Welcome back. Remixing a funny interview as an auto-tuned song is internet culture at its finest. This week another was added to the canon with schmoyoho’s “It’s Corn” remix infiltrating every circle of TikTok, and few things have put a bigger smile on my face.

–Hannah Doyle

YouTuber Releases a Book of Essays

Sometimes you set out to write a novel and accidentally write a YouTube success story instead. Eleven years after starting his channel to find an audience for a novel he was writing, Evan Puschak is finally publishing his own book of essays.

Puschak started his film and art commentary channel, The Nerdwriter, in 2011. He was inspired by John Green, who used YouTube to build an audience for The Fault In Our Stars.

“That plan went out the window really quickly because the novel was’t great and I fell in love with YouTube—with the idea of making a show about my interests that used the unique tools of a new medium,” Puschak said. “But the dream of writing and publishing a book never died.”

While running the channel, Puschak (and his motivations) evolved.

• His 2011 video on The K.I.N.D. Fund landed him a job at MSNBC, which he later left for Discovery.

• In 2018 Puschak started a Patreon, which enabled him to transition to YouTube full-time.

Soon after, he was approached by a book agent, who worked with him to come up with a concept to pitch to publishers. Simon & Schuster took the bait.

His book, Escape Into Meaning, hits shelves Tuesday. Watch a video excerpt here.

Puschak shared more details on his writing process in our Q+A at the end of this newsletter. 👇

Our Take

Puschak’s journey is a much-needed reminder that comparison is the thief of joy—and also pretty useless. What he learned making The Nerdwriter helped Puschak become a better storyteller and keep his audience top of mind, an invaluable skill for any creator, no matter their end game.

Sara Dietschy 25Xs Kickstarter Goal

Tech creator merch typically falls into one of two categories: branded hats or bland desktop wallpapers. Few creators attempt to sell products in the space they cover, owing to some pretty well-funded competitors (hi Apple and Microsoft).

But not Sara Dietschy. This week the tech and entrepreneurship YouTuber launched a Kickstarter campaign for her line of desk accessories called LAB22.

Within the first day, LAB22 tripled its initial $10k goal. Now the project has raised almost $260,000.

Why a Kickstarter? Producing a line of desk accessories is more capital intensive than screen printing a bunch of sweatshirts. Mitigating that risk early is necessary.

The details: Dietschy partnered with the tech manufacturers at Moment to make the hardware. The Kickstarter capital will go toward the tooling, testing, and certification process, with the aim to ship products by January 2023.

Our Take

Creating a better version of the tech you make a living reviewing is both difficult and expensive. But by targeting what she knows best, Dietschy found a market that aligns with her audience and content.

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What’s Behind VidCon’s Meet and Greets?

TikToker Elyse Myers is coming to the defense of fellow creator Grace Africa after none of her 1.5 million fans showed up to Grace’s meet and greet at VidCon in late June.

In her video, Myers explained the twisted mechanics of these meet and greets, which appear to leave everyone wanting more. According to Myers:

• To be eligible for meet and greets, fans need a three-day VidCon track pass (which cost up to $130).

• Fans have little say in what creator’s meet and greet they’re assigned.

• Creators aren’t compensated for the meet and greets and don’t get event details until day-of.

Our Take

Myers said it best—if creators are valuable enough to be marketing material, they should be valuable enough for compensation. The misaligned incentives between the event and the creators prove this model isn’t working.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Adam Waheed funds a school in Indonesia.

• Twitch is now allowing partnered streamers to stream on other platforms.

• Andrew Callaghan and Channel 5 are going on tour.

• Brooklyn and Bailey start a skincare line.

• Give your content a longer shelf life. Lulu is offering a free consulting call on how to turn your content into a book.*

• Rhett & Link release a board game.

*This is sponsored advertising content.

Q&A: Evan Puschak

It feels great! And a little unreal, like I’m having a chat with my 2011 self. I’m saying, “Can you believe it? We did it!” He’s saying, “Eleven years? What took you so long?” He wants to fast-forward. Time is moving slowly for him, and he’s impatient to get better. But the only way to get better is to work and work and work, for several slow years. (The irony is that, from this perspective, the last decade feels like an eye-blink.)

I’d say, “Dude, it works out well for us. Don't stress so much. Unless...the stress is what's motivating you to work so hard, in which case, keep stressing. You know what, it probably wasn't a good idea for me to come here. Can you please look into this Men In Black neuralyzer?"

After I abandoned the novel (realizing it was…not good), I began to focus on the show for its own sake. What started as a Vlogbrothers clone gradually became its own thing. Week by week, I figured out how to make the show sharper and more immersive, and I gravitated toward art because it’s my greatest interest. At the time, I didn’t know YouTube could be a job. That dawned on me slowly, as it dawned on a lot of us back then. We were all just on the hamster wheel, making the next week’s video in whatever free time we had—after work, on weekends. I was lucky to be in the right place when it suddenly became possible for digital creators to earn a living.

Patreon patrons enabled my transition to a full-time YouTuber, and I'm forever grateful to them. I work harder doing this than I ever did at "real" jobs, but it's work I want to do. Every job has stresses, but the stresses of making something you believe in are the kind of stresses you want. If I never have to go to a morning meeting again, I'll be a happy man.

I always have dozens of unfinished Word docs on my laptop—abandoned video ideas, first chapters of novels, essays, short stories. I’m always writing, but I’m rarely finishing. Nerdwriter scripts and Escape Into Meaning are outliers in that regard. Most of what I write descends into the graveyard that is my Documents folder, never to return.

Making The Nerdwriter has taught me so much. Most of all, it taught me how to finish, which is a hugely important skill. It also taught me how to engage an audience. As consumers of digital media, we are ruthless with our attention. If you bore us for a second—click!—we’re on to the next thing. Making YouTube teaches you to be hyper-sensitive to the viewer. I don’t think the audience should determine what you make, but I do think you should always have the person on the other side of the screen (or the page) in mind. You’re making it for them, after all.

The last essay in Escape Into Meaning is all about the emotional ups and downs of writing that novel ten years ago, and what it taught me. Writing always pits you against a part of yourself that is very critical (and often cruel). I'm more confident than I was then, but writing this book was still an emotional gauntlet. I don't think that will ever change, but I've become better at weathering those storms and plowing ahead in the face of them.

Aside from that, the most technically challenging thing about Escape Into Meaning was also the most rewarding: learning how to make an engaging, lucid argument across 4,000 to 8,000 words, which is many times the length of most Nerdwriter videos.

I’m sure there are lots of ways to get into publishing. My story is just one of many. That said, my advice would be to have a few book ideas in your pocket before you approach (or get approached by) an agent or publisher. The more fleshed out those ideas are, the easier they’ll be to pitch. If you have a sizable audience, publishers will already have some interest in you. If you have an audience and a good, pitch-ready idea, you’re in a great position.