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Paper Towns

novel · in 161 videos (2007–2026)

Paper Towns is John's third novel, released on October 16th, 2008, with two different covers over identical books. John calls it a story about empathy and learning that romanticizing someone isn't loving them; it became a New York Times bestseller and later a movie.

By: John Green · Adapted as: Paper Towns (film), planned Paper Towns film (2008 Mandate Pictures option) · Within: Margo Roth Spiegelman, Quentin Jacobsen, Radar, Ben Starling, Angela, Dr. Jefferson Jefferson, Lacey Pemberton, Great White Wall of Cow, Jefferson Park, Omnictionary (character, “Paper Towns”), Chuck Parson, Mr. Joyner, Myrna Mountweazel, Robert Morris

Videos by year: 2007: 21 · 2008: 49 · 2009: 28 · 2010: 8 · 2011: 6 · 2012: 2 · 2013: 2 · 2014: 6 · 2015: 6 · 2016: 2 · 2017: 5 · 2018: 5 · 2019: 3 · 2020: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2023: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2026: 3

Also known as: Paper Town

Website: papertowns.com

Threads

Project history (12)

Story (8)

Ask (17)

Promise (5)

Running joke (1)

Also named in the threads: John asks Hank to come up with a title for his new novel, Paper Towns (2007) · Brotherhood 2.0 Book Club: each brother reads a book the other assigns (2007) · Four-minute rule for vlogbrothers videos (2007) · John's 'the puff' stress habit (2007) · Question Tuesday: weekly Tuesday question days for nerdfighters (2007) · Nerdfighter Blurbing Book Club (2008) · Hank Would Think This Is Awesome: Nerdfighters' belated birthday project for Hank (2008) · John asks Nerdfighters for questions for two Question Tuesdays in one week (May 2008) · Tour de Nerdfighting 2008 edition · An Abundance of Katherines paperback release (2008) · Hank asks Nerdfighters to RSVP for the Paper Towns tour events (2008) · This Is Not Tom: John's story told through weekly online riddles (2009) · John: break the Question Tuesday record by answering 100 questions in four minutes (2009) · John's week touring the Netherlands with Jordan Sonnenblick and Steve Kluger (2009) · John invites Nerdfighters in Melbourne and Sydney to meet him during his Australia trip (2009) · Hank asks Nerdfighters to photograph Margo Roth Spiegelman wherever they see her (2009) · Where's Margo: Nerdfighters photograph Margo Roth Spiegelman around the world (2009) · John: write 50,000 words of a story for NaNoWriMo (November 2009) · John takes the line 'Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia' from Sarah on their first date for Looking for Alaska (told 2016) · John's trip to Munich for the White Ravens Book Festival (2010) · John's week in Europe for events in Amsterdam and Vienna (November 2010) · John points viewers to pre-order The Fault in Our Stars (2011) · John asks Nerdfighters to submit cover designs for An Abundance of Katherines (2011) · An Abundance of Katherines fan cover contest (2011) · Paper Towns film: production and release (2014) · P4A 2014 edition · Paper Towns movie tour (2015): Europe stops and US states chosen by Tumblr vote · John's European Paper Towns press trip with Nat Wolff, starting in Madrid (June 2015) · Sarah and John's friends see the Paper Towns film; nobody notices John's cameo (2015) · John asks viewers to go see the Paper Towns movie (2015)

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

Paper Towns (film) (24) · An Abundance of Katherines (19) · Looking for Alaska (novel) (31) · perspective-taking (11) · Question Tuesday (19) · Paper Towns collab album (3) · Maureen Johnson (14) · 10-word challenge (2) · Julie Strauss-Gabel (7) · Willy (12)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2007

