A children's book is Book of the Year for the first time in the 15-year-old Australian Book Industry Awards.
The 52-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and illustrator Terry Denton also won the prize for best book for younger children, praised for its "huge impact on encouraging young children to read, particularly boys".
The funny fantasy-adventure story was the best-selling book in Australia in 2014 and is the fourth in the Treehouse series, which has total sales of 1.5 million in Australia and New Zealand and is selling well in the US.
Brooke Davis, another international success with her first novel Lost & Found, won the awards for general fiction and Matt Richell New Writer of the Year, a new award honouring the chief executive of Hachette Australia, who died surfing last year.
Maxine Beneba Clarke's debut short-story collection, Foreign Soil, added literary fiction book of the year to her accolades, ahead of veterans Peter Carey and Joan London.
The founder of Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art, David Walsh, won the biography award for his unconventional memoir, A Bone of Fact, over books by Julia Gillard and Molly Meldrum. Biologist Tim Low's popular book about Australian birds, Where Song Began, is general non-fiction book of the year, and the beautiful Anzac Treasures by Peter Pederson is illustrated book of the year.
Other children's book awards went to Withering-by-Sea by Judith Rossell, and Tea and Sugar Christmas by Jane Jolly and Robert Ingpen. Bob Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister won the new award for a small publishers' adult book, and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is international book of the year.
Winners are chosen by publishers, booksellers and other book industry members, reflecting creative, marketing and sales success.
Among the business winners: Andy Griffiths' publisher Pan Macmillan is publisher of the year, Black Inc. (small publisher), Dymocks (national book retailer), Booktopia (online book retailer). Hardie Grant publishers won the innovation award, Melbourne bookseller Mark Rubbo won the Lloyd O'Neil career award and Melbourne's Avenue Bookstore is independent book retailer of the year.
Andy Griffiths, Brooke Davis and Maxine Beneba Clarke are at Sydney Writers' Festival, this Friday to Sunday.
