Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: Alice Osman, graphic novel, Heartstopper

Now Heartstopper Volume 5 Is Also The Best Selling Book In The USA

Alice Oseman’s LGBTQ+ young adult graphic novel Heartstopper Volume 5 is now the best-selling book in the USA as well as the UK.

Last week, Bleeding Cool reported that the latest instalment of Alice Oseman's LGBTQ+ young adult Heartstopper series had become the UK's fastest-selling graphic novel to date. With Heartstopper Volume 5 selling 60,012 copies in the first three days after its release alone, from the 7th of December. This made it the overall best-selling book of the week in the UK across all categories and sold 15,000 more copies than the second-placed book in the charts, Pinch of Nom: Express. It had already been named the highest-selling children's book in over two years.

But what about America? Well, it is now the best-selling book in the USA as well. Even as it has been targeted by conservative parent groups, trying to get certain books banned from schools, volume 5 sold 90,000 in its first week of sale in the US.

The first three books released in 2020 and 2021 sold a combined 100,000 in those years, but the Netflix TV adaptation in 2022 saw volume 4 alone sell over 180,000 copies in print by the end of that year. In total, the five volumes have currently sold 1,400,000 copies in the US.

The Heartstopper series was originally a webcomic, self-published by Alice Oseman to Tumblr and Tapas, and was begun during the final year of her English degree. She crowdfunded a small print-run, a copy of which recently sold for over $300. Hachette Children's Group published the first collected volume in 2019. The upcoming sixth part of the Heartstopper series for 2024 will be the final volume.

Philip Stone, who works for Nielsen BookData, the company that publishes the UK book chart, tells the Guardian that "sales of graphic novels have boomed in recent years, helped by the popularity of adaptations on both the big and small screens. None more so than Heartstopper, the adaptation of which has become a global hit, earning rave reviews from critics and audiences alike, and propelling a boost in sales for its source material."

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