After five years in hardcover, Angie Thomas’ bestseller The Hate U Give will finally arrive in paperback this spring, according to a release from publisher HarperCollins.
Thomas’ 2017 YA novel about a Black teenage girl who witnesses her friend killed by a White police officer has been on the New York Times bestseller list in hardcover for 248 weeks and counting. The Hate U Give has sold more than 3.5 million copies, been translated into 35 languages, and was adapted for a film in 2018.
The novel was also a Kirkus Prize finalist; the Kirkus reviewer concluded, “This story is necessary. This story is important.”
Paperback editions typically appear about a year after a book’s publication in hardcover, so a multiyear wait is evidence of a book’s robust hardcover sales. Dan Brown’s 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code, didn’t appear in paperback for three years. Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing appeared in paperback two and a half years after the hardcover.
This spring will also mark the arrival in paperback of Concrete Rose, Thomas’ 2021 prequel to Hate.
In a statement, Thomas expressed thanks to her readers for how the novels’ message has been received and amplified. “To say that the past five years since The Hate U Give was first published have been amazing would be an understatement.…I’m grateful for the conversations these books have created and the voices that are no longer silent because of them,” she said. “The love they have received is far greater than the hate anyone can give.”
The paperback editions of The Hate U Give and Concrete Rose go on sale May 3.
Mark Athitakis is a journalist in Phoenix who writes about books for Kirkus, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.
