At tonight's taping of The Daily Show, I was thinking about what a boon Jon Stewart has been for the publishing industry. In between the Doris Kearns Goodwins and the Tom Brokaws who turn up to push their books, there are more obscure authors whose books on the Teapot Dome scandal or Mary Todd Lincoln would never get any play anywhere but C-Span2 on weekends.
I wondered whether these books see a sales bump, the way almost all of the authors booked on Oprah do. Of course, Jon Stewart is no Oprah (proven by the fact that there were no car keys under my seat this evening). But The Daily Show is hitting an awfully desirable demographic: educated liberals, otherwise known as People Who Buy Books.
As I checked the Bookscan sales for the books who have been on the show lately, I realized there was a problem: if the author appears on The Daily Show the same week the book comes out, how can you tell whether the sales are due to this publicity and not whatever else the publisher is doing? Well, you can't. So "new" books were out.
BUT. There are cases where the author appeared on the show months after a book's release for whatever reason (political timeliness, late pushes from the book publicist, etc.). Like Robert Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger. Book was released in April. Dallek was on the show in late July. Sales increased 133% the week after the show, and another 28% the week after that. Last week, Ronald Kessler came by to talk about torture--with his November book, The Terrorist Watch, on full display. Sales have gone up 100% this week.
Our previously mentioned friend, Doris K-G, was on the show in late January to talk about the state of State of the Unions. No mention of her last book, and no copy sitting on the desk. No spike in sales. So it's clearly the specific mentions that are driving this. I'm willing to bet (and offer 9-1 odds!) that Colbert's author guests see similar results.
It's not that I'm surprised that television publicity leads to sales. And there's so little proof of what does cause people to go out and buy books, outside of assumption and possibly coincidental timing. But what I do find amazing is that The Daily Show and its progeny have amassed this kind of power. Who saw that coming, back in the Craig Kilborn days--or even the early Stewart days? If someone had said, in 1996, that Comedy Central would become the go-to place for authors, he'd have been burned at the stake (they did that back then, right?).
3 comments:
I liked this post because it shows that the publishing industry pays attention to "data," and not just...I don't know...conventional publishing wisdom.
Oh, you'd be amazed at all the research that goes into seemingly disastrous book ideas.
But so much of it is speculation about what people will like, what will "catch," that conventional wisdom has to get almost as much play. Kind of a scary business strategy, but I guess it's better than coin-flipping.
Very Interesting post. I was wondering if you had a link to all the books that are featured on Jon Stewart's show. I find video on them but not a list with authors and titles. Can you help me?
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