What Publishers Want

Anita Heiss is an internationally published, award-winning author of 25 books across genres. She's a proud member of the Wiradyuri Nation, a Lifetime Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. 

Anita adapted her novel Tiddas for the stage and it premiered at La Boite as part of the 2022 Brisbane Festival, and was featured in the Sydney Festival, 2024.

Anita is Publisher at Large for the First Nations imprint Bundyi (Simon & Schuster, Australia). She enjoys running, eating chocolate and being a creative disruptor. 

Ben is the proprietor of Paradigm Print Media, a Brisbane-based print management business that specialises in printing books. Established in 2003, Paradigm has assisted Brisbane, Australian and International clients produce high quality publications. He has worked with both publishers and self-publishers in that time, witnessing the strategies that led them to successful outcomes.

Samuel Bernard is a freelance writer, critic, and editor, who joined Zeitgeist as a Literary Agent in 2023.

He writes for The Weekend Australian’s ‘Notable Books’ column, as well as a monthly opinion column for Good Reading Magazine and has appeared in the Australian Book Review and Backstory Journal. He has also been an editor for Verge Literary Journal, published by Monash University Publishing.

Sam has a Master of Writing from Swinburne University and was working on a PhD in Creative Writing at Monash University, before deciding that the publishing industry was where he wanted to be. Shortly after ceasing his PhD, he began work as a Literary Agent at Zeitgeist Agency.

Terri-ann White is Publisher, Upswell Publishing, a new literary imprint started in mid-2021 in Perth. In the past she has been a bookseller, a writer, and a professor at the University of Western Australia: teaching, directing a cross-disciplinary research centre, and publishing books in a university setting.

Alexandra Payne is a publisher at Murdoch Books, Australia’s leading lifestyle publisher. She has worked in publishing for more than two decades at a number of houses including Penguin and Hardie Grant. More recently, she was the Non-Fiction Publisher at UQP, where books she commissioned won awards such as the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the QLD Literary Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for History. At Murdoch Books, she focuses on the genres of sustainable living, personal development, health, narrative non-fiction and anything off the beaten track. She’s enthralled by books, authors and readers and firmly believes books can change the world.