On March 7th, 2013, a friend of Brosh under the handle 'Minion' took over her personal Facebook fan page. The following day, Brosh responded to the thread wherein she revealed that she had been taking a hiatus to seek help. In March 2012, Redditor honeytrap submitted a question to /r/AskReddit inquiring about Brosh's whereabouts. As of April 2013, there has not been another update to Hyperbole and a Half. On October 27th, 2011, she posted Adventures in Depression, touching on her ongoing struggle with clinical depression. In August 2011, Brosh posted a note to the Facebook fan page to explain her extended absence due to her working on the book. As of April 2013, the book is ranked #7 on Amazon 's Comic Strips chart, slated for release on October 29th, 2013.

On April 5th, 2013, Touchstone Books posted a photo of the manuscript to their Instagram account, which was shared two days later on the /r/Books subreddit and earned more than 3,700 upvotes. Following the announcement of the book deal, Brosh ceased to update the comic blog regularly. In May 2011, Brosh announced on her blog that she had signed a book deal with Touchstone with an anticipated release date of fall 2012, half of which would be brand new material and the other half taken from the blog. The following month, Brosh did an interview with True/Slant where she described her writing and drawing processes and noted Rage Guy as one of her artistic influences. The same month, she was able to earn enough money from merchandise sales to make blogging her full time job. In April 2010, Brosh contributed a bear fashion guide based on her bear comics to The Gloss.

The blog began receiving large amounts of attention in the first half of 2010, when it was featured on Serious Eats, Skippy's List, Strange Future and Beauty Geeks. Later that month, Brosh began incorporating drawings in to her posts illustrating a story in which she accidentally drank from a sprinkler releasing pesticides. Brosh launched Hyperbole and a Half in July 2009, opening with a text post dedicated to the loud basslines emanating from her neighbor's apartment.

Hyperbole and a half comics