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Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Felix Kjellberg, better known as YouTube’s Pewdiepie, has created an internet empire for himself.
Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Felix Kjellberg, better known as YouTube’s Pewdiepie, has created an internet empire for himself. With over 37 million subscribers at the time of this writing, Pewdiepie’s exaggerated Let’s Plays took YouTube by force, and the influx of new subscribers doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.
It might come as a surprise to some, then, to learn that Pewdiepie posted a video promoting a new project that has very little to do with his usual video subjects. Pewdiepie is extending his style of humor to something a little more traditional: a book.
Pewdiepiehas joined forces with Razorbill, a division of the massive book publisher Penguin Random House, to create his very first book. Entitled This Book Loves You , the 256-page book will be available as a softcover and e-book, and is intended to be a parody of the self-help genre. Rather than replicating Pewdiepie’s typical friendliness and thankfulness towards his subscribers, it appears that the book will jokingly focus on making readers “embrace their astounding mediocrity” with a philosophy of “you can never fail if you never try”. Pewdiepie’s announcement video furthers the parody, as he takes on the role of multiple fictional philosophers of his own creation who offer nothing but praise for the book.
The power of the Pewdiepie-obsessed “bro army” is obvious here, as even though the book won’t be available until late October, his fans have already propelled it to the #1 best seller of ‘being a teen’ books listed on Amazon. It’s also not the first time he’s used his fame to branch out from his YouTube videos, as Pewdiepie has appeared twice on South Parkand recently announced his first mobile game,.
While it’s not surprising to see Pewdiepie using his influenceto further expand his media empire, launching a book does come as somewhat of a surprise. While it’s clearly selling copies at an extreme rate thus far, one wonders if those who enjoy Pewdiepie’s YouTubejump scare, joke, and scream-filled videos will actually read a parodic self-help book that has little (if anything) to do with gaming.
This Book Loves You is available for pre-order now, and will be released on October 20, 2015.
Source: Pewdiepie, Amazon