'Cat Person' to be published as standalone paperback

Jonathan Cape will publish the New Yorker short story which went viral, ‘Cat Person’, as a standalone paperback.

Kristen Roupenian’s provocative tale of online dating will be published as a “beautiful physical edition” with black and white photographs in May, ahead of Cape’s publication of the short story collection next year.

It will be targeted partly at the gift market with Roupenian scheduled to visit the week of its release.

‘Cat Person’ triggered a record-breaking response from readers, becoming one of the New Yorker's most read pieces of 2017, despite being published in December, and provoked huge discussions about gender, sex and the #MeToo movement across social media and the press.

Cape snapped up Roupenian’s debut, the seven-story strong story collection You Know You Want This, days after 'Cat Person' was published. Less than a week later, Simon & Schuster US imprint Scout Press bought it as part of a two-book deal, believed to be worth around $1.2m (£900,000) and the collection went on to be sold in more than 20 other territories.

A spokesperson for Cape confirmed that ‘Cat Person’ would be published as a standalone paperback on 3rd May and that the Vintage imprint plans to bring Roupenian over to the UK for the week commencing 30th April. The price of the book has not yet been confirmed.

The spokesperson told The Bookseller: “The cover is designed by [Vintage creative director] Suzanne Dean and the insides will feature black and white photographs by Elinor Carucci, who took the now-famous ‘kiss’ photograph that accompanied the story on the New Yorker website.”

Michal Shavit, Cape’s publishing director, who pre-empted UK and Commonwealth rights for the short story collection in December, told The Bookseller: ‘‘Cat Person’ is the most talked-about short story of modern times and lots of readers have expressed a wish for a version they can own or give as a gift. So we wanted to publish a beautiful physical edition that they could.”

You Know You Want This explores the “complex - and often dark and funny - connections between gender, sex, and power, across genres”  and is slated for publication in February 2019.

Earlier this month it was announced that US entertainment company A24 had bought a horror film script by Roupenian titled "Bodies Bodies Bodies".