Jeff Kinney Releases Book 11 in 'Wimpy Kid' Series, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: DOUBLE DOWN

Jeff Kinney is releasing a new book in the 'Wimpy Kid' series called DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: DOUBLE DOWN (BOOK 11).

About the Book: The pressure's really piling up on Greg Heffley. The only thing he's good at is playing video games, but his parents want him to broaden his horizons by doing something-anything!-else.

When Greg finds an old video camera in his basement, he thinks he may have discovered just the thing to prove he's got big-time talent. With the help of his best friend, Rowley, Greg hatches a plan to make a scary movie . . . and to become rich and famous in the process.

But is doubling down on movie-making a smart plan? Or is it just a recipe for doubling Greg's troubles?

In 1998 Jeff came up with the idea for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a story about a middle-school weakling named Greg Heffley. Jeff worked on his book for almost eight years before showing it to a publisher in New York.

Jeff Kinney was born in 1971 in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland in the early 1990s. It was there that Jeff ran a comic strip called "Igdoof" in the campus newspaper, and he knew he wanted to be a cartoonist.

However, Jeff was not successful in getting his comic strip syndicated after college, and in 1998 he started writing down ideas for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which he hoped to turn into a book. Jeff worked on the book for six years before publishing it online on Funbrain.com in daily installments. To date, the online version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid has more than 80 million visits, and is typically read by more than 70,000 kids a day.

In 2006, Jeff signed a multi-book deal with publisher Harry N. Abrams, Inc. to turn Diary of a Wimpy Kid into a print series. The first Diary of a Wimpy Kid book was published in 2007 and became an instant bestseller. Just a year later, more than 100,000 copies were in print in the United States alone. With each subsequent book, in-print numbers continue to grow exponentially both in the U.S. and abroad. There are now more than 180 million copies of the series in print worldwide.

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series has been a fixture on the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. The series has remained on the New York Times bestseller lists since the publication of the first book, for more than 450 weeks total, and more than 350 on the series list. The books are currently available in 61 editions in 52 languages.

Since initial publication in 2007, the series has gone on to win many regional and national awards around the globe including two Children's Choice Book Awards and six Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Book. Jeff Kinney was named one of Time magazine's most influential people in the world. In addition, three movies based on the book series have grossed more than $250 million internationally. A new film based on the books is set to release in May 2017.

Jeff Kinney is also the creator of Poptropica, which was named one of Time magazine's 50 Best Websites. He spent his childhood in the Washington, D.C., area and moved to New England in 1995. Jeff lives with his wife and two sons in Massachusetts, where they own a bookstore, An Unlikely Story.

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