James Patterson Promotes New Book With Web Series On ‘Fred’ YouTube Channel

On November 24th, prolific author James Patterson will release House of Robots, his latest work of young-adult fiction. The book’s launch, however, won’t be limited to print. Four days after its arrival, Patterson and Collective Digital Studio will debut a web series of the same name, which will be available on the Fred YouTube channel.

House of Robots tells the story of Sammy, a fifth grader whose life changes when his mother invents an intrusive, error-prone robot named E. The web series, which is animated in a claymation style, will illustrate specific scenes from the book. Its trailer is now available on the recently-relaunched Fred channel, which has more than 2.3 million subscribers.

The House of Robots web series continues an existing relationship between Collective DS and Patterson. The media company and the bestselling author are also working together to develop a web series version of Maximum Ride, Patterson’s highly successful series of YA novels.

Patterson isn’t the first big-name author to use YouTube as a promotional tool for a new book. In October, Lemony Snicket used a “choose-your-own-adventure” style series to drum up awareness for Shouldn’t You Be In School?, his most recent prequel to A Series of Unfortunate Events. As the literary and online video industries become more intertwined, expect these kinds of web series to become more common.