(Milo Yiannopoulos.Mike Allen)
Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos' book rose to the top spot on the Amazon best-seller list on Friday, about 24 hours after it was announced.
Preorders of the book, "Dangerous," put it ahead of Tim Ferriss' "Tools of Titans" and just behind the late Carrie Fisher's "The Princess Diarist."
Yiannopoulos reacted to the news on Facebook.
"WE F---ING DID IT," he wrote in a post.
Yiannopoulos announced on Thursday that he had inked a book deal with Simon & Schuster reportedly worth $250,000.
"I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying my hardest to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions," he said. "I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building — but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of cash."
The book, which will be published March 14, 2017, will touch on Yiannopoulos' relationship with the alt-right movement, his lifetime ban from Twitter, and his nationwide college tour.
Business Insider recently conducted a brief Q&A with Yiannopoulos:
Oliver Darcy: There's been a lot of criticism aimed at Simon & Schuster after the announcement of your book. Some are calling for a boycott of the company. What's your response?
Milo Yiannopoulos: As is now painfully obvious from my Twitter ban, boycotts tend to make the shunned more popular. Simon & Schuster apparently understands this, which makes them the smartest of the big publishers.
Darcy: Did you talk to any other publishers? Did any reject you?
Yiannopoulos: Of course. We spoke to everyone. But Threshold Editions at Simon & Schuster were my first choice, and I was thrilled they wanted me.
Darcy: You are often associated with the alt-right, but you yourself say you don't identify yourself as sharing the movement's politics. What specifically turns you off to the movement?
Yiannopoulos: There are some fringe factions of the alt-right that have demonstrated genuinely racist, anti-Semitic, and prejudiced leanings. They clearly don't want a Jewish, homosexual, black-d--- supremacist as a spokesman. And I don't want to be associated with them, either. I like the free-speech stuff, the political-correctness stuff. And I believe in and love the populist, nationalist, antiglobalist rebellion happening all over the West.
Darcy: In the press release about your book, you talk about being banned from Twitter and suggest it hasn't harmed your brand. But, as some observers have noticed, when you were banned, Google searches for your name dramatically dropped. Are you sure being exiled from the platform hasn't hurt you?