Once upon a time, back in June, Adam Mansbach had a particularly difficult time getting his 2-year-old daughter Vivien to go to bed. So the frustrated dad did what a lot of parents do in our hyper-connected times — made a joke about it on Facebook.
"Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, 'Go the F--- to Sleep.' "
His Facebook friends found it hilarious, so Mansbach banged out some verses to go with the then-imaginary "child's book for adults." Verses like this (sans dashes):
The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest
And the creatures who crawl, run and creep.
I know you're not thirsty. That's bullsh--. Stop lying.
Lie the f--- down, my darling, and sleep.
It grew from there.
And so, the Internet which takes much of the the blame for the demise of corporeal books, helped make a bestseller out of one that doesn't come out for another month.
Mansbach, the author of novels "Angry Black White Boy” and "The End of the Jews," hooked up with illustrator friend Ricardo Cortés and independent publisher Akashic Books, and now 'Go the F--- to Sleep' is the No. 1 best-selling book on Amazon.com. Thing is — the book doesn't become officially available until June 14. (Read the TODAY Moms interview with the author and vote on the book!)
As it turns out, many of the customers pre-ordering the actual book may have already read it via a pirated PDF. Book industry workers, it seems, forwarded the pre-published version to friends, who forwarded it to friends, and so on. In a piracy twist, the free copy of the book made people want to buy the actual thing. The Bay Citizen reports:
The phenomenon of music and video piracy has been around seemingly since the Internet's invention — it's a well-known scourge that has driven the recording industry to pricey lawsuits and the rest of the world to Pirate Bay and BitTorrent.
But it seems that book publishing has a new issue on its hands: the viral book PDF.
"The copies have been proliferating since this craziness started," Ibrahim Ahmad, senior editor at the Brooklyn-based Akashic Books, told the Bay Citizen. "With a PDF, you can make so many duplicates and people have just been forwarding it."
Try as it might, Akashic Books was unable to stop the viral PDFs, which may be a good thing. The pirated PDFs serve as free advertising for the actual book. Fast Company observes:
The multi-billion-dollar question, though, is this: When does piracy work to a publisher's benefit, and when does it work to its detriment? If "Go the F--- to Sleep" weren't a children's book of sorts, would parents be so eager for hard-copy versions? Or if it didn't have its irresistible illustrations? Books with artwork have a tactile, archival appeal lacking in the latest Grisham potboiler, say.
Whether this will work for your new potentially best-selling Facebook status update remains to be seen.
More on the annoying way we live now:
- Want another bedtime story, sweetie? Here's one: 'Go the F@#k to Sleep'
- Planking: A Facebook fad to die for?
- Creepy lip-syncing kids guilt moms off Facebook
- Hillary Clinton too sexy for Situation Room
Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Join her on Twitter and Facebook, won't you?