The Indie Book Awards are the first national awards of the year and perhaps the only ones in which Peter Carey's cynical political satire, Amnesia, will sit on the shortlist with Graeme Simsion's best-selling romantic comedy, The Rosie Effect.
They can also be read as a guide to potential winners of later awards: last year's overall Indie winner, Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, went on to take the Man Booker Prize.
Peter Carey and five others have withdrawn from a gala after it was announced Charlie Hebdo would be receiving an award.Credit: Steven Siewert
Winners will be chosen by panels of booksellers (and announced on March 25) from entries nominated and voted for by independent bookshops across Australia, which help to champion unsung books and keep printed books alive.
On the 2015 fiction shortlist with Carey and Simsion are Favel Parrett's second novel, When the Night Comes, and Sonya Hartnett's 22nd, Golden Boys.
Amnesia by Peter Carey.
"The judging is both democratic and informed," said Lindy Jones at Abbey's Bookshop in Sydney who judged the fiction and is also on the Miles Franklin panel. "It's a good list because it is inclusive."
Finalists for the non-fiction award are The House of Grief by Helen Garner, Bush by Don Watson, Where Song Began by Tim Low and Cadence by Emma Ayres. On the children's and young-adult shortlist are The 52-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton, Pig the Pug by Aaron Blabey, Withering by Sea by Judith Rossell and Laurinda by Alice Pung. And shortlisted for the debut fiction award are Lost & Found by Brooke Davis, Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clark, The Strays by Emily Bitto and After Darkness by Christine Piper.
Jenny Barry at Books Plus, Bathurst's only bookshop, judged the debut fiction and said, "We're seeing some fantastic new voices being supported, and it's a remarkably strong list across all categories. Don Watson's Bush is a seminal book but I wondered if it would make the shortlist; it seems an indie book is an indie book across the country."
Bookshops have taken a battering but Barry said after 18 hard months to mid-2014 she and her colleagues "feel really optimistic and really supported by customers. That has to be partly the quality of the books coming through."
When Jones started at Abbey's 15 years ago there were 20 bookshops within two city blocks and now there are four or five. High rents are the main problem, she said, even when sales are strong.
"We're hanging in and still serving customers well, but we're in it for love, not money," she said. "Icons can disappear if you don't come in and buy books."