2008

  • 2008-02-08 · QUESTION TUESDAYS (On Friday) — announcement: John gives Paper Towns' official release date as October 16th, joking that he had been lying when he said September. — 00:00:36
  • 2008-05-18 · A CUTETACULAR INTRODUCTION! — announcement: John: With every video this week (week of 12 May 2008), including this one, John will give away one copy of Paper Towns to a random commenter. — 00:02:47
  • 2008-06-16 · Maine Inspires Deep Thoughts — announcement: Hank announces that he and John are starting a temporary project, Obama's Idiots, about the 2008 presidential race, at youtube.com/obamasidiots. — 00:00:00
  • 2008-09-13 · Hank Vlogs (and a String Quartet) — ask: Hank asks UK Nerdfighters only to email their name, age and location to a Gmail address, whose login he would give UK publishers to show demand. — 00:03:01
  • 2008-10-06 · Berlin and Let it Snow (in Your Pants) — announcement: John: With Hank's help, all Paper Towns and Nerdfighting Tour events are now on Facebook with up-to-date information; Eventful.com, now their 'mortal enemy', is dropped. — 00:02:20
  • 2008-10-08 · J Scribble Goes to Borders — John: Searching YouTube for Paper Towns, John found groups of Nerdfighters slipping notes into his books in bookstores inviting readers to Paper Towns and Nerdfighter gatherings; he calls it fantastic and will copy it. — 00:00:00
  • 2008-10-14 · Paper Towns Reading — announcement: John tells Hank he will read from his new book Paper Towns, which comes out on Thursday, over his next couple of videos. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • 2008-10-17 · Vital Status Report from NYC — John says Paper Towns is about people who constantly misimagine each other because they think of one another as something other than a person. — 00:00:00
  • 2008-10-22 · Punish Hank? Save Hank? YOU DECIDE. — John: Vero Beach High School nerdfighters gave John every item Lacey, Ben, Q and Radar pick up at their first BP stop in Paper Towns, including Nerds; he says it is no spoiler. — 00:01:24
  • 2008-10-28 (said on 2008-10-27, implied) · Early Voting with Hank — announcement: Hank names Paper Towns the new Blurbing Book Club book after a long gap since the last pick. — 00:02:20
  • 2008-10-30 (said on 2008-10-29, implied) · Hank is Late (dr horrible) — announcement: Hank announces Paper Towns will spend a second week on the New York Times bestseller list, at number six, showing people beyond the first Nerdfighter rush are still buying it. — 00:01:23
  • 2008-12-26 · Skoodilypooping — announcement: John says that to wrap up the Paper Towns edition of the Nerdfighter Blurbing Book Club he will do two videos about the book, ideally answering questions. — 00:02:36
  • …and 126 statements more in 2008 — all statements of 2008

Also named in: PEEPS Eating Contest Is Peepstacular, Painful

2009

  • 2009-02-10 · Paper Towns Tastic Question Tuesday — John: Margo is the book's mirror maker: people looking at her see a funhouse-mirror reflection of themselves, not what is true of her, hence the two different, equally inaccurate covers. — 00:00:46
  • 2009-02-21 (said on 2009-02-14, implied) · Paper Towns and PUPPY — John: In a bonus video, helped by Willy and pre-recorded questions from 'past John', John answers Paper Towns questions he didn't get to in his last video. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-04-21 · Question Tuesday — announcement: John confirms an awesome Nerdfighter gathering from 2 p.m. in Melbourne on May 31 to promote the Australian edition of Paper Towns; booking and details are in the sidebar. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-04-28 · 10 Book Reviews in 4 Minutes — announcement: Hank says John, bestselling author of Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines, is writing another book, This Is Not Tom, released through weekly riddles. — 00:02:38
  • 2009-05-04 (said on 2009-05-03, implied) · Oinkbarf Pandemic! An Intellectual Response to Swine Flu — John's Paper Towns won an Edgar Award on Thursday night, given by the Mystery Writers of America to the year's best mystery novels, so he now owns a bust of Poe. — 00:00:27 · also in: What Could You Do with a Poe Bust?!
  • 2009-06-07 · I Will Call Him Louis: Australia Rocks! — John says that in Melbourne he attended the Reading Matters conference, where actors performed a series of scenes from Paper Towns. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-08-11 · The Island of Nerdfighteria? — announcement: John announces that Paper Towns will be published in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury, and thanks Bloomsbury. — 00:01:01
  • 2009-09-08 · My Puppy's SECRET SHAME (and Paper Towns) — announcement: John announces the Paper Towns paperback comes out September 22 and asks those who haven't read it to pick it up or pre-order it via the sidebar. — 00:01:36
  • 2009-09-22 · Paper Towns in Paperback: A How-to Guide — announcement: John announces that Paper Towns comes out in paperback today, Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-09-23 · Where's Margo! A Nerdfighter Event! — Hank jokes that Margo Roth Spiegelman escaped John's head, and says he asked Nerdfighters to photograph her wherever they saw her, and they complied. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • 2009-09-28 · Paper Towns Winners and Ningmasters — announcement: John announces the last ten Paper Towns paperback winners: a song-challenge winner chosen from many great songs, and nine 10-word comment winners. — 00:01:40
  • 2009-10-20 · The Bella Twins Like Paper Towns — announcement: John announces that Paper Towns won the Teens' Top Ten vote, beating great books like The Hunger Games, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and the last Twilight book. — 00:00:29
  • …and 64 statements more in 2009 — all statements of 2009

