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PewDiePie, the most popular person on YouTube, is publishing a self-help book

PewDiePie, the most popular person on YouTube, is publishing a self-help book

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"Don’t be yourself. Be a pizza. Everyone loves pizza."

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Another internet star has scored a book deal. PewDiePie, aka Felix Kjellberg, aka that guy who does those gaming videos on YouTube, has written a book. Kjellberg's magnum opus, titled This Book Loves You, is being published in October in the US, UK, Germany, France, Sweden, and Norway. It features 250 pages of "indispensable advice and inspirational quotes" including, according to its Amazon page, gems like "You can never fail if you never try" and "Don’t be yourself. Be a pizza. Everyone loves pizza."

pewdiepie_book_cover.0.jpgThe book's cover (Amazon/Penguin Randomhouse)

Kjellberg isn't the first YouTuber to leverage his fame with a book deal (online stars such as Grace Helbig and Shane Dawson have already published best-sellers), but he is the biggest. With 37 million subscribers, the Kjellberg is by far the most popular person on the site, with over 9 billion views and counting across all his videos, and annual revenue of around $4 million, according to one report in 2014. Popularity like this is extremely bankable, as Kjellberg's publishing deal with the Penguin Randomhouse subsidiary Razorbill proves.

"Razorbill and Penguin US are excited to bring the words of PewDiePie to the American people in book form," said Ben Schrank, the president and publisher of Razorbill, in a statement reported by the LA Times. "And with more subscribers than Taylor Swift and One Direction combined, Felix is without question one of the most influential stars of this generation."

Kjellberg himself describes the move as "a great chance for me to reach my audience in a new way," with a promotional video for the book posted on YouTube yesterday already racking up 1.5 million views. The video presents This Book Loves You as a parody of the sort of trite, poetic phrase that "demands to be tattooed on your wrist in italic script." However, Kjellberg and his publishers will still be hoping that PewDiePie fans take it seriously enough to buy a copy.