MrBeast and James Patterson's Book Might Be a Flop

What do you mean that MrBeast and James Patterson’s novel won’t stave off the literacy crisis? The dead-eyed torturer also known as Jimmy Donaldson (no relation) has teamed up with the ghostwriter assembly line manager of popular fiction, and according to one report, the pre-release orders do not match the hype.

According to Semafor, the pair’s great contribution to the written word, creatively titled The Most Dangerous Games, has been tracking poorly in presales. Citing anonymous sources “close to the project,” Semafor reported that the book is “on track to be a historic bomb.” As of last week, pre-orders were “numbering in the four digits […] a tiny fraction of what the publisher will need to justify Patterson’s and YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson’s [aka MrBeast] hefty fees.”

The book, which is basically Squid Game (just like Monsieur Bête’s own reality TV show rip-off), is described as “an unprecedented competition from MrBeast, the world’s #1 creator with more than a billion followers, and James Patterson, the world’s #1 bestselling author, where the stakes couldn’t be higher.”

Donaldson may be the most followed man on YouTube but his tactics of shamelessly bribing his fans into caring about his stuff can only take him so far. To promote this book, which I’m sure he had someone read him a summary of it, he and Patterson released a YouTube short titled “Read My Book, You Could Win $1,000,000.” You’d think that would get some decent pre-sales numbers, but apparently not. I imagine Donaldson’s advance was pretty high too. But historically, MrBeast products have been, well, crap. His chocolate bars taste awful. His Lunchables rip-off he released with one of the Paul brothers had a mould problem. His reality series is so poorly made that video essayist Dan Olson spent over 80 minutes exhaustively and hilariously dissecting its ineptitude.

Donaldson’s whole shtick is high-concept stunts and big-money bribes, stuff that’s designed to appeal to kids who are mindlessly swiping up on YouTube shorts. His attempts to build an empire have short-term success but don’t stick around. It doesn’t help that, outside of the YouTube bubble, his reputation is that of a dead-eyed brat who has no personality outside of gaming the algorithm and who only seems truly happy when he’s torturing people who need money or medical help. And he can’t even do that effectively, as Beast Games demonstrated. Why buy his book unless you’re hoping to win $1 million?

I’m sure The Most Dangerous Games will debut on the New York Times bestseller list, but whether or not it sticks around in the top ten is up for decade. James Patterson loyalists don’t care about MrBeast, and MrBeast fans don’t care about reading. General readers are busy devouring Yesteryear and Dungeon Crawler Carl. And little Jimmy’s plans for world domination will continue to be thwarted by his own ineptitude.