2010

  • 2010-06-11 · Mmmm....PARTS — announcement: John: Paper Towns has just been published in the United Kingdom. — 00:02:17
    • John's new website, JohnGreenBooks.com, lists forthcoming Nerdfighter gatherings and other events, in places like Washington, D.C., Munich, Edinburgh and London. — 00:02:17
    • John asks people to buy Paper Towns in the UK, joking that otherwise no other book of his will ever be published there. (playful) — 00:02:17
  • 2010-07-28 · Umbrellas Amuse Me: Observations from One Day in Munich — John: In a Munich bookstore that stocked his books, John met a reader buying an English copy of Paper Towns; he had never been recognised while looking for his own books, and was embarrassed but delighted. — 00:00:58
  • 2010-08-16 · Lust and Folly in London and Edinburgh — announcement: The description says John's UK trip was to support Paper Towns, which had just been published there. — video description
    • In London a department store 'ordered' John to lust for a red purse; he mocks a consumer mania in which wanting a handbag no longer suffices and you must be sexually attracted to it. (playful) — 00:00:02
    • John visited Alex Day and Charlie McDonnell at their flat: Charlie made tea, Alex read a quiz from Pick Me Up magazine, to which he has a two-year subscription, and they watched YouTube. — 00:00:02
    • At Piccadilly Circus John met Ningmaster Tom, Lidewij and Nerdfighter Tobias, to whom his half of Will Grayson, Will Grayson is dedicated; they went to Funland, mostly simulated murder. — 00:00:42
    • John feared nobody would come to the club, which rarely hosts book signings, but too many came, so they held two shows, one in the club and one upstairs; a magical night for him. — 00:01:12
    • John met many nerdfighters at a bookstore who said good morning to Hank; one had a ukulele version of Hank's guitar and many were in the PEN15 Club. — 00:01:12
  • 2010-08-20 · The Fox Hat IS REAL, but Are Zombies People? — John: Downstairs shelves include author copies of his own books, desert island books, lexicography, child prodigies, Mark Twain, books about death, poetry, religion and conjoined twins. — 00:01:56
  • 2010-11-19 · I'm Not Going Down: Thoughts from Amsterdam — John's description says Paper Towns is a finalist for a literary prize in the Netherlands, where he travels from Indianapolis. — video description
  • …and 4 statements more in 2010 — all statements of 2010

Also named in: Foreign John Green Books and the Ultimate Concern, The Patron Saint of Youtube

2011

  • 2011-02-04 · QUESTION FRIDAY: Spelling is Hard Edition — ask: John: Readers must also promise to read one of John's actual books so they don't think he is as bad a writer as the novella suggests. (playful) — 00:02:10
  • 2011-04-25 · Meeting Greg Mortenson — John: A couple of years earlier, when Paper Towns came out, John was one of about eight authors, with Mortenson, at a Penguin dinner for some 200 young adult librarians at a library convention. — 00:00:24
    • In his two-minute talk John described his book as about Walt Whitman and imagining others complexly; Mortenson followed with a book about nearly dying and devoting his life to education in Afghanistan. — 00:00:50
    • Feeling his pee-joke book was outclassed, John remembered that Nerdfighters had helped rebuild a school in cyclone-ravaged Bangladesh and wanted to tell Mortenson. — 00:01:03
    • At the cocktail party John told the man he took for Mortenson about Nerdfighters' pond sand filters, Kiva loans and the school, talking for twelve minutes without letting him speak. — 00:01:33
    • The man answered that he was not Greg Mortenson: since nearly all the librarians were women, John had simply walked up to the white man, assuming he was Mortenson. — 00:02:00
  • 2011-05-18 · The Education Continuum WARNER CHILCOTTED — John says it doesn't matter whether, writing Paper Towns, he meant the Great White Wall of Cow to reference Moby-Dick's whale; it is there to make readers think about nature's apathy toward individuals and the heroic response. — 00:02:30
  • 2011-06-06 · Men Running on Tanks and the Truth about Book Editors — John: Without Julie, John says, Paper Towns would be largely a boring history of the US Postal Service instead of being about Whitman's Song of Myself. — 00:02:54
  • 2011-08-26 · Will He Kiss You? Am I a Muggle? It's Question Friday. — John says Sarah has contributed tons to his writing: the line 'imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia' in Looking for Alaska, the pranks in Paper Towns, and hugely to The Fault in Our Stars. — 00:03:05
  • 2011-12-23 · There Will Be NO SPOILERS!!! — ask: John: The Fault in Our Stars is still available for pre-order, and meanwhile viewers can read John's other books (the description names Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns). — 00:02:50

