AJ Brown’s BookTok moment helped the Super Bowl-bound Eagles and an unknown author

The Eagles’ star wideout was caught on camera reading a self-help tome on the sideline during a playoff game. Now the book is a No 1 bestseller and Philly are in the Super Bowl

Sarah Jessica Parker is papped on the regular dashing around the West Village with a hot new novel in her grip. Actor and onetime Jonathan Safran Foer correspondent Natalie Portman uses Instagram to flaunt her bibliophile status, posting selfies with a cocked eyebrow peeking out from behind what is often a highbrow work in translation. Now there’s a new bookfluencer on the scene: 27-year-old Philadelphia Eagles star wide receiver AJ Brown, who was spotted during the fourth quarter of a recent playoff game against the Green Bay Packers looking pensive on the sidelines with his nose burrowed in a paperback.

Though Brown’s performance that day was below his All-Pro standard, the Eagles won the game 22-10. Within 24 hours, the clunkily titled but undeniably winsome Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life was the No 1 selling book across all categories on Amazon after previously being ranked 523,497th, beating out everything from Mel Robbins’s blockbuster self-help tome Let Them and all the weird shapeshifter stories that are fueling the romantasy bonanza.