How Adam Mansbach Got Samuel L Jackson Voice the ‘Go the F to Sleep’ Audiobook

Adam Mansbach wrote a 400-word children's book for adults, and before it was even published, it was number one on Amazon.

That's not marketing spin. That's just what happened with "Go the F to Sleep." Mansbach gave a reading to about 200 people at a museum in Philadelphia in April. The book wasn't due out until the following October. People went home, pre-ordered it on Amazon, and by the end of the week it was sitting at number one. A book that did not yet exist.

The momentum built from there. The publisher had put together a PDF to send to booksellers, partly because they weren't sure booksellers would even want to stock something called "Go the F to Sleep." That PDF ricocheted around the internet and landed in hundreds of thousands of people's inboxes. Mansbach told Rich they were "dumb enough to think this was a problem."

Audible, which he described as "a brand new company at the time," saw an opportunity. They asked Mansbach who he wanted to read the audiobook. He thought about it for about one second. Samuel L. Jackson, "the bard of the F-bomb," was the obvious answer.

The speed of what followed still seems to surprise Mansbach. Tuesday morning, they asked Jackson. Tuesday afternoon, he had already recorded it. The book is around 400 words, Mansbach noted, "many of them repeated more than once," so the turnaround made sense. Jackson then went on Letterman to read it aloud, which Mansbach called "a rare thing for audiobooks."

Mansbach's take on Jackson's performance was not modest: "It's probably his best work since Pulp Fiction." Rich offered no pushback.

The celebrity readings kept coming after that, none of them organized by Mansbach. He told Rich he would just be minding his business and his phone would blow up. Jennifer Garner, Gilbert Gottfried, Cardi B, Shaggy, LeVar Burton. Cardi B read the book pregnant on the Tonight Show after a host handed it to her.

The follow-up, "You Have to Effing Eat," got Bryan Cranston. The third book, "F, Now There Are Two of You," got Larry David. Mansbach earned Larry's respect, he said, by refusing to fly to Los Angeles to supervise the recording session because he was on Martha's Vineyard and didn't want to leave. David's statement about narrating the book: "I did this book as a favor to Adam, who I don't know and have never met."

Rich's read on why the original book connects so hard with parents is personal. He called out his now 6'2", 15-year-old son Cooper, noting that Cooper would sleep fine every night of the week except Saturday nights, the one night Rich had an early call time for NFL Network. "Will you go the F to sleep?" is not a premise. For anyone who has been there, it is a lived experience.