Ebury signs new four-book deal with Pam Ayres

Ebury has acquired four new titles from Pam Ayres as part of a major deal, with early material showing the poet to be “absolutely at her peak”.

This will include four new Ebury publications, starting this autumn with Up in the Attic, her first new collection since 2013’s You Made Me Late Again! Publisher Andrew Goodfellow bought world rights from Vivien Green at Sheil Land.

Ayres is one of the nation’s best-known poets who first found fame on “Opportunity Knocks” in 1975 propelled her to fame. She continues to perform her sell-out tours, and her poetry collections have all reached the heights of the bestseller lists, Ebury said.

In addition to her new collection, the deal includes “a beautiful illustrated anthology of her best-loved animal poems”, a reissue of the classic collection With These Hands and, for her 75th birthday, the long-awaited Complete Poems.

Ayres said: “I am really pleased to continue my happy relationship with Ebury, and am looking forward to the first of the books, my new collection of poems Up in the Attic, being published in the autumn.”

Goodfellow revealed it gave him "great personal pleasure to be able to cement our relationship as Pam’s publisher for the future".

He said: “We have exciting plans for both her front list and extensive backlist to create a strong publishing brand for Pam that will find her many new fans and reacquaint her with old ones too. The early sightings of poems from the new collection show Pam absolutely at her peak, mixing her warm observational wit with a rich reflective tone, and the Collected Works in 2022 will be Ebury event publishing at its best. It will form the centrepiece of a huge celebration of Pam’s career and legacy as Britain’s most loved popular poet. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”