News & Reviews

WORD: ‘Ask A Ninja’ deal with Crown Publishing could mark new trend

In what could be the first in a new trend for the book industry, video podcast ‘Ask A Ninja’ landed a book deal with Crown Publishing following an auction by literary agent Joe Veltre of Artists Literary Group. Douglas Sarine and Kent Nichols, the duo behind Ask A Ninja, will write the book.

The book is tentatively titled ‘The Ninja Handbook: A Guide for Non-Ninjas To Become More Ninja-Like,’ United Talent Agency announced.

"This book will take people who are complete (non-Ninjas) and bring them to Ninja-esque and finally to ‘Hey, is that a Ninja?’ It’s a fantastical approach; no one will be able to complete all of the requirements but it will help them along their path," said Ask A Ninja co-creator Kent Nichols.

Since Ask A Ninja launched its first episode in November 2005, its traffic has steadily grown to its current 1.5 million page views per month with each episode viewed by more than 300,000 users. In January, Ask A Ninja became a top-ranked Apple iTunes podcast with the launch of its website, and it receives an average 500 questions per day.

Many of Ask A Ninja’s past episodes are on Youtube, and their book deal coincides with the announcement that Ask A Ninja received the first annual YouTube Video Award for Best Series based on viewer voting.

Ask A Ninja co-creators Douglas Sarine and Kent Nichols are also partners in Beatbox Giant, where they write and produce 'Hope Is Emo,' a controversial series that runs at YouTube.

Ask A Ninja is also represented by Chris Day at UTA and manager John Elliott at Mosiac Media.

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