cover image But Wait... There's More! Tighten Your Abs, Make Millions, and Learn How the $100 Billion Infomercial Industry Sold Us Everything but the Kitchen Sink

But Wait... There's More! Tighten Your Abs, Make Millions, and Learn How the $100 Billion Infomercial Industry Sold Us Everything but the Kitchen Sink

Remy Stern, . . Collins Business, $24.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-06-126055-1

In this lively exposé, journalist Stern dissects the direct-response marketing business (which includes both infomercials and home shopping networks), a $300 billion industry, larger than the film, music and video game industries combined. There's guilty-pleasure revelations aplenty: how the traditional sales pitch adapted to a televisual format by, for example, real-time number tracking that allows network officials to tell on-air talent, through tiny earpieces, that, say, twirling a piece of jewelry around a finger causes sales to spike and how hosts persuade Americans to buy products like the Inside-the-Shell Electric Egg Scrambler, Power Scissors, the Miracle Broom and, of course, the most successful on-air product to date, the celebrity-driven skin-care regime Proactiv. There's psychology here, too: the author describes the mindset of the typical late-night tired consumer, falling for tricks they wouldn't necessarily fall for in a store. Stern is the perfect host to this slightly seedy world, well-informed and “transfixed by the zany nature of it all.” (Apr.)