Did MrBeast and James Patterson’s Book Actually Flop?

Pre-release buzz was not great for The Most Dangerous Games, the literary debut of Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a. the YouTube titan MrBeast. Written (put some heavy air quotes around that word) in collaboration with James Patterson, the book is a dystopian thriller that bears an uncanny resemblance to Beast Games, Donaldson’s reality competition show, which itself is a shameless point-missing rip-off of Squid Game. It’s seldom a good sign when the author proudly admits that he wasn’t much of a reader, as Donaldson did. Shortly before its release, The Hollywood Reporter alleged that pre-orders of The Most Dangerous Games were lower than expected, “numbering in the four digits.” So, did it actually flop?

The internet certainly had a field day with the book, offering damning reviews and dramatic readings of its more inept parts. If you went exclusively by the reactions of this subset, you would assume that MrBeast was universally loathed. Certainly, to anyone who isn’t a nine-year-old boy or an Amazon executive, his public image is not a glowing one. To many, he reads as abjectly evil, a soulless embodiment of the almighty algorithm, a fame-chasing personality void who only ever seems truly alive when he’s torturing some poor sap for money. Of course, if that were the case, he wouldn’t be as wildly popular as he is. Pre-teen boys watch a lot of YouTube. But do they want to read his book?

To its credit, it did debut at number three on the New York Times hardback bestseller list. According to one report, The Most Dangerous Games had confirmed first-week sales of over 22,600. That number doesn’t include all sales, such as those made through Donaldson’s own website, but they are certainly nothing to sniff at. They were at least solid enough for stories to start spreading about a future film adaptation. If this was a book by any other debut author, 22k sales in its first week would be stellar. But we can’t pretend that the same rules apply to the man who claims to be the number one rule breaker.

I’ve seen no reports on the advance Patterson and Donaldson were paid for this book, but I imagine it was at least in the low six figures range. When you’re the biggest YouTuber ever and live by the ethos of being the king of the castle, anything less than total domination cannot help but read as a disappointment. 100 million videos on one video stops being impressive to you after a while, and not reaching the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list will sting. Debuting at number three is obviously highly respectable, particularly in the current publishing market, but it is undoubtedly a disappointment for Team Beast. The book slumped to number 14 on the hardback list in its second week, and after that, it disappeared entirely. “The biggest YouTuber” ever couldn’t stay on the list for longer than a fortnight?

It’s also a step down for James Patterson, an industry powerhouse whose endless assembly line of content typically gets the top spot without breaking a sweat. His other major celebrity collaboration of 2026, Judge Stone, co-written with Viola Davis, debuted at number one. Going by Jimmy’s adherence to data, he’s more “popular” than the EGOT winner, but she makes far more sense as a novelist, especially one in collaboration with Patterson, than he does. Patterson readers know Viola Davis, and they helped her to sell a reported 44,700 copies in its first week. I question if they were as aware of MrBeast. As a collaboration, Beast and Patterson made all the sense in theory and none of it in execution. Solid for cold hard business acumen, terrible for both core audiences.

The vague puff pieces documenting Donaldson’s success talk of how he’s built a core fanbase willing to branch outside of YouTube and support his other products, like his Feastables chocolate line, Amazon series, and toys. The actual success of said items are variable and come with a lot of caveats (remember the mouldy Lunchables-ripoff?) The chocolate tastes terrible and the toys are of equally poor quality, and they only sell when Donaldson offers bribes to his viewers. The same goes for this book, which includes a puzzle within and the chance to claim a major cash prize. Paying for attention is certainly not a long-term business strategy, let alone that builds loyal fandom. And it still wasn’t enough to get most people to care about the book. They all bought Yesteryear or Dungeon Crawler Carl instead the value is in the reading itself.

I cannot help but come back to what video essayist Dan Olson said about MrBeast in his scathing, hyper-detailed takedown of the YouTuber. When diagnosing why so many of us find this man so off-putting, he said, “They find the brand actively repellent, and associate it with low-quality, thoughtless products, things made cheaply and quickly; candy bars that need two iterations to have moulded break points. The whole enterprise has a stank about it, a manic desperation combined with a naked embrace of everything repulsive in the metrics-driven attention economy. MrBeast reeks of ambition (derogatory) […] No one wants to see this guy win. This is villain behaviour.”

Jimmy Donaldson is YouTube manifest, and it’s kind of disgusting to watch, but the scales also fall from people’s eyes more effectively when he tries to step out of his bubble. Nobody thought this book was an artistic endeavour or anything with more evident merit than a desire to be number one in a new field. Expectations of it being good, or even readable, were in the gutter. Even fans seemed aware that it existed as a brand expansion exercise, a barely-sketched pitch for a film deal. I feel about his literary career the same way I do about people using generative AI to “make” art: if you couldn’t be bothered to care, why should I? Being a slop merchant has worked for MrBeast for many years, but the standards are very different when you’re expected to produce something truly tangible.