Jimmy Donaldson wants you to read a book. Specifically, his book, the one where 100 strangers sign up to win a billion dollars and the ice in Antarctica starts thinning under their feet.
The Most Dangerous Games is out today, $35 for a hardcover, and it arrives trailing a story about its own failure. A report from news service Semafor, via The Hollywood Reporter, said the thriller was “on track to be a historic bomb.”
That framing is now being disputed.
The number everybody’s arguing about
Semafor’s concern was that presales “numbering in the four digits” amounted to a “tiny fraction of what th epublisher will need to justify Patterson’s and YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson’s hefty fees.”
A senior-level source with knowledge of the numbers pushed back on that read, saying presale figures are “beyond four digits” and “tracking well for a debut novel.” A publishing source separately noted that presales in the single-digit thousands are typical for books of this kind.
So the same figure gets to be a catastrophe or a perfectly normal Tuesday, depending on who’s describing it. Welcome to publishing.
The strategy isn’t about pre-orders anyway
Here’s the part that reframes the whole thing. The marketing plan for the book reportedly isn’t focused specifically on driving pre-orders, because the thinking is that Donaldson’s younger audience will pick it up after publication day rather than reserving a copy weeks in advance.
Which tracks. Teenagers are not, as a rule, placing hardcover pre-orders.
And Donaldson still has the largest promotional machine on YouTube pointed directly at this thing. He’s already posted a video titled “Read My Book, You Could Win $1,000,000,” which should help sell a few more copies. The end-of-year sales season is also still ahead.
What HarperCollins is actually risking
The real exposure isn’t presales. It’s the advance.
HarperCollins could be on the hook for a sizable sum regardless of how the book sells, depending on what it paid Donaldson and co-author James Patterson simply to secure the publishing rights and receive the manuscript. That figure isn’t public. Everything about it is speculation.
Patterson, for context, is the Alex Cross guy. He does not come cheap.
The book itself sounds like Battle Royale (official site) meets Squid Game
The novel is a fictionalized version of a large-scale MrBeast survival game, and the blurb doesn’t undersell it.
“A thousand strangers receive the invitation,” it reads. “One hundred make the cut. The Games begin in Antarctica, where one wrong step on the ice kills you, and they never let up: Shark water off a remote Chilean island, desert heat that cooks you where you stand, storm-battered peaks, and caves so black you cannot find your own hand. No rescue. No second chances. A billion dollars to whoever is still standing.”
Then it gets worse for everyone involved.
“Then the terrain stops being the thing that can kill you, and the other players start. Alliances turn into ambushes. Trust becomes the sharpest weapon. And somewhere above it all, a hidden voice is watching every move, testing, deciding who deserves to survive.”
A hidden voice watching every move, deciding who deserves to survive. Donaldson has been writing autobiography this whole time.
