It’s not every day that some snappy tweets can get you a book deal. But that’s exactly what happened with comedian Rob Delaney, who’s in town Friday for a book reading at Malaprop’s.
Most of Rob Delaney’s tweets can’t actually be read out loud on public radio. But they’re funny-- totally absurd, often dirty jokes that fit into 140 characters or less.
Though social media strategists hadn’t predicted that Twitter would turn out to be the perfect platform for comedians, it’s turned out to be a great way for funny people to try out their jokes on a digital audience.
That’s exactly what Delaney decided to do when he first signed up for a Twitter account in 2009. He wrote enough funny tweets to get some positive attention.
Here’s his version of the story, in 140 characters or less: “Publisher tweeted me with book deal.” (For the record, that’s 30 characters.)
“I mean, that made it sound terrible,” Delaney said.
“But that’s what happened. I mean, not explicitly, ‘Here’s a book deal,’ but ‘Would you write a book for me?’ I got on Twitter from Julie Grau.”
And at first, Rob thinks this is just a random, nice tweeter who asked him for a book. But then a friend of his sends him an email saying, ‘Bro, that’s a real publisher. You should probably respond to her.’ So he did.
“Then I wrote a book over the course of a little over a year,” Delaney said. “And you can buy it in the store. Which is shocking.”
The book’s title is also kind of a twitter-joke. It’s based on peoples’ twitter bios, which are informational paragraphs on each person’s profile.
“People write these silly whimsical bios for themselves on social media. And I…” Delaney laughed. “I don’t like whimsy. I don’t like cute clever things.
“And so I made fun of people who make their bios like, mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.”
That’s right. It’s called Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. (Which, by the way, is 75 characters.)
“And as silly as that sounds, it’s not that much sillier than a lot of peoples’ bios,” Delany said.
“If you’re just a civilian and you make that your bio, that’s great. But if a famous actor writes a bunch of things in his bio that aren’t just ‘Famous actor’?
“Like, if you’re Brad Pitt, your bio should be ‘Famous actor’. Not ‘Gardener. Barbecue enthusiast. Zoroastrian.’ I don’t care about all that stuff. But people do that a lot and I thought it would be fun to ... roast them, as it were.”
For someone who hates whimsy, Delaney’s book sure is full of it.