MrBeast is the king of stunts. His next big challenge? Convincing his more than 500 million YouTube subscribers to log off and read a book.
On Tuesday, the content creator released his first novel, “The Most Dangerous Games,” coauthored with bestselling writer James Patterson. As of Tuesday morning, the book was available for pre-sale and sitting at No. 12 on Amazon’s new releases list. It was No. 73 on Amazon’s overall book list.
“Having the name MrBeast attached to any book is going to get it a ton of immediate awareness and interest,” said Matt Kaye, cofounder and CEO of Bindery Books, a book publisher that works with creators and other tastemakers to launch imprints tailored to their fans.
“We’ll see if the people in his audience who give it a shot love it enough to recommend it to other people,” Kaye said. “However big the name is, the long-term success of a book lies in how much readers love it and recommend it to each other.”
To draw in readers, MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is turning to one of his reliable marketing tactics: dangling a cash prize. Fans who buy the book can enter a competition he’s hosting in September for a chance to win a $1 million prize. The novel contains clues and hidden easter eggs meant to help players compete in weekly elimination challenges, a company spokesperson said.
Book publishing is one of many business ventures the MrBeast team is testing as it looks to expand beyond YouTube. The company’s various bets include the “Beast Games” Amazon Prime Video competition show, selling chocolate bars via its Feastables candy brand, and offering financial services after acquiring the Step banking app.
Influencer books have flittered in and out of popularity. During the 2010s, a wave of content creators like PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg), Lilly Singh, Shane Dawson, and Zoella (Zoe Sugg) published chart-topping works.
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The creator-to-author pipeline has since calmed down, though the emergence of BookTok, a social-media community of readers and book recommenders, has rekindled creators’ interest in publishing.
“Books are having a moment again,” said Jeff Speich, an executive who oversees Range Media Partners’ publishing arm, Range Literary Publishing. “Anyone with a profile is thinking about if they have something to add to the space.”
While MrBeast has demonstrated he can promote just about anything to his fans, “The Most Dangerous Games” could also get a boost from its other famous author, Patterson, who over the last decade has helped books by Dolly Parton and former president Bill Clinton reach the top of The New York Times best-sellers list.
“Publishers are looking for people who already have established audiences, whether that’s authors or celebrities or massive creators, to break through the noise,” Kaye said. “Most books that get published fall into the void.”
