Sam Baker to publish manifesto for women over 40

Journalist Sam Baker is publishing a book with Coronet for women aged 40 and over, drawing on her own life experiences – The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too.

Explaining the rationale for the book, The Pool co-founder Baker described women over 40 as "disregarded" while her publishers at Coronet refered to the demographic as an "underrepresented" segment of women despite it being a time when they are likely to have the more freedom, power, confidence and self-knowledge than ever. In The Shift, Baker will share her experiences of life post-40 in a "part-memoir, part-manifesto", showing "how women can create a radical new narrative for what can and should come next".

Coronet publisher Hannah Black, who acquired UK and British Commonwealth rights from Abigail Bergstrom at Gleam Titles, called The Shift "important" and "long overdue" as well as "insistent, funny and necessary". "Sam is the perfect voice and inspirer for a whole generation of underrepresented women. Fiercely intelligent, frank and brilliantly dogged in her search for a better story, Sam shows us that we already have the power — we just need to use it," she added.

Baker added: "The Shift is part-memoir, part-manifesto for women who are staring the second halves of their lives in the face and wondering: WTF is going on? I hit the menopause early - before everyone else I knew - and it felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. But the truth is that, once it passed, the world opened up in a way I never could have imagined. I felt liberated. Released. Empowered. Contrary to all expectations it was brilliant! Why had nobody ever told me? It’s time women north of forty took a leaf out of the millennial handbook and reinvented things our way. This generation of women has been disregarded and this book is about how they can harness their considerable energy, opinions and power to write a new narrative for the second halves of their lives. Younger women have 'Fleabag', How To Be A Woman and Everything I Know About Love. Why should they have all the fun? Hannah got that instantly and I’m thrilled to be working with her and the team at Coronet."

Coronet will publish The Shift in hardback, e-book and audiobook in September 2020.