Richard Dunn writes book about viral All By Myself lip-synch video

A man from New Brunswick who shot to fame with a video of himself lip-syncing to Céline Dion’s version of the classic All By Myself in a near empty Las Vegas airport has now released a book about the experience.

Richard Dunn says the book, entitled How I Shot the YouTube Megahit "All by Myself" on My iPhone and Why I'm Not Lonely Anymore, came out last week on Amazon.ca, less than two months after his video went viral.

He says the publishers pushed him to get it out quickly while the video was still fresh in people's minds.

The video has had a total of about 20 million hits on Vimeo, YouTube and a number of other sites to date.

Dunn, who grew up in Moncton and now lives in Canton, Georgia where he works as a lighting designer for corporate entertainment, says the book was supposed to be about how to make a viral video on your smartphone.

But it turned into a story that begins with him getting bumped off two consecutive Delta Air Lines flights and ends with him and his whole family meeting Céline Dion, he told CBC's Shift on Tuesday, while vacationing in New Brunswick.

And while the book does explain how Dunn shot, performed and edited the video overnight at the McCarran International Airport, he doesn't guarantee others will get the same results he did, he said.

For example, Dunn taped his iPhone to a ruler, which he then sandwiched between suitcases as a tripod.

For his big finale, he strapped the camera to a bag and set it on an escalator so the camera zooms out on him as he crescendos, then he sprinted to the top of the escalator to retrieve his bag and save it from getting stuck.

The video prompted a video response by Dion, who called it "hilarious."

Then the megastar invited Dunn and his family to one of her Las Vegas concerts and brought them all backstage, including Dunn's wife, daughter, parents and in-laws.