Tonight at the McNally Robinson bookstore in SoHo, three authors from the recently launched TOW Books—Jason Roeder, Sarah Walker, and Wendy Molyneux—will, according to an email from John Warner, the imprint’s founding editor, “dispense useless, but hilarious, advice for introverted people, parents, and all of womankind, respectively.” With titles like Molyneux’s Everything Is Wrong with You: The Modern Woman’s Guide to Finding Self Confidence Through Self Loathing, Walker’s Really, You’ve Done Enough: A Parents’ Guide to Stop Parenting Their Adult Child Who Still Needs Their Money But Not Their Advice, and Roeder’s Oh, the Humanity!: A Gentle Guide to Social Interaction for the Feeble Young Introvert, I figured the McSweeney’s veterans were having fun mocking the self-help market, but Warner says he’s got a much loftier goal. “TOW Books was established to beat back the Sudoku menace,” he reveals:
“Last year, nearly forty percent of all books sold were Sudoku titles. Will Shortz by himself made close to $87 million in royalties. By releasing ‘Funny Books for People with Good Senses of Humor,’ TOW Books hopes to establish a beach head in the Humor/Comics section (usually adjacent to Puzzles and Games) and make the bookstore safe for titles that are filled
with words, not numbers… Down with Sudoku!”
I have not, I should warn you, had time to independently verify those statistics. (To identify the authors, start with Roeder and go counterclockise.)