Do Newspaper and Radio Interviews Sell Your Book?
A Literal Literary Loser Stops the Presses
When I sat in the HarperCollins marketing meeting prior to the release of my historical fiction novel, “The Nesting Dolls,” (it was February of 2020, we had such big plans; ha, ha, none of them happened), the Marketing Director was adamant that book tours didn’t sell books, ads didn’t sell books, reviews didn’t sell books. Only press coverage sold books.
Because both “The Nesting Dolls” and my subsequent historical fiction, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region,” were traditionally published, I did not have immediate access to sales figures, so I could test the connection between mainstream press attention and sales.
The best I could do was see if, after I was interviewed by “The Jewish News of Northern California” about Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision to pull her Russia-set book in light of the Ukraine war (something I also covered, here), my Amazon numbers showed any significant movement. There was a slight trend upward, but since ranking is difficult to correlate to actual sales figures, I was still just making guesses in the dark.
As a result, I only have my self-published data as a guide to decipher whether newspaper and radio features/interviews contribute in a significant way to book sales.
In March of 2021, Kveller, a Jewish parenting website I’d contributed to for years, ran my post, “25 Years Before Bridgerton, I Wrote the First Jewish Regency Romance.” Over the course of the next week, I sold 80+ copies of “The Fictitious Marquis,” the novel spotlighted in the piece. I’m going to assume those two events were connected.
But it’s not always that simple. In December 2021, I wrote an op-ed for The New York Post entitled “High School Guide: What Happens Now With Admissions?” It was part of their special high school supplement. I received prime positioning: The full, last page of the issue. They ran my bio, including that I was the author of the book, “Getting Into NYC High School.” And yet, not a single book was sold that week.
Last Wednesday, I was again asked to comment on NYC high school admissions. This time, it was on the radio, for The Brian Lehrer Show. Lehrer is a big deal! NYC mayors regularly call in to chat with him! I’m a real New Yorker now!
Lehrer and I spoke specifically about applying to public arts high schools. (You can listen to the recording, here.) He mentioned my book and my website at the start of the segment, and at the close. I could not have asked for better placement.
Afterwards, I sold about a dozen books on Amazon. But that spike was in line with the spike I usually see after doing a “Getting Into NYC High School” workshop, which I’d just hosted the Thursday before, so it was tough to discern which sales came from where.
In addition, it’s school admissions season in NYC. Public high school applications are due in early December. This is the time of the year when I sell the bulk of my niche school books, anyway. (2021 was a Covid anomaly in that the application process hadn’t even started yet in December.) Not to mention my social media promotion, and my own mailing list.
So does radio and newspaper publicity sell books?
You all recognize the drill by now: When it comes to book publishing (say it with me!) nobody knows anything.
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Meanwhile, as part of my ongoing experiment to see if promoting other authors helps sell my own books, behold, the latest episode in my daughter’s and my YouTube review channel! Click to watch! We’re talking representation, getting your furniture off the street, and learning English by watching TV!