Page moves from OMC to sign two new titles with HarperFiction

Sally Page is moving from digital division One More Chapter to sign two new titles with HarperFiction, as the publisher celebrates a quarter of a million in sales.

Martha Ashby, publishing director, and Lucy Stewart, editor, bought UK and commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Tanera Simons at Darley Anderson Agency. The first novel, as yet untitled, will publish in autumn 2023 with the next to follow a year later.  

The first novel follows three unlikely friends connected by Highgate Cemetery: Jo, struggling with inheriting her uncle’s stationery shop; Ruth, a runaway vicar; and Malcolm, haunted by the ghosts of the past.  

Page’s début novel, The Keeper of Stories, about an ordinary woman who collects stories from the families for whom she cleans, has now hit successive number ones for The Bookseller’s Heatseekers chart, Kindle, Amazon books and the overall Amazon charts. HarperCollins said it has ambitious plans to continue and grow sales throughout the autumn and into the winter.

Page said: “Charlotte Ledger at OMC was the only publisher to offer for The Keeper of Stories. I am pleased to say she is clearly a publisher who knows what readers like, and she took almost as much pleasure as I did in watching my book rise up the charts – and then stay there! I am absolutely delighted to be continuing my publishing journey with HarperCollins by signing with HarperFiction for my next two books. As soon as I met the team, I felt a connection and a shared enthusiasm for what I was trying to do. Plus I knew that with Martha and Lucy I was in very safe hands.” 

Ashby added: “The Keeper of Stories has been an outstanding success this year: a novel that readers read, love and recommend again and again, showing the true power of stories, as Sally herself well knows. We absolutely jumped at the opportunity to bring her on to the HarperFiction list and continue to grow her career – she’s a star in the making, a reader favourite and her next book is just as uplifting and life-affirming!”