Harvard more likely than NPR?

Nobody with an ounce of experience ever said that book publicity was easy. In fact, for well-documented reasons, it is becoming more competitive with each year that passes. That said, publicists rarely take the time to document how competitive things are actually getting.
In yesterday's Publishers Lunch I was delighted to see a mention of a new initiative by Viking/Penguin Assistant Director of Publicity Yen Cheong to keep track of the number of authors covered on NPR. From Publishers Lunch:

Cheong has started a weekly tally of author appearances on national NPR shows as part of a contest for book publicists to keep track of how many books are actually covered. It grew out of a realization, Cheong explains on her Book Publicity Blog, that of "100,000+ authors published each year, the national NPRs interview about 600 of them (I'm estimating a dozen interviews per week) -- which is a whopping 0.06 percent. In other words, getting on a national NPR show is 15 times harder than getting into Harvard." Weekly contest winners will receive the NPR Books Grid, an Excel spreadsheet listing the titles, authors, subjects, shows, interviewers and post-interview Amazon rankings of all the book stories for that week.

What does this mean for authors who have been interviewed on NPR?

Don't let those Ivy League degrees intimidate you any longer.

Those of you interested in another great book publicity blog should check out Cheong's . She runs one of the best we've come across.