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The Borough Press announces slew of special editions for Yellowface paperback campaign
The Borough Press has announced a range of paperback special editions of Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang, which will be released on 9th May 2024.
A critical and commercial hit in hardback – with UK hardback sales alone at 125,000, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market – the paperback publication of Yellowface will also be accompanied by an ambitious PR and marketing campaign.
Blackwells will be launching a Yellowface cover tie-in gift card on publication, and a black sprayed-edge edition of the book will be available exclusively through independent bookshops. A yellow sprayed-edge edition will be available through Sainsbury’s, while the classic trade edition will complete the set.
Moreover, Waterstones has announced an exclusive edition containing not-yet-seen material from Kuang’s next novel, Katabasis, which is due to be released in summer 2025. This edition will be rolled out across Waterstones, Foyles and Blackwell’s.
Yellowface was selected as Foyles’ Fiction Book of the Year and Amazon’s Book of the Year, and was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. It has also been shortlisted for a 2024 British Book Award.
The PR and marketing campaign for the paperback edition will include festival appearances and events throughout the year – including a week-long tour in October – and bespoke offerings for every retailer. Meanwhile, the marketing campaign will further develop the activity programmed on hardback publication, with a focus on student engagement, on-street "pancake pop-ups" and book club activity.
"It has been phenomenal to see the response to Yellowface so far across the trade, and our special edition paperback plans reflect how wide a reach this incredible novel has," said Ann Bissell, deputy publishing director of The Borough Press. "Rebecca has not only captured the zeitgeist, but has skewered it to the page with her razor-sharp wit and gloves-off satire in this addictive literary thriller."
Kuang added: "It means a lot to me that this novel, which is so critical about the way we select and talk about books, has received such a warm welcome in the UK. I take this to indicate that we are all frustrated with a publishing ecosystem that commodifies identity, that limits representation to one or two exhausting examples, that tells marginalised authors the only thing interesting about them is their pain."
