When the Night Comes, Favel Parrett. General nonfiction: The Wife Drought, Annabel Crabb; Gallipoli, Peter FitzSimons; This House of Grief, Helen Garner; Where Song Began, Tim Low; The Bush, Don Watson. Biography: Optimism, Bob Brown; My Story, Julia Gillard; Love Your Sister, Connie & Samuel Johnson; Never, Um, Ever Ending Story, Molly Meldrum; A Bone of Fact, David Walsh. Winners will be revealed on May 21. Other categories: abiawards.com.au
