Announcing the NPR Books Watch Contest

Media news was a little light this morning (excluding the Spitzer boondoggle stories), but no matter.  As I was brushing my teeth last night, I came up with the idea — all my good ideas come up when I’m near running water not that you asked — of tallying what books have been covered on the national NPR shows each week (since all good book publicists know that a national NPR interview is almost the Holy Grail of radio publicity.)  Here’s how it’ll work.

Every Friday afternoon I’ll post a roundup of the national NPR book stories of the week.  The first person to send me the imprints (not publishing houses but imprints) of all the books mentioned (rarely more than a dozen) will win The Grid.  What is “The Grid”?  The Grid is an Excel spreadsheet listing the titles, authors, subjects, shows, interviewers and post-interview Amazon rankings of all the book stories for that week.  For those of you who know how to use the alphabetize function in Excel, you’ll know that you can then organize the columns to see which shows or interviewers have been covering the most books in what subjects.  If tracking down the imprints of these books sounds like a wild goose chase to you, think of it this way — regardless of whether you win The Grid, you will have just familiarized yourself with all the national NPR book stories for that week.

First roundup to be posted later today, so check back soon …