Bloomsbury marks one million milestone for Eddo-Lodge with updated edition

Bloomsbury is releasing an updated edition of Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, which the publisher says has now sold more than one million copies across all editions.

First published in June 2017, the book won the Jhalak Prize and the British Book Award for Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year. 

The new edition, out on 21st July, features a fresh chapter by Eddo-Lodge which sees her try to "take stock" of the past five years.

"In June 2020, as the world reckoned with the horror of the recent murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement reached new heights and activists took to the streets in the UK and around the world," the publisher said in a statement. "As people sought to educate themselves on endemic and structural racism and make sense of the moment they found themselves in, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race was repeatedly recommended as a resource." 

Eddo-Lodge is an award-winning journalist, and has written for the New York Times, the Voice, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Stylist, Inside Housing, Dazed and Confused and the New Humanist. In 2020, she became the first Black British author since records began to top the overall Nielsen charts, and in 2021 she received a Nielsen Gold Bestseller Award for sales of more than 500,000.

"When my book was featured on an episode of ’EastEnders’, it truly hit home to me that it had become a cultural phenomenon," she said. "I felt compelled to write this brand new chapter so I could try and take stock of the past five years – the global consciousness raising that took place in the summer of 2020, the ominous government pushback, and the small and big ways that our world has shifted.

"I could never have envisaged any of this when my book was first published, and I know it couldn’t have become what it has without its readers. It has prompted so many conversations, I had to respond."

Bloomsbury editor-in-chief Paul Baggaley added: "When Reni’s ground-breaking book was first published, it was immediately recognised as one of the most important and influential books about society and race, influencing a whole generation of readers. Over the next five years its significance has grown, as both a landmark publication and a book that has become even more relevant to the society we live in. I know that it will continue to inspire and guide us for many years to come as Reni’s ideas resonate with ever more readers. It is remarkable when any book reaches sales of one million copies and we couldn’t be prouder to be the publishers of Reni and of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race."