Colbert’s First LATE SHOW
Book Bump

Reporting on the guests Colbert interviewed in his first week replacing David Letterman as host of The Late Show, The Hollywood Reporter headline reads, “Joe Biden and Wonky Guests Are Great But Celebrity Chats Could Be Improved.”

The guests got even wonkier this week, with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer appearing last night. There to promote his book, The Court And The World, (RH/Knopf), out today, he got little chance to talk about it, but it rose on Amazon’s sales rankings nonetheless.

Breyer also appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, was interviewed yesterday on NPR’s Morning Edition and the book was reviewed in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. All that attention sent the book to #203 on Amazon’s sales rankings, but Colbert had even greater impact, sending it to #110 this morning.

THR notes, “One look at Colbert’s guests in the next two weeks emphatically proves that he — and CBS — are going all-in on this [wonky] strategy: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders Friday, Global Poverty Project founder Hugh Evans and Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Sept. 23; Archbishop Thomas Wenski on Sept. 24 and Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai on Sept. 25.”

Bernie Sanders is publishing two updated books in December, The Speech: On Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class  (Nation Books) and Outsider in the White House (Verso; Exp Upd edition).

Elizabeth Waren’s book, A Fighting Chance (Macmillan/Metropolitan) was published last year.

Malala Yousafzai’s book, I Am Malala (Hachette/Little, Brown) is credited as the inspiration for the documentary, He Named Me Malala, to be released Oct. 2.

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