When I was a child, my parents would read me books to help me fall asleep. I think that most of the time they would simply make the stories up to spare their tired eyes from having to read another page, but I think that most of the stories were at least *based* on the books they were holding at the time. Now, it’s been a long time since I’ve read a children’s book, or looked at a picture book of any kind, but I can say with absolute certainty that as a child, I never read a book like this.
Go The Fuck To Sleep, By Adam Mansbach, is a children’s picture book that went viral and climbed the charts of the Amazon best sellers list. This is remarkable for two reasons. The first is that the book isn’t even out yet, and the second is that this happened because of piracy. Yes, I’m sure you can appreciate the great irony of that last point. People sharing a book for free… resulted in… massive sales? Amazing.
The Bay Citizen wrote an excellent article on how this phenomenon happened, and how everyone is reacting, including the publisher and the author himself.
