YouTuber books can take many different forms — from deeply revealing essay collections to dystopian adventures novels to memoirs co-written alongside one’s own parents. And now, UK vlogger Will Darbyshire is set to pilot yet another approach with This Modern Love, his debut book project, which is slated to hit shelves stateside on August 16.
This Modern Love is a crowdsourced collection of stories about romance, submitted by Darbyshire’s fans in response to six questions posed by the aspiring filmmaker over the course of six months. Prompts included ‘What would you say to your ex, without judgement?’ and ‘Write a thank you note to your partner.’ Darbyshire then curated more than 15,000 responses from 100 countries into “a compendium of 21st century love, structured into the beginning, middle, and end of a relationship,” he writes. He was inspired to compile the book, he says, after a particularly fraught breakup.
More than a week before its release, This Modern Love is already at the top of Amazon‘s ‘Love, Sex, & Marriage Humor’ charts.
Stateside, This Modern Love is being published by Keywords Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster that’s behind the literary ventures of some of the world’s most renowned digital stars, including Justine Ezarik, Shane Dawson, Shay Carl, Joey Graceffa, Zoe Sugg, Connor Franta, Marzia Bisgonin, and Ricky Dillon. In the UK, the book will be available on August 11, and is being published by Century — an imprint of Penguin Random House UK.
Darbyshire is kicking off a UK tour in promotion of the release on August 10, where he will talk about the making of This Modern Love, as well as his own views on love and romance. Attendees will also view short films created by Darbyshire, followed by a meet-and-greet and book signing.
Darbyshire, who is 23 and counts over 600,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, is renowned by fans as a bit of a relationship expert himself: he’s currently dating fellow YouTube star Arden Rose. Check out the tour announcement below:
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