The Mermaid Chair, is being adapted as an original TV movie for Lifetime Television. Randy Robinson of Randwell Productions is Executive Producer and Suzette Couture is onboard to write the script.

On June 26, 2005, The Mermaid Chair hit the #1 spot on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction.

The Secret Life of Bees has been a successful and popular pick for city-wide, one-book reading programs. These programs, which originated at the Seattle Public Library, began with the idea of bringing people together around the same book. Cities that have read The Secret Life of Bees together have sponsored creative programs, including public book discussions, art exhibits, lectures, panels, school writing contests, workshops, luncheons, and dramatic performances.

On May 16, 2005 Sue Monk Kidd read from her novel The Mermaid Chair at the Lincoln Center in New York as part of “A Gala Evening of Readings”. The event was a benefit for Literacy Partners and “a celebration of the power of the written word.” The other three readers were Edward P. Jones, Lauren Bacall and Renee Fleming. The evening raised $1.1 million dollars for literacy in New York City.

There are presently over 4.5 million copies of The Secret Life of Bees in print in the U.S. , and over 850,000 hardback copies of The Mermaid Chair in print.

The Mermaid Chair has been chosen as the main selection of the Book of the Month Club and featured alternate of the Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club.

The Mermaid Chair will be translated and published in the following countries: UK, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Portugal, Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Spain, Brazil, Israel, France, Bulgaria, Taiwan, Greece, Indonesia and Holland.

La Vida Secreta de Las Abejas, a Spanish edition of The Secret Life of Bees is to be published April 5, 2005.

The Secret Life of Bees was awarded the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year in paperback on June 4 at BOOK EXPO AMERICA in Chicago. The award is presented annually by Book Sense, a national organization of independent booksellers. Jane Pauley presented the award to Sue. In her comments, Sue expressed gratitude to “booksellers , her publisher, and her readers” The finalists were Atonement, Life of Pi, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff.

Since The Secret Life of Bees was published in 2002, approximately three and a half million copies of the hardcover and paperback have been sold.