Ebury signs trio of books from Rosen

Ebury Press has acquired three new non-fiction books from Michael Rosen exploring trauma, recovery and language. 

Robyn Drury, commissioning editor for Ebury Press, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights in the trio from Charles Walker at United Agents. 

The first book, Getting Better, will be a narrative memoir of trauma and recovery, and the role they have played in the author’s life. "It will discuss the death of his teenage son Eddie, his experiences with chronic illness, and his long road to recovery following his near-death experience with Covid-19, and will also explore how we return to our lives following traumatic experiences," Ebury said. Rosen spent eight weeks in the intensive care unit at Whittington Hospital after contracting Covid-19 last year and was at one point given a 50:50 chance of waking up from an induced coma.  

Getting Better will be published in early 2023. The second and third books will explore aspects of language and poetic language with publication in the autumn of 2023 and 2024 respectively.  

The news comes shortly after the publication of Many Different Kinds of Love (Ebury), an exploration of his Covid-19 ordeal. It be released in paperback on 31st March 2022. Sticky McStickstick, a memoir picture book from Rosen, illustrated by Tony Ross, exploring Rosen's personal experience of illness and recovery from Covid-19, will be published by Walker this autumn.

Drury said of the new three-book deal: “The response to the publication of Many Different Kinds of Love has been absolutely overwhelming – one of the highlights of my publishing career. It has been a joy to see the love that readers and booksellers alike have shown one of Britain’s favourite authors, and I’m incredibly excited to be working on three new books with Michael. Getting Better will be a deeply personal and powerful book that will resonate with so many readers and we can’t wait to publish it.” 

Rosen said: “If you write about yourself, it's a bit like walking along by the side of a swimming pool, watching yourself swimming. This year, it's felt a bit like watching myself being saved from drowning. The result has been Many Different Kinds of Love. It's been both moving and gratifying to have received such an appreciative response, some from people who themselves suffered Covid, or who lost a loved one. Others have talked of similar experiences telling me they found a 'home' in my words.” 

He added: "The last part of Many Different Kinds of Love is about recovery, or should I say, 'trying to recover'. This is what I'm still trying to do, still trying to figure out how to live with what's happened. As I've thought more about recovering, it's thrown me back to other episodes in my life where I've had to find new ways of living.”  

Rosen will reflect on how he has tried to recover from various traumas. He explained: “When I was 17, I was badly injured in a car accident; between the ages of about 22 and 35 I was slowly going under with hypothyroidism; and in 1999, my son Eddie died. Each of these events — and there are others — have pushed me into figuring out what to do: day by day, month by month, year by year. In a way these are versions of what we all have to do at some point or another in our lives, so I'm looking forward to reflecting on this, sharing my thoughts which I hope will be useful for others. It'll be called Getting Better — an optimistic title, I think.” 

Rosen has sold 2.7 million books for £15.6m in the UK through Nielsen BookScan since 1998, with We're Going on a Bear Hunt (Walker) his bestseller and one of just two books that has never dropped out of the weekly top 5,000.