What does it take to become a star in the highly competitive world of children’s Christmas e-book writing?
Why, tell Reddit about your masturbation habits, and assure them that an ex-girlfriend makes a cameo as a fart, of course.
Australian Rob Towner, 30, took to Reddit’s r/IAmA forum to promote his third children’s book, Romy’s Garden Adventures: Christmas City. It wasn’t a particularly popular post, but for some reason—the fact that he posted while most Americans were sleeping, making him the most exciting thing on Reddit at the time, perhaps—that was enough to catapult him to the top of Amazon’s leaderboard for free children’s Christmas book downloads.
So he hopped back on for a second AMA Friday morning, and quickly integrated himself with new fans. And while he’s not made much money from the book—free downloads don’t pay, and he’s only sold two physical copies—Towner insisted it’s more for fun than anything.
“What is something secret, cool, or anecdotal about it or its message that a normal reader wouldn’t otherwise notice?” asked HyperbolicChamber.
“There’s a character in it called Vanessa… In the book, she is a fart cloud… I named this character after one of my ACTUAL ex girlfriends :) You are the first (AND LAST) person I have told this too,” Towner replied.
The book’s inspiration was well-grounded, Towner said. “My young niece Romy was playing by herself and running around bumping into shit. Funny as hell. I just thought “Fuck this. I’m gona write my niece a Christmas book.”
Towner perhaps most ingratiated himself with his new fans by assuring him he was, like many of them, a frequent masturbator.
“I love my wife to bits and would be nothing without her… But yeh, I fap a lot,” he said.
“GUYS! HE’S LIKE US!!!” replied rekcut303.
He’d previously tried and failed to get his book off the ground in r/Atheism and r/Books, and only had moderately more success in his first AMA.
Photo of Towner via I Write Smiles on Kids Faces/Facebook