SARAH Palin week has begun.
The former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate is hitting the tube hard to flog her new memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”
The first stop on the Palin tour is today’s interview on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
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It’ll be followed by a five-part interview with Barbara Walters, portions of which will air during tomorrow’s “Good Morning America,” “World News” and “Nightline” (to coincide with the book’s release) and continue on Wednesday’s “GMA,” concluding on Friday’s “20/20.”
Palin is also expected to be interviewed by Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday. (In a perfect world, she’s said on her Facebook page, that she’d also like to chat with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Greta Van Susteren.)
If that seems like overkill, it’s just part of the media blitz that comes along whenever a celebrity wants you to buy into their latest project.
“Anything national goes first — you want the biggest bang for your buck,” says Drew Nederpelt of Sterling & Ross Publishers, who’s currently working on Alan Thicke’s “How to Raise Kids Who Won’t Hate You” book tour.
“Once you have one morning show, the others won’t have you on, so you go to a national cable morning show and then try to do an evening show, whether it’s ‘Larry King Live,’ ‘Letterman‘ or ‘Leno.’ ”
Nederpelt says interviews with “the holy grail, the ones that have rabid audiences” — Oprah, Dr. Phil and Beck — usually don’t come until weeks later, once it’s proven that your book has legs.
Given this, it’s surprising that Palin is kicking off her publicity tour with an “Oprah” appearance.
But, the truth is, that while “publishers consider it a coup to get Oprah, in this case, Oprah probably considers it a coup to get Sarah because she doesn’t traditionally sit down with anybody,” Nederpelt says.
“Oprah is in a class of her own, and [morning shows] don’t mind following in her footsteps.”
Grace McQuade, executive VP at Goldberg McDuffie Communications, a firm that specializes in book publicity, concurs. “Every show wants to get the first interview but they can’t,” she says.
“When it’s a book in the news or an author who is a newsmaker herself or himself, usually they’re willing to follow and do the interview [anyway].”
To combat the problem of overexposure — and hearing the same, rehearsed talking points over and over again — show producers will “watch the other interviews and come up with their own way of doing the interview, [ask] fresh questions and put their own spin on it,” McQuade says.
Ultimately, there’s no such thing as oversaturation when it comes to celebrities pimping their products.
“We want our book’s name everywhere, all the time,” Nederpelt says.