Amazon Publishing signs major Catherine Cookson deal

Amazon Publishing has acquired two new and unseen titles by the late novelist Catherine Cookson, including a memoir.

The deal for world English rights, excluding hardback, was struck between Emilie Marneur at Amazon Publishing and Sonia Land at Sheil Land Associates. Amazon said the print books will be available to “anyone who would like to carry them” in the UK, including bookshops, libraries and major retailers, through Gardners.

The new books are a fiction novel entitled Saint Christopher and the Gravedigger and a non-fiction title, A Catherine Cookson Memoir, and were found in Cookson’s home before she died, Land said.

“It was a complete revelation that she had written them so many years prior to her death,” said the agent. “One of them is a memoir from the saddest and perhaps the most painful time of her life, yet she pulled through this period to write many bestsellers in the years ahead. The other book is a refreshingly funny fictional work written in 1952.”

Cookson’s works were previously published in print by Transworld and in digital by Land, who released the e-books directly on Amazon through her own company, Peach Publishing.

Amazon is now planning a “revival promotion” for Cookson’s backlist. “With Amazon having all of Catherine’s e-books available to readers and fans around the world, it was fitting that Amazon Publishing publish these two books,” Land said. “Not only will they put its promotional might behind these never-been- seen-before publications but it will be promoting her backlist titles at the same time to reach new readers.”