Publishing is in rude health, judging by the scene before me. I’m at the first standalone book-signing ever held in London’s enormous ExCeL Centre, where several thousand acolytes await the man whose debut instantly topped the Sunday Times and Amazon bestseller charts. Fans sit fiddling with their wristbands on the grey arena floor, penned in. It’s a necessary measure. Earlier this month, a Waterstones signing by today’s author was besieged by almost 8,000 people; a fraction of the millions who hang on his every action. Nervous anticipation ripples round the room. “I’m gonna wet myself.” “I might die. I might actually die.”
Alfie Deyes, a skinny 21-year-old, enters unassumingly, wearing shorts. The online star is one of the most famous people you have probably never heard of. He owes his following – and his book sales – to PointlessBlog: a video diary he has uploaded to YouTube every single day since he was 15. In the videos, filmed in his Brighton bedroom, cute, regular-guy Alfie talks about why girls are confusing, or eats random tinned food, or plays Sims 4. He’s often joined by his friends, who are also cute boys with swoosh-y hair, or his even more popular vlogger girlfriend Zoella. The blog has 3 million subscribers.
When he enters, the room of girls – it’s almost exclusively teenage girls – erupts. “I can’t believe he’s real,” a 16-year-old next to me exclaims, sounding almost panicked. “Oh my god, he waved! He just waved!!” she screams.
Deyes is here to promote The Pointless Book, a paperback described as an addition to his channel and “a gift to his fans”. (It sits in that great tradition of gifts for which you pay £8.99 to the person giving it to you.) It’s a bit like the activity sheets given to children in museums and on planes to keep them quiet. Most of the pages are largely blank, containing instructions to “Draw a selfie” or “Fill this page in with whatever you want!” One double-page spread, titled “Head Tennis”, instructs the reader to “look right!” and “look left!”
A case could be made for this form-stretching horseplay making this bestseller the Tristram Shandy of our age, but not a terribly convincing one. “What a load of shit,” says a security guard policing the event when I show him my copy.
Deyes signs the book in an upstairs room to which fans are escorted in groups of 50. “You get a photo or a selfie – the choice is yours – but have the phone ready,” a steward briefs each batch. As they queue for their 15 seconds with fame, clusters of girls discuss strategy. “Get a hug in first, and one at the end if you can. High fives are too awkward.”
In the hall below, jumbo screens roll his videos, a live feed of the signing room, a ticker-tape of fan-tweets. Upstairs is a different story. Each group that makes it, lifted from hysteria and uncertainty, drops into reverential hush. “I’m scared to speak because everyone can hear me!” says Deyes, perhaps oddly for a man who shares his thoughts with 3m people every morning.
Even I can see
Deyes is perfect first-boyfriend material. He’s unerringly friendly to everyone, compliments their hair, distributes hugs on an industrial scale. Hug, photo, sign, smile, hug – the process lasts for hours. Girls sob with gratitude, or are afflicted with drymouth. Many bear votive offerings: personalised M&Ms, Capri Suns, loom bands, love hearts. He places them on a table to the side.
Outside the venue, I talk to Phoebe, a breathlessly excited 13-year-old. “I never watch normal TV,” she says. “We love the YouTubers. When you’re having a bad time you can just enter their life, they’re with you every day.”
Her equally oxygen-challenged friend Alex agrees. “I love his laugh. I can’t explain it, I don’t have words right now. He’s not even a celebrity …”
“He is a celebrity,” Phoebe interjects.
“He’s normal, not like celebrities.”
He’s one of the most watched people in the country, anyway. With his affability, natural presenting talent and pre-made fanbase, Deyes is ripe for a TV crossover. But he’s not interested in the restrictions of old-school, mainstream media.
“I’d never do something just for the sake of being on TV – I don’t see that as a step up. YouTube gives me full control to make whatever content I want, whenever I want, as often as I want,” Deyes later explains. He’s in a powerful position, with more views – 27m a month – than entire TV channels. “The videos are what I love. I’m not thinking about ‘the next step’. I want to keep having fun.”
The team around Deyes definitely is thinking of the next step, which is turning 3 million followers into £3m, or a multiple thereof. Deyes makes a living from pre-roll advertising, which he describes as “nothing substantial, but enough to pay the bills”. It may not be Moby Dick, but with its self-promoting hashtag games and “exclusive digital content”, the Pointless book is a canny piece of merchandising.
Representatives of Blink Publishing, who approached Deyes with the proposal, sweep the contents of his gift table into boxes, gauging the hysteria, amping it up when they can. “If a book sells 30,000 copies that’s a success. We’ve already sold significantly more,” one of them tells me. “And because it’s interactive – you can rip pages out and write on them – people might buy more than one. There’s no reason for them to stop buying – it could go on into Christmas.”
