Watchers of Comedy Central also read. Who woulda thunk it?

I have recommended before, and have a link to it on the right, Barry Ritholtz's blog. Ritholtz has is about to publish a book called "Bailout Nation" about the financial mess we are in, which I can't wait to read. In fact, he had a publishing deal with a publisher associated with S&P, and they dumped him because he blasts them in the book over their ridiculous ratings of complete crap as AAA.

Today Ritholtz writes about a meeting he had with his publisher about marketing, and what whose he would appear on. Here's what he says about appearing on The Daily Show:

But the most intriguing “inside baseball” stuff we discussed was the impact of The Daily Show on book sales — in particular, two recent books that were the subject of big TDS segments. These were mentioned as prime examples of the power of Jon Stewart.

The first is House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan. After Stewart raved about the book (”Helluva book — you made finance read like a suspense novel”) when Cohan was on the show April 9th, sales of the book in stores tripled. They have been strong ever since.

The second example was the infamous James Cramer appearance on TDS on March12th. According to the people I had lunch with yesterday, the very next day, sales of Cramer’s book Jim Cramer’s Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World went into free fall. They absolutely plummeted — and they haven’t recovered since.

As a big Daily Show fan, I've often wondered about the authors who appear there to promote books. I guessing that Stewart's audience is a bit more educated and inquisitive than the audience for "Reno 911:.