The Colbert Bump is Real, Colbert’s Nation Not What He Thinks it is
By Chris Gemignani
January 31, 2008
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Stephen Colbert has mentioned that he’s having trouble getting guests during the writer’s stike. We find this puzzling, given the supposed benefits of the Colbert Bump. Does being on the Colbert Show really provide a bump—a critical leap that vaults a writer, or a politician to superstardom?
We know that Colbert isn’t a big fan of “facts,” and only needs his gut to tell him the Colbert Bump is real. At Juice, we let the data decide what’s real or not, so our apologies to Stephen for not taking his word for it. Intrigued, Juice Analytics set out to find out the truth. We gathered data about Amazon sales rank for 20 authors that appeared on his show in recent months. How did those ranks change in the days immediately before and after the authors’ appearance on the show?
Hmmm, there might be something there but those sales ranks don’t tell us much. Fortunately for Stephen, some “eggheads” have worked out roughly how Amazon sales rank corresponds to actual book sales. We calculated the sales, and normalized the data so that the week prior to appearing on the Colbert Report was equal to 1.0. Here’s a picture.
That looks like a bump, Conan. In fact, being on the Colbert Report increases sales by 10 times on average. That bump doesn't last forever, but, let's face it, what does?
We also wanted to know, what kinds of books are Colbert’s audience going crazy for? After all, Colbert is well known as a rock-solid conservative. He’s tight with the Bush Administration. Even though he debates a few liberal (“pinko”) authors now and then, most of his guests are writers of pop-intellectual studies of the Gladwellian persuasion.
Here are the authors and how we categorized them:
Pinkos: Jessica Valenti, Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, Wesley K. Clark, A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country, Robert Shrum, No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner
‘Publicans: Tom DeLay, No Retreat, No Surrender: One American’s Fight
Pop Essayists: Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel B. Smith, Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination, Michael Gershon, The Second Brain: A Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestine, John J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives, Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Richard Preston, The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring, Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Bjorn Lomberg, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, Michael Wallis, The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate
Popular: Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You!), John Grisham, Playing For Pizza: A Novel, Tina Brown, The Diana Chronicles
How much of a bump did each of these groups receive?
It’s a shock! Liberals and high-minded eggheads do better than popular or conservative books. I’m not sure if Colbert knows this, but his audience isn’t who he thinks they are.
Here are all the authors and their normalized sales around the time of their appearance on the Colbert Report.
This post was a collaborative effort of the entire Juice team. Pete Skomoroch concocted the idea, wrote copy, and found the study linking Amazon Sales Rank to actual sales. Zach data mined. David May whipped up elegant, instant visualizations. Sal Uryasev munged data.
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25 comments | Show all comments only the last 5 are shown
Freccia said:
Great idea...
Valenti, Shrum, Gershon and Smith all had big bumps... did they appear on any other shows at the same time, or was the impact all-Colbert?
As a member of the Colbert Nation, I personally don't watch any other shows, but I've heard that they exist.
Hadley said:
What delta did you use? It isn't listed in the paper you reference.
David said:
Wow - I hope that you realize that Colbert is only pretending to be a 'publican. He is actually a pinko and is very aware that his audience is too. It's the 'publican leaning authors that may be confused.
Stephen said:
It seems clear that everyone has gotten the joke - except you
Rob said:
1) Perhaps you should watch the show - you would then realize his whole act is 'playing' a conservative.
2) Umm.. Don't book authors go on all the chat shows they can usually within a short period. You would need to look at all the other main TV shows each author was on too if this data wee going to make any sense at all.
Chris Gemignani said:
David/Stephen/Rob: Colbert's not the only one who can play a double game. Did you _really_ think we thought Stephen's White House correspondent's dinner roast was evidence that he's "tight" with the White House?
Andrew said:
To be fair to David, Stephen, and Rob, there are people out there whose genes contain a specific mutation that stops their minds from comprehending sarcasm in witty writing. Keep up the good work--it's interesting to see the numbers behind the phenomenon that I already believed was real. There are at least 3 books that I was influenced to buy after seeing the author on the Colbert Report, and I know I can't be the only one watching...
david said:
Quite the analysis!
It will be interesting to watch global trends in book publishing, to see if e-books ever steal the thunder from print books, the way e-music seems to be cutting into "printed" music on CD's.
