Trigun Fan Tweet Causes 2019 Queer Sci-Fi Novel to Climb Sales Charts
Sometimes a book hits right out the gate, and other times it takes an inexplicable "juice" to give a story the boost it deserves. While Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's 2019 book This is How You Lose the Time War was already the winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novella and the Nebula and Locus Awards in the same category, it recently blew up again thanks to a tweet from a Trigun fan who goes by the handle "bigolas dickolas wolfwood."
The tweet below went out on May 7 and really took off, leading to enough sales that the book quickly climbed its way back up the Amazon bestsellers charts. It's currently listed at #7 in the print books section of the charts, and while it's #4 in the Science Fiction category right now, it recently went as high as #1.
read this. DO NOT look up anything about it. just read it. it's only like 200 pages u can download it on audible it's only like four hours. do it right now i'm very extremely serious. pic.twitter.com/Pzb2FWvFlg
— bigolas dickolas woIfwood (@maskofbun) May 7, 2023
RELATED: TRIGUN STAMPEDE Anime’s “Final Phase” Officially Announced
Co-author El-Mohtar took notice, as evidenced by a blog post that went live a couple days after the initial tweet. Prior to that, she tweeted the only thing one can really tweet in this situation: "I do not understand what is happening but I am incomprehensibly grateful to bigolas dickolas."
Here's a highlight from the blog post:
"As far as I can tell, someone going by the name Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood runs a fan account for a 90s anime called Trigun which was recently rebooted, and tweeted about loving Time War with imperative enthusiasm, and somehow over the course of 24 hours that tweet went viral with people chiming in to say how much, how passionately, how violently they love the book, and it blew up, and despite the fact that Twitter Does Not Sell Books enough people bought our book in a short enough period that whatever algorithmic alchemy determines Amazon's best-sellers took notice, and the upshot of it all is that corporate marketing people at Simon & Schuster now know the name Bigolas Dickolas."
Co-author Gladstone was on vacation when it all went down, but provided a similarly flabbergasted comment on May 9:
i am afraid to say anything because what could i say that does full honor to the serendipity and the, well, energy?? of it all https://t.co/e0WzpKW1O9
— Max Gladstone (@maxgladstone) May 10, 2023
Even TRIGUN STAMPEDE anime producer Yoshihiro Watanabe couldn't resist:
Have I bought the book? Yes.
— Yoshihiro Watanabe (@crazynabe) May 10, 2023
Here's how Amazon describes the novel:
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That’s how war works, right?
Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
Who doesn't appreciate a bit of word-of-mouth marketing? For that, bigolas dickolas wolfwood, we salute you.
Via Kotaku
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Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. You can read his comics at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter @Moldilox.
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