Meet the very modern Mrs Mop who sparked ‘incredible’ publishing frenzy
Sophie Hinchliffe attracts ‘six-figure’ book deal after creating army of fans for her online cleaning videos
DOMESTIC cleaning guides have been helping us maintain a gleaming home for more than 150 years. But the manual has been given a modern makeover by a cleaning-mad social media star, who has won a lucrative book deal after a “heated” bidding war by 11 publishers.
Sophie Hinchliffe – known to her 1.4million Instagram followers as Mrs Hinch – is a 28-year-old hairdresser who was unknown just nine months ago, before she began recording videos of her cleaning her humble Essex home.
She is now due to publish her first book, Hinch Yourself Happy: All The Best Cleaning Tips To Shine Your Sink and Soothe Your Soul, which promises to offer readers “clever cleaning tips” for “not only a cleaner house, but a calmer you”.
Her fans, who call themselves the Hinch Army, have even coined a new term for cleaning: “hinching”.
The world rights to Mrs Hinchliffe’s book were acquired by Michael Joseph publishers, part of the Penguin Book group, for an estimated six-figure sum, and it is being positioned as “one of their biggest books for 2019”.
Fenella Bates, a publisher at Michael Joseph, described Mrs Hinchliffe as “a one-woman cleaning phenomenon”.
She said: “In the last month and a half, Mrs Hinch has gained a million followers on Instagram. But this book will be about much more than cleaning. Sophie has openly spoken about suffering from anxiety in the past and has explained how vital cleaning has been for her recovery.”
Fans have described the Instagram page as “a support mechanism”, with one commenting: “I suffer with bad anxiety and panic attacks… the only thing that helps ground me through a bad bout of anxiety is ‘hinching’.”
Her unexpected fame has also been attributed to an online trend known as autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), in which people watch videos of “relaxing” activities, such as cleaning or painting. Dr Giulia Poerio, of the University of Sheffield’s department of psychology, found that people who experienced ASMR showed consistent reductions in heart rate when watching videos of methodical tasks.
Mrs Hinchliffe follows in the footsteps of Shirley Conran, whose cleaning manual Superwoman, published in 1975, was hailed as a “historic volume” that was “full of valuable tips”.
One of the first cleaning manuals published in the UK was Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, originally printed as newspaper columns between 1859 and 1861.
Mrs Hinchliffe announced her book last Wednesday and it quickly climbed to number two on the Amazon book chart, on the strength of pre-orders.
Andrew Bloch, founder of leading PR firm Frank, said the bidding war had been “incredible” and praised Mrs Hinchliffe’s ability to reach “a younger generation through social media in a way that’s aspirational and amusing”.