2012

  • 2012-08-28 · In Which the Candle Dies — announcement: John shows the new box set, designed by Karen Kavett, with hardcovers of Looking for Alaska without the candle, the new Paper Towns design and Nerdfighter Sarah Turbin's Katherines design. — 00:00:29
  • …and 1 statement more in 2012 — all statements of 2012

2013

  • 2013-01-15 · An Evening of Awesome at Carnegie Hall — John says Paper Towns is about empathy and trying to imagine other people complexly, and hopes his books can jump into the abyss to be with readers. — 00:53:07
    • John Darnielle: Darnielle says he was sent a hardback book and found a Mountain Goats song in it ('Paper Towns'), then plays 'Game Shows Touch Our Lives'. — 01:39:10
    • John introduces a Paper Towns reader's theater, a book about imagining other people and our myths complexly: John as Q, Hannah Hart as Angela, Grace Helbig as Ben, Neil Gaiman as Radar. — 02:30:51
  • 2013-10-22 · Question Tuesday: The Fault in Our Stars Movie Edition — John: Adapting his own Paper Towns into a screenplay, John had the main character pursue an entirely different girl than in the book, so he may not be the best judge of faithfulness. (playful) — 00:01:56

2014

  • 2014-10-28 · The Paper Towns Movie IS HERE! — John is in North Carolina for the Paper Towns movie; filming starts in a week, he slept in director Jake Schreier's apartment and had pizza with Cara Delevingne. — 00:00:01
    • John introduces Isaac Klausner, executive producer of Paper Towns and of The Fault in Our Stars, and director Jake Schreier. — 00:00:24
    • The table read went great; John is exhausted but so excited about the Paper Towns movie and grateful to everyone coming together to make it. — 00:03:09
    • Long-time Nerdfighters know John's slightly tortured experiences with Paper Towns in Hollywood over the years; now everything is going well, and he thanks everyone who read and supported the book. — 00:03:17
  • 2014-11-04 · Mustaches and Movies: Day One of Paper Towns — John: At 5:48 a.m. John says the Paper Towns movie starts filming in about an hour and 12 minutes, and he is extremely excited and nervous. — 00:00:00
    • One scene shot that day was the first part of Paper Towns John ever wrote, about nine years ago: little Q and Margo biking up to a dead body; he found it weird and wonderful and cried a little. — 00:02:37
  • 2014-11-19 · The Future of the Project for Awesome: Pizzamas Day 8 — announcement: Nat Wolff announces the P4A will be on December 12 and 13, not its usual time around his December 17 birthday, because that is the end of the Paper Towns shoot. — 00:01:06
  • 2014-12-23 · Agloe, New York — John says the Paper Towns movie finished shooting a couple of days ago, so he is home, tired and a little sick, and grateful to everyone who worked on it. — 00:00:02
    • John says the map, famous to cartography nerds and Paper Towns readers, shows Agloe, New York, north of Rockland: a town made up by its creators Ernest G Alpers and Otto Lindberg from their initials. — 00:00:32
    • John says the mapmakers put their fake town at a dirt-road intersection in the Catskills to protect their copyright; mapmakers have always made such paper towns or streets to catch copiers. — 00:00:46
    • John says Paper Towns is about how we hurt ourselves and each other when we imagine other people as less than or more than human. — 00:01:44
    • John thanks everyone who made Paper Towns real by reading it and so made Agloe real again; Agloe will cease to exist again someday, but together they made it real for a while. — 00:02:49
  • …and 13 statements more in 2014 — all statements of 2014

