World English audio rights sold for PUTIN’S TROLLS! The auction winner is Blackstone Audio!

We are really happy to announce that the award-winning investigative reporter and winner of the US State Department’s International Women of Courage Award Jessikka Aro’s PUTIN’S TROLLS: ON THE FRONTLINES OF RUSSIA’S INFORMATION WAR AGAINST THE WORLD, was sold to Addi Wright at Blackstone Audio, for publication in June 2022, by Rhea Lyons at HG Literary on behalf of Elina Ahlback at Elina Ahlback Literary Agency.

”We are excited for the opportunity to publish this timely and heroic work in audio book to the English-speaking world.   Putin’s Trolls by award-winning Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro is a ground breaking expose of Russia’s information warfare.”

– Addi Wright, Acquisitions Editor, Blackstone Publishing, US

Rights to PUTIN’S TROLLS have been sold now in 11 languages, and will be published in English by Ig Publishing, available in e-book on March 22, 2022 and in print in June 2022. The rights are still available in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands etc.

“Jessikka Aro has written a frightening and fascinating book, chronicling Russian information warfare in irrefutable detail. Exposing Putin’s trolls is dangerous, vital, and ultimately heroic work.”
– Anne-Marie Slaughter

“By exposing Putin’s institutionalized trolling operations Jessikka Aro has gone where no one has had the courage to go before and has done so at great peril. Ms. Aro has done the world a huge service by showing us how these tactics work so we can better defend ourselves going forward.”
– Bill Browder

Download the full English PDF by clicking here!

The book has been a bestseller in Finland and internationally, and has just this week received an excellent review in the US in Kirkus Reviews:

“Timely exposé of Russia’s vast disinformation campaign from a Finnish journalist persecuted for her persistent reporting of its brazen abuses.

In this important, firsthand account of Russian malfeasance, Aro shows how she has suffered personally and professionally during her diligent quest to expose the rampant social media incursions orchestrated by Putin and his minions. Her work is especially telling in terms of Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and implementation of its online “troll factory,” which meddled significantly in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. [—] Throughout this book, Aro reveals the mechanics of Russia’s insidious nonmilitary tactics and widespread propaganda targeted at civilians—strategies used decades before in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to gain control over the minds of citizens. [—] the author is to be commended for both her journalism and for her creation of a damning portrait of Putin and his autocratic, manipulative regime.

As Russia continues to threaten Ukraine in hybrid warfare, Aro provides an extremely valuable lesson.”
– Kirkus Reviews, 08.03.2022

PUTIN’S TROLLS
Johnny Kniga, November 2019, 453 pp.

Russia wages war against civilians online. Every critical voice is an enemy. Award-winning journalist Jessikka Aro’s book presents criminal smearing campaigns, launched and approved by the Kremlin against private individuals around Western countries.

PUTIN’S TROLLS, praised by critics in Finland, brings together recent international and illegal filth operations to silence and smear the critics of the Kremlin. The book zooms into the destinies of the author Jessikka Aro, financier Bill Browder, Bellingcat investigator Eliot Higgins, journalist Liz Wahl and many more.

Well documented and shocking true stories show that Russia does not shy away from the darkest means of eliminating its opponents through cyber-espionage, social media trolls, fake news, cyber-attacks, death threats and hate campaigns by PR professionals.

About the author:

Jessikka Aro (born 1980) is a Finnish journalist working for Finland’s public service broadcaster Yle. In September 2014, she began to investigate pro-Russian Internet trolls, but became a victim of their activities herself.

On December 1, 2020 Jessikka Aro received the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award, presented in partnership with the Washington Post and hosted by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Jessikka was recognized for her award-winning investigative reporting of Russian information warfare.