Week Seven Prompt: Oprah's Book Club

“In this paper, we present evidence that strongly implies the conventional wisdom is correct: Oprah’s TV picks helped sell the books she endorsed.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I read that sentence in the introduction of From Obscurity to Bestseller: Examining the Impact of Oprah’s Book Club Selections. Well…yeah! Of course Oprah helped sell the books she endorsed! Everyone in the world knew that! But there were some interesting discoveries in the study, chiefly that the books picked later in the study sold less than the books picked earlier. Why? The authors offered three possibilities:

1. Oprah’s influence waned

2. Declining quality of the books 

3. Oprah started picking older books

I would venture a guess that Oprah’s influence did not wane – at least not until she stopped doing her afternoon television show. Nor do I think that the books she chose were of poor quality. The older books suggestion piqued my interest

That sparked a look at the history of Oprah’s book club picks. In 2002 – the last year of the study – Oprah chose two books, one published in 1996 and one published in 1973. The latter was Sula written by Toni Morrison – the fourth book of Morrison’s that Oprah had chosen up to that point.  But in the previous two years (2001 and 2000) Oprah picked a total of 15 books. Eight of the fifteen – more than 50% - of those titles had been published within a year of their selection for the book club. Twelve of the 15 – 75% - had been published within three years of their selection. The only exceptions were:

A Fine Balance (1995) – picked in 2001

We Were the Mulvaneys (1996) – picked in 2001

The Bluest Eye (1970) – picked in 2000

So it's hard to make the case that "older books" caused the decline in sales. I do think it’s significant that following the ado over The Corrections, Oprah chose three books that were published at least six years prior to their Book Club selection. And it's not far fetched to see a connection between The Corrections and what came next.

Following Sula in April of 2002, Oprah took a full year off before resuming the book club in June of 2003. That’s when her selections get really interesting. Starting in 2003 - in other words, after the study – Oprah really focused on older books. And not just older books; we’re talking older older books. Over the next two years she picked nine books. Here they are, listed by publication date:

1967 – One Hundred Years of Solitude

1952 – East of Eden

1948 – Cry, The Beloved Country

1940 – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

1932 – Light in August

1931 – The Good Earth

1930 –As I Lay Dying

1929 – The Sound and the Fury

1877 –Anna Karenina

It’s almost as if Oprah thought, “Oh! You think my 2002 picks were old? I’ll show you some old picks!”

In September of 2005, Oprah finally picked a recent book. Unfortunately, she chose A Million Little Pieces. If you’ve done the other readings for this week you know how that turned out!

One final thought: Oprah ended the original Oprah’s Book Club in December of 2010 with a couple of Charles Dickens books. Her show ended its run five months later. In 2012, Oprah brought the book club back – calling it Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 – using her website and social media to promote and discuss the selections. She's picked six books over the last five years. I would be very interested to see the impact of the new incarnation of the Book Club compared to the original version. I think it would be an interesting study of Oprah’s continued impact on American culture but also the impact of digital media versus traditional media.