Authors (and actors and musicians) often make appearances on talk-shows to promote their latest works; now, I can understand how hearing a musician perform might sway a potential buyer, and how the right clip from a film might hook someone, but I don’t ever remember an author just reading a passage from their book and getting anyone to say, “hells yeah! I gotta get me summa that!” anyone have a different experience in general?
I’ve been inspired to think “yeah that’d be cool to read” but I never actually did
I know I bought the first Freakonomics and Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacationbecause of seeing the author interviewed, then bought more of Vowell’s works because I liked that one. I bought the new Cleopatra bio because of seeing the author on Daily Show (that one’s a Christmas gift for my cousin who loves ancient Egypt), and not sure if these count as author shilling but I bought John Waters’ most recent book due to the excerpts about Leslie Van Houten that were on Huffington Post and I bought Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties because the author gave a good radio interview and then even with that godawful “radio reader” guy on NPR monotoning it out piecemeal it was interesting.
Since when do authors get to read passages from their books on talk shows?
Live readings certainly seem to work to encourage buyers, though.
I bought Freakonomics after seeing the guy talk about Superfreakonomics on the Daily Show.
I asked for and received for Christmas last year, Andre Agassi’s Open. I was an average level Agassi fan (not a big follower of tennis, but when I watched I rooted for him), but I’d heard/read all the hoopla about him smoking meth and slagging off Pete Sampras and the going commando during matches and all the salacious little tid-bits. So, I guess that kind of made me want to read it.
Meh. The book kind of sucked. It reads like cheap Mickey Spillane because it’s all first person and I don’t think there’s a sentence longer than ten words, nor a paragraph longer than three sentences.
And all the salacious tid-bits turned out to be practically non-sequitors – barely mentioned. Not to mention that, besides the fact that Agassi does a lot of decent stuff regarding funding a school, the book is nothing but a long whine about how much it sucks to be filthy rich for being good at a game.
I bought “The Sparrow” after hearing Mary Doria Russell talking about it on NPR.
I’ve bought books by authors I’ve met at SF conventions after hearing them talk about their books. Offhand, some would be Esther Friesner, Judith Tarr, Jane Yolen, Hal Clement, and Susan Swartz
Authors are some of my favorite *The Daily Show *guests (generally can’t stand the film/TV celebs). I’ve sometimes bought and often borrowed books I first heard about there.
Indeed. I listen to enough NPR to hear about some books that sound interesting, such as David Mitchell on Fresh Air. I might read The Thousand Autumns of whats-his-name (sometime next year, from the library).
I bought The Omnivore’s Dilemma after hearing Michael Pollan in an interview. I don’t recall if it was explicitly on a book tour; I think it was in another context but it may have been part of the promotion. On the other hand, that case was somewhat rare for me - I’d been given a $100 gift certificate to Amazon to spend on myself and needed something to top it off.
I read the book *Mindless Eating*because I heard the author being interviewed on the radio (NPR, maybe?). Very interesting book.
I bought the movie Away from Her because I heard the director being interviewed. Most depressing movie ever.
For me, in most cases, it let’s me know an author has a new book in stores. I don’t follow who is publishing what and when very closely, so an appearance on tv is sort of like letting me know a new book is available.
And on a few occosions I’ve heard about a book that seemed intresting. Nowadays with Amazon this means that 5 minutes later it is ordered and often also read. I would be interested to see whether Amazon’s sales spike when an author is on - say - the Daily Show.
This for me too.
once upon a time i was in the gallery, there was an author having a signing at a bookstore.
she saw me, and waved me down. asked me if i liked to read, wouldn’t i be interested in buying her book, etc.
i ended up buying the book. i read it about a year later… one of those days when i didn’t have much else to read and didn’t feel like going out and hunting books. really, how bad could it be, right?
it was bad. it was bad in a really strange way…kinda surreal. i’m reading this book thinking this is really a bad book, but i can’t stop reading it! it keeps going, really horrible, but you can’t stop reading it.
i took it to work and left it at the reception desk. it was known as the emergency book. if you were up there and needed something to read it was there. everyone who read it (6 people!) thought the same. really bad book, but strangly compelling.
the other week i couldn’t believe i saw gary trudeau on the colbert report! the man hardly ever does interview and he is on the colbert report. that was odd.
I haven’t actually bought any of his collections, but hearing Billy Collins read his stuff makes me want to buy something of his.
I like the NPR reviewers. They often read a segment or interview an author, and if the author doesn’t sound like a pompous ass, I’ll head to Amazon.
I’m another person who heard about a book on The Daily Show and ended up buying it. (For the life of me though, I can’t remember which book it was.)
I might be tempted, but actually had sort of an opposite reaction to James Patterson and a commercial he did. I’m not a big fan of his work in the first place, but he did an ad where he said something like, Buy this book or I’ll kill off Alex Delaware (the main character). Pissed me off.
i did buy 3 books from npr reviews. the poisoner’s handbook, the tiger, and the poker bride.
I bought The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan after seeing del Toro on Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show. It was funny, because part of Ferguson’s schtick had been railing against wimpy, romantic, “sparkly” vampires, and here was del Toro with a new novel hearkening back to the evil monster vampire. The two of them had a great time reminiscing about when vampires weren’t lame. Since I’m a fan of del Toro’s movies, I figured the book was worth a shot, even though I’d never heard of Hogan. And it definitely was worth it; the second in the planned trilogy just came out a couple of months ago, and it’s a great “evil vampire” series. Oh, and the other guy (Hogan) has apparently done pretty well with his own stuff (he wrote Prince of Thieves, which was adapted for the screen as The Town, Affleck’s recent critical hit).