Few authors, no matter how serious or scholarly, can afford to refuse to participate in a book tour. If they want to sell books, that is. But fewer still could have guessed until recently that their best pitchmen- and most engaged interviewers—would be the comedians of late-night cable TV. Take Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi “banker to the poor”, who recently appeared on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. “Tell me about micro-financing and micro-lending,” Stewart asked earnestly. Stewart has also interviewed Ishmael Beah, the young Sierra Leonian who just published A Long Way Gone, a memoir about his wrenching experience as a child soldier; Jeffrey Rosen, the George Washington University law professor who wrote The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America; and Vali Nasr, the Middle East expert who was promoting The Shia Revival, an examination of ethnic conflict in Iraq. Yunus’s appearance gave a jump-start to his national press tour and sent his rank on the online bookseller Amazon soaring, said Susan Weinberg, who is the publisher of Public Affairs. “It was our pièce de résistance,” Weinberg said. Many publishers shrug off other TV comedians like The Tonight Show With Jay Leno on NBC and Late Show With David Letterman on CBS, saying they are too celebrity-driven to be interested in serious authors, and usually fail to generate a bump in sales anyway.All that’s left are 60 Minutes on CBS, Imus in the Morning on MSNBC, Larry King Live on CNN, and of course, The Oprah Winfrey Show, all extremely competitive venues for placing an author. Said Martha K. Levin, publisher of Free Press: “Particularly for non-fiction, we are so dependent on media, and TV has an impact that is unparalleled.”“If I had a choice between Charlie Rose and Jon Stewart, I’d pick Jon Stewart, no question,” said one publicist.About a year ago, publicists began noticing that Stewart was interviewing serious authors, said Lissa Warren, the senior director of publicity for Da Capo Press. “It was almost an ‘oh my God’ moment,” she said. Michael Mandelbaum, a professor of American foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said during his interview last year on The Daily Show to promote The Case for Goliath, that Stewart drew out the most important themes of the book. “In my experience, it’s not just that serious books get a hearing on comedy shows,” said Mandelbaum. “But serious books get a serious hearing as well as a funny one on comedy shows.”If it’s true that comedy thrives on opposites, perhaps the combination of serious and slapstick makes perfect sense. Not that Stewart injects comedy into each interview. He all but wept when he interviewed Beah, saying. “I’ve rarely read a book that makes my heart hurt, but this one does.” Julie Bosman
