After fans of the romance author Colleen Hoover bombarded her publisher with thousands of tweets and Facebook pleas, Atria has finally bowed to the pressure and agreed to turn Hoover's free ebook Finding Cinderella into a print book.

The bestselling novelist published the standalone novella, featuring the characters Daniel and Six from her Hopeless series, as a free ebook for fans last autumn. But her readers – calling themselves the CoHorts – wanted more, and took to Facebook and Twitter in their thousands calling for the book to be released in print.

Yesterday, Atria Books said yes: "5,000 tweets, hundreds of posts and memes, and a few Harry Connick Jr references later, we've finally announced that we are printing the book," it announced. "Because you can't smell an e-reader, and [fans'] shelves were lonely."

The new edition will be published in paperback on 18 March, featuring an exclusive new epilogue, a note from the author, and fan tweets from the #FindingCinderella campaign.

"I just spent the last hour-and-a-half watching something incredible take place on Twitter.  Hundreds upon hundreds of tweets and pleas from readers, begging for this book to be put into print and Atria agreeing to do it," said Hoover. "When I write a book, I still have that fear that no one will like it, no one will read it and people will throw eggs at me.  But you guys continue to amaze and surprise me. Atria Books continues to amaze and surprise me.  This life continues to amaze and surprise me."

"Thank you," she told readers, "for making today one of the greatest days ever."

At the Good Ereader blog, Mercy Pilkington said that Atria had "demonstrated its willingness to connect and interact with its customers […] This is a rather exciting amount of publisher-author-fan interaction, and hopefully more publishers will follow suit with this level of engagement," she wrote.