There's an interesting list of sources of statistics on book sales at Google Answers:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=246739
<a href="http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=246739">Global Book Sales</a>
Worth a look.
Pete Skomoroch said:
For some more anecdotal evidence of the Colbert Bump in Amazon rank (including a brief interview with Stephen Himself), check out this video:
http://asap.ap.org/data/interactives/_entertainment/colbert/
Mark said:
Heck, I keep trying to talk my local book stores into adding a 'Daily Show \ Colbert Report' shelf, along with their new releases, top sellers, etc.
Someone needs to get on that. And then also pay me.
dogintub said:
We already knew it was real because Stephen told us, really what you have done is simply confirm that data analysis can detect a force of nature lol
Well done!
Kyle Wegner said:
I'd like to refer back to one of my favorite sayings when looking at data analysis: correlation does not imply causation. There are plenty of factors outside of being on the Colbert show that would "bump" the ratings of some of these authors. To cite a few:
As was stated before, many of these authors were probably on multiple other shows within a short period of time, meaning that it is more of a media bump than a Colbert bump.
I would venture to guess that the majority of these authors are out pimping brand new books right around their release time, which obviously means their rating will shoot up around the same time they are out selling their wares...this is the first time it is possible for them to see an increase.
These are just the first 2 examples that came to mind, but they seem entirely realistic and probably counteract the "Colbert bump" almost completely.
Diego said:
Kyle's right. You could probably include a comparison group to go around the first of his points, perhaps with authors who were on media tours around the same time but did not appear on the Colbert show.
Jason said:
From the second figure, it looks like the median "bump" is by a factor of about 1 (i.e. not a bump), and certainly not more than a factor of 2.
Hamilton said:
Re: Diego: Building a control group would be difficult, because, well, it wouldn't exactly be random.
I will say this, though; my aunt and uncle are musicians who make obscure but NPR-friendly music. They tend not to do ANY sort of publicity for their work, except on NPR. When they do, though, their Amazon sales rank goes through the roof. This even happens when their record has been out for a year (or two). Just a small anecdote.
Chris Gemignani said:
@Jason: The bump is an increase of sales by a factor of about 10. While it's certainly not there for all books, I think it's worth calling it a bump.
More interesting, but not shown, would be data about the quantity of daily sales over the bump period. While we can only estimate it, some of these books entered the Colbert Report with quite low numbers of daily sales (~10 per day on Amazon). The bump is great, but it's only adding a couple thousand extra dollars in these author's royalty checks.
This isn't Oprah's book club.
James Hanley said:
Um, I'm not real familiar with this site, so I'm not sure if you're being tounge-in-cheek when you call Colbert a "rock-solid conservative"? You are, I hope? Or are you satire-deaf?
Ross said:
I'D LIKE TO SEE THE COLBERT BUMP HE HAS MADE ON DORITOS SALES. GOT ANY STATS ON THAT? I BET WHOEVER THE DORITOS DECISION-MAKER WAS HAS BEEN PROMOTED.
Adele said:
I have to echo James Hanley's question...you were joking, right? Colbert's show is a satire on conservative news programs, its no wonder that liberals enjoy it. And Colbert knows exactly who is audience is.
Chris Gemignani said:
Adele/James: Colbert's not the only one who can play a double game. Did you _really_ think we thought Stephen's White House correspondent's dinner roast was evidence that he's "tight" with the White House?
Adele said:
ahhso.
guilty as charged, haha.
jeff said:
since many of these authors appear on colbert the same week/day that they appear on other shows (often/usually as part of a promotional tour for the book/product they're schilling), can this bump truly be ascribed to colbert and his nation?
mike said:
thats a good question, correlation does not necessarily mean causation :)
mike said:
oops already mentioned, perhaps the suggestion of a control group would be best, comparing a media blitz without Colbert Report to those that appear on the show. it would be difficult to separate out the other factors though, like maybe someone that chooses to go on the CR is also more effective in their other promotions. possibly if there were enough data points, then other effects would be insignificant?? ;)
or maybe find someone that ONLY goes on the Colbert Report, a clean sample sort of :D
Aaron Deyfer said:
great article!
one question: how did you manage to get the historical sales rank data? Did you gather the data "manually" using AWS over time or do you use another service?
said:
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