Now that The Tonight Show has crowned a winner in its Spring book club, we’re getting a first look at what a Jimmy Fallon book bump looks like in 2024.
Back in March, Fallon announced the return of his Fallon Book Club with a tournament-style bracket to choose The Tonight Show’s next official book selection. Last week, Fallon announced “Nightwatching” by Tracy Sierra as the winning pick on air (and sent everyone in the audience home with a copy).
On Friday’s program, Fallon highlighted the effect the tournament has had on the book’s sales. When he first mentioned the book club on air, the “Nightwatching” hardcover stood at #20,143 in Amazon Books’ Best Sellers Rank. Two days after Fallon announced it as the winner, the book shot up to at least #46 on that list.
Per LateNighter’s own research, improvements in the book’s ranking correlated with Fallon’s periodic updates on the bracket. When Fallon declared the book club’s Final Two on April 8th, “Nightwatching” was #2,873 in Amazon’s Best Seller Rank. Within 12 hours of that segment airing, it had risen to #632.
“Nightwatching” is Tracy Sierra’s debut novel, and the author is clearly grateful for the attention Fallon’s book club has provided, calling the experience “so utterly surreal” in a recent post to X/Twitter.
Fallon first introduced his book club with 2018’s “Tonight Show Summer Reads,” but this year’s format was built around a March Madness-inspired bracket. Starting from a lineup of 16 books, viewers were asked to vote in multiple rounds of head-to-head matchups on the Fallon Book Club website until the field was narrowed down to one official Spring Read.
Of course, talk shows establishing book clubs is nothing new. In 1996, The Oprah Winfrey Show launched Oprah’s Book Club, creating something of a phenomenon in the publishing world. It has been credited with selling tens of millions of books during its run.
Time will tell if “Nightwatching” continues to move up the charts as the Fallon Book Club continues—and after author Tracy Sierra’s appearance on the program. “We’ll see you on the show very soon,” Fallon promised Sierra after announcing that her book had won.
