The astonishing thing about the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, which was presented to Melanie Cheng this week, is the consistency with which the judges come up with a winner who then proves a great success as a published author.

"It seems to have the magic touch," Pan Macmillan publishing director Cate Patterson says.

The award started in 2003 and Carrie Tiffany won for Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living. It went on to win a WA premier's award and was shortlisted both for the Miles Franklin and Orange prizes. Subsequent winners include crime writer Angela Savage, Peggy Frew, whose second novel, Hope Farm, is shortlisted for this year's Miles Franklin, Graeme Simsion, the award's greatest success story, whose The Rosie Project has sold more than 3 million copies around the world, Maxine Beneba Clarke, and last year Jane Harper with The Dry.

Shortlisted authors who have gone on to greater glory include Emily Bitto, who won the Stella Prize for The Strays, Lisa Jacobson, whose verse novel The Sunlit Zone subsequently won the Adelaide Festival poetry award, Jacinta Halloran and Chris Womersley.

So do publishers pay attention to the progress of the award each year? "It's absolutely the done thing that agents and publishers will swoop on the shortlist," says Patterson, who published The Dry. She says that there aren't many gatekeepers now. "Agents and publishers can't keep up with their own slush piles these days. Respected judges produce the shortlists so it's something that the manuscripts have been judged." And Black Inc., publisher Aviva Tuffield, who published Frew's first novel, said the award immediately fast-tracked writers once they were shortlisted.

"Since The Rosie Project people have realised that more commercial books can be entered, not just literary manuscripts. It's a reasonable amount of money and authors are choosing to enter the prize rather than the Vogel. The other thing is that it's independent; it's not linked to a particular publisher like other unpublished manuscript awards are."

The Sisters get new backing

Good news for the Sisters in Crime and their Davitt Awards. This year they are to be sponsored by online book retailer Booktopia. Booktopia boss Tony Nash says he wants to support Australian writers.

"The Davitt Awards have done an impressive job in convincing Australian publishers to back local women crime writers," he said. "Women's crime writing is on a huge wave and we should all be catching it."

The Davitts will presented on August 27 at the Thornbury Theatre. Liane Moriarty will be guest of honour. sistersincrime.org.au

Ian McEwan's latest twist

Ian McEwan has created many surprises in his novels, particularly early in his career, but perhaps never like the one coming in his new novel, Nutshell, that will be published in September. This time the narrator is an unborn child with only two weeks left in its mother's womb.

Described as a tale of murder and deceit, here's the publisher's puff: "Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home – a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse – but not with John. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb."

A bit different from his recent stuff.