McGinniss became an overnight success when the book, his first, landed on The New York Times bestseller list.

A fellow commuter had just landed the Hubert Humphrey account and was boasting that 'in six weeks we’ll have him looking better than Abraham Lincoln.'

It "spent more than six months on best-sellers lists, and McGinniss sold a lot of those books through television, appearing on the titular shows of Merv Griffin, David Frost and Dick Cavett, among others.

"[2] Conservative writer William F. Buckley "assumed McGinniss had relied on 'an elaborate deception which has brought joy and hope to the Nixon-haters.'

SBN 671-78036-0, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 77-92157 The Selling of the President, 1988 reprint, with new introduction by author, New York:Penguin Books.