2015

  • 2015-02-17 · Places I've Never Been — John: Last week (week of 9 February 2015) John found a copyright-subreddit post saying a friend's Tumblr line was attributed to him and sold as a poster; he illegally downloaded a pirated copy of his own novel, searched it, and the line was not there. — 00:01:20
    • John corrects the record: the line was written several years ago by a 13-year-old Nerdfighter, Melody, who often quoted his books and made art on her Tumblr; someone assumed he wrote it. — 00:01:44
  • 2015-03-17 · What Are Paper Towns? — announcement: John says the Paper Towns trailer comes out on Thursday, which is why he is in the airport: he has to go be on The Today Show. — 00:00:23
    • John says 'paper towns' means different things to Q in the book, but in real life is about copyright: mapmakers plant fictitious entries so copying can be detected. — 00:00:49
  • 2015-04-28 · Is the Paper Towns Movie Like the Book? Thoughts on Adaptations — John: The question John is asked most is whether the Paper Towns movie will be (exactly) like the book; his answer is yes, but also no. — 00:00:25
    • John's own Paper Towns screenplay, written many years ago, was vastly different from the book (Q chases a different girl, an airplane crash) and was horrible because it focused on theme over storytelling. (playful) — 00:01:54
    • John says the idea he wanted to tell visually is that putting people on a pedestal, failing to imagine them complexly, is tremendously destructive. — 00:02:07
    • John calls the Paper Towns script by Mike Weber and Scott Neustadter, who wrote the Fault in Our Stars screenplay, brilliant because it captures both story and ideas; for him it created the same feelings. — 00:02:23
    • John learned from the Goonies novelization that changes are not necessarily for the worse; he would rather Paper Towns be good than faithful, but believes it is both. — 00:03:06
  • 2015-06-23 · Question Tuesday with Cara Delevingne and Nat Wolff — John records Question Tuesday in the back of a movie theater in Berlin with Nat Wolff, who plays Q, and Cara Delevingne, who plays Margo Roth Spiegelman in the Paper Towns film. — 00:00:06
  • 2015-07-28 · Paper Towns, Agloe, and Touring: Thoughts from (Many) Places — John says Paper Towns is about the challenge of understanding that others are as complex as you, which is especially hard inside the publicity machine, since it commodifies everyone it touches. — 00:00:37
    • John says the Paper Towns movie is out in most of the world and thanks everyone who watched it and shared responses via Nerdfighteria's #wallofcow. — 00:03:29
  • …and 14 statements more in 2015 — all statements of 2015

2016

  • 2016-07-26 · El Chapo and Me — John: The article says El Chapo has read two books in prison: a Spanish novel, El Final del Ave Fenix, and John's Paper Towns. — 00:00:53
    • John argues Paper Towns isn't so much a love story as a story of learning that romanticizing someone isn't the same as loving them. — 00:01:04
    • John's biggest question is how a book he wrote eight years ago ended up in a prison in Juarez, Mexico, and so how anyone ever found his books. — 00:01:31
    • John says his books are far more widely read than he imagined, yet more than 97% of Americans haven't read one, so his readers are a relatively small club. — 00:01:45
  • 2016-11-15 · Good News/Bad News: A Pizzamas Video in Nine Slices — John says Leonard Cohen gave him one of the central ideas in his book Paper Towns. — 00:02:05

2017

  • 2017-06-06 · My Favorite Subreddits: Joy, Wonder, Knowledge, and Birds with Arms — recommendation: John loves Imaginary Maps, unsurprisingly for readers of Paper Towns: occasional copyright trap maps, but mostly fantastical maps like the Republic of Skyrim's languages or New York State High Speed Rail 2030. — 00:03:05
  • 2017-08-29 · 40 — John says next week's (week of 4 September 2017) video, his reading of the first chapter of Turtles All the Way Down, will be over four minutes but is not punishable, citing precedents from 2011 and 2008 when he read the first chapters of The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns. (playful) — 00:02:51
  • 2017-10-17 · Look at Tiny Baby Hank — John: At Hank's old high school John signs books and thanks the Winter Park High School students who made a paper town and got them t-shirts and green room chairs. — 00:00:38
  • 2017-10-20 · Places Made of People: Thoughts from My Old High School — Hank: This week (week of 16 October 2017) Hank went back to Winter Park High School, a place of good times and bad times but mostly just times, an experience that doesn't fit well into his brain. — 00:00:00
  • …and 1 statement more in 2017 — all statements of 2017

2018

  • 2018-04-17 · John Green Answers Your John Green Questions — John lives in Indianapolis, where TFIOS and Turtles All the Way Down are set; earlier he lived in Chicago (part of An Abundance of Katherines), Birmingham, Alabama (Looking for Alaska) and Orlando, Florida (Paper Towns). — 00:00:35
  • 2018-07-03 · How Does This End? — John's Myspace is still there, a minor museum to his 2007 self, with a profile picture advertising the forthcoming Paper Towns. — 00:00:39
  • 2018-08-14 · Question Tuesday: Secrets & Primes — John adds that Paper Towns has 32 chapters counting the prologue, and Looking for Alaska 60 counting the author's note; saying it out loud, it's a little weird. — 00:01:27
  • 2018-08-28 · The Book Was Better? — John: Paper Towns, a New York Times bestseller, sold about 50,000 copies in its first year; a movie selling 50,000 opening-weekend tickets loses a lot of money, and even 500,000 is usually a failure. — 00:02:02
  • 2018-10-12 · Hank Reads from 'An Absolutely Remarkable Thing' — Hank explains the channel tradition: when one of the brothers has a book out, he reads its first chapter in a video; so far only John, back to Paper Towns nine years ago. — 00:00:00

