Could the End of the Daily Show Augur a Decline in Book Sales?

February 27, 2015

Is the end of Jon Stewart’s satirical news program, the Daily Show—a television program that allowed publicists to plug their books—a terrible thing for booksellers?

According to Publishers Weekly’s recent poll of book publicists, probably not—or if so, only marginally so.

“With no single show emerging as a slam dunk for promoting books, publicists agreed on one point: the on-air landscape is more segmented than ever before,” wrote PW writer Rachel Deahl. “Some publicists noted that few TV shows still reach a broad audience—a decade ago, Today was one of the top outlets for promoting books, in part because it consistently drew such a large viewership—so the key is to think small... and more focused. Now, for book publicists, it’s less about the big ‘get’ than the right ‘get.’”

In fact, the television market has only a minor influence on book sales compared to other mediums of book discovery, according to 2014 survey of adult book buyers by Nielsen Books and Consumer. Only three percent of respondents said they learned about a new book from television, which is down from four percent in 2012.

Nonetheless, the impact of book publicity on television has been strongest for sales of nonfiction titles, with seven percent of adult book buyers reporting that they bought a nonfiction title after seeing the author on television. Also, six percent of book buyers reported that they purchased movie tie-in titles after viewing author appearances on a TV show.

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