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YouTube Books are Still a Thing

Two of the platform’s biggest creators have books out this week, and one of the largest UK talent agency’s publishing arm is growing

Chris Stokel-Walker
FFWD
6 min readOct 28, 2019

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Image composite: Chris Stokel-Walker

October is a busy month in the book publishing world. The start of the month is heralded by “Super Thursday”, the single day in which many of the publishers hoping their books will end up beneath Christmas trees across the world release their labors onto the world. And at the end of the month, two YouTubers —Andrew Rea of food channel Binging with Babish, and John Plant of Primitive Technology, which has nearly 10 million subscribers — unveiled their books to the world.

It’s a familiar sight for anyone who has followed YouTube for the last 14 years. Almost since the site began, creators have been publishing books off the back of it. Some, including Hank and John Green, the Vlogbrothers, have even managed to parlay their fame on YouTube into success as authors in their own rights.

At first the confluence between digital creators and authors of physical books might be difficult to discern, but book publishing continues to be popular for those publishing on YouTube.

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Published in FFWD

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Chris Stokel-Walker
Chris Stokel-Walker

Written by Chris Stokel-Walker

UK-based freelancer for The Guardian, The Economist, BuzzFeed News, the BBC and more. Tell me your story, or get me to write for you: stokel@gmail.com

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