2019

  • 2019-04-23 · untitled — John: Paper Towns got an okay title only after John tried 'The Life and Hard Times of Margo Roth Spiegelman', 'The Copyright Trap' and 'More Light Than Heat'. — 00:00:58
  • 2019-09-10 · Another Contender in the Room — John says seeing some imagined maps inspired much of his novel Paper Towns. — 00:01:56
  • 2019-12-17 · The Best Days of My Decade — John: Hank long supported John's writing: when Paper Towns came out in 2008, Hank and Katherine toured libraries and bookstores with him in a rented minivan, Hank singing and playing a turtle professor or sock puppet. — 00:02:27

2020

  • 2020-07-21 · Somebody Once Asked . . . — John: Wallet Island being on Google Maps feels lovely: it would be a wonderful coda to Paper Towns if a place that only exists sometimes became real by being named on a map. — 00:02:52

2021

2022

  • 2022-01-11 · The Fault in Our Stars - Ten Years Later — John: After Paper Towns, whose plot hinges on the narrator realizing that Margo was not a miracle or an adventure but a girl, John felt he had explored that theme fully. — 00:00:58
  • 2022-09-30 · COMMIT TO THE BIT — John tells the bust of Edgar Allan Poe he won for Paper Towns 14 years ago that it is now his second favorite mustachioed bust, after a new one. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • 2022-10-06 · The Pizzamas Magic Is Almost Over… — John recalls Maureen writing Suite Scarlett across the table while he wrote Paper Towns, at a New York City cupcake restaurant where they paid $2 for coffee and stayed six hours. — 00:03:17
  • 2022-12-20 · The Best Books Get Better — In a channel comment John says he was very interested in This Side of Paradise while writing Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, and is still fond of its rhythmic prose though it feels dated. — creator comment

2023

2024

  • 2024-02-06 · The Truth of How Books Become Movies — John says most optioned books never become movies: An Abundance of Katherines was optioned and never made, and Paper Towns was optioned three times first. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-08-07 · Dear Hank and John Livestream! — John says opinions on his other books mostly come from readers, though Paper Towns had a little discourse, so some people judge it without reading it. — 00:10:57
  • 2024-10-01 · On Fame and Chappell Roan — John's least favourite photo of himself is from the Paper Towns film premiere: on top of the world, rich and very famous, he was in the middle of a panic attack. — 00:00:12

2025

  • 2025-02-25 · EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS — John says reading a new book's first chapter is a Vlogbrothers tradition since he read Paper Towns' first chapter in 2008; both brothers have done it since. — 00:09:27
  • 2025-07-01 · What #1 New York Times Bestseller Actually Means — In a comment John clarifies that the roughly $105,000 from Paper Towns was his personal take, after production costs and publisher and bookstore cuts. — creator comment
    • John says the Paper Towns hardcover made around $105,000 in total, but the book took three years to write: about $35,000 a year, a modest living from writing. — 00:02:26
    • John first reached the list with his third novel, Paper Towns, which spent three weeks on the young adult hardcover list, selling about 20,000 copies in that time. — 00:02:26

2026

  • 2026-02-13 · Project for Awesome 2026 Kickoff! — John says he desperately wants to be a proper mystery and romance novelist but can't write a proper mystery: Turtles All the Way Down mostly became about OCD, and Paper Towns about imagining other people complexly. — 03:07:36
  • 2026-07-14 · On the Road Again — John recalls the 2008 Great American Tour de Nerdfighting: he, Hank and Katherine drove around the country for a month in a minivan, Hank selling CDs and John Paper Towns; exhausting but exhilarating. — 00:00:00
  • 2026-08-11 · Hollywood, Ending — announcement: The description says John reads the first chapter of Hollywood, Ending, out everywhere September 22, the eighth part of a series since 2008 in which the brothers read first chapters. — video description
    • John says reading a new book's first chapter is a tradition going back to 2008, when he read the first chapter of Paper Towns before it came out. — 00:06:46
  • …and 1 statement more in 2026 — all statements of 2026