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CNN Live Today
Oprah's Book Club to Cut Back
Aired April 08, 2002 - 10:44 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: One guaranteed route to publishing profits is closing down almost entirely. The Oprah Book Club, which has boosted many an obscure publication to overnight bestseller status, is scaling way back. Our Beth Nissen has details on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Oprah made the announcement on her talk show.
OPRAH WINFREY, TALK SHOW HOST: I just want to say, that this is the end of the book club as we know it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. From now on, when I come across something I feel absolutely compelled to share, I will do that, but it will not be every month. The truth is, it has just become harder and harder for me to find books on a monthly basis that I really am passionate about.
NISSEN: The announcement stunned publishers who have profited and novelists who have coveted Oprah's Midas touch endorsement.
(on camera): What does it mean for a book to be an Oprah pick?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, first and foremost, it means automatic best-seller status. It means books that might get a print run of 100,000 copies or less suddenly are getting a 700,000 or 800,000 automatic print run.
NISSEN (voice-over): A classic example, "Song of Solomon," by Toni Morrison. The year Morrison won the Nobel Prize for literature, the novel sold about 100,000 copies. When Oprah made it her book club pick, it sold more than 800,000 copies in just a few months.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What Oprah has done is she has opened up the market for the potential to sell a million copies to authors who didn't have that chance before.
NISSEN: First time novelists like Jacquelyn Mitchard, literary novelists including Barbara Kingsolver, Isabel Allende, Andre Dubus III. 46 books in six years.
WINFREY: Wasn't it something?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oprah came in and reinforced for publishers the message that there's a large market out there for quality literature.
WINFREY: So I don't know when the next book will be. It might be next fall, or could be next year.
NISSEN: Oprah may yet find new books to recommend. There are about 100,000 books published each year in the United States alone.
Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Oprah's Book Club cutback has turned a publisher's dream into a new reality. Many wonder how it is going to impact their bottom line and their readers. For some insights, let's bring in the editor of "Book" magazine, and that is Jerome Kramer. Good morning, thanks for joining us.
JEROME KRAMER, EDITOR, "BOOK" MAGAZINE: Thanks for having me.
KAGAN: Oprah didn't just light a fire under the careers of some specific authors, she kind of made it cool for America to be reading again.
KRAMER: That's exactly right. I think that's the thing that we really are going to keep an eye on here. That's so interesting, because it became -- it became part of the general entertainment culture to read. Here's this woman who is phenomenally popular, phenomenally beloved, so to speak, who was saying reading was something that was incredibly important to her, and she got her audience on board like no one ever has.
KAGAN: And enjoyable as well, but really, you must see everything that's out there. Is there a dearth of good stuff, like Oprah seems to say?
KRAMER: I don't think there's a dearth of good stuff by any means, but I also think that that's not exactly what she is saying. What she is saying is, there is a -- there has been -- it is harder and harder for her to find what she is looking for.
KAGAN: Well, let me do this, let me make Jerome's Book Club, isn't there at least one book a month that you could recommend to me?
KRAMER: Sure, absolutely, absolutely. I think there's -- how many books are published every year? An astonishing number. So, I don't think there's any doubt there must be hundreds that you could pick from that would be exciting to work with, but she has got a huge publicity machine outside of her organization trying to get her to pick this book, or that book.
KAGAN: That's true, a lot of pressure.
KRAMER: She, I think, really wants to endorse things that she feels great about. So, if she is having a hard time with that...
KAGAN: If there is anybody who is thinking that this is the death or a big blow to the book industry, all you need to look is this advance from the guy who wrote "Cold Mountain," that was his first book, reading in the "New York Times" yesterday, Charles Frazier, his second novel ever, $8 million advance, and, like I said, he has only written one book before, and he turned in a one-page outline for book number two. That is incredible.
KRAMER: Amazing, amazing, and there is another $3 million attached to that too, because Scott Rudin, the Hollywood producer who tends to have a real eye for literary properties, he bought "Kavalier and Clay" earlier, he paid 3 million for that same, based on the same thing, that one-page outline.
KAGAN: Now, what does that say?
KRAMER: It says that when there is something out there that publishers think they can strike gold with, they're willing to pay an awful lot for it. I think there's a $10 million advance for former President Clinton's memoir...
KAGAN: Right. Of course, he's a little bit more well-known than Charles Fraizer, who wrote one book.
KRAMER: I know, I know. But, I mean, he's not known as someone who sells a lot of books.
KAGAN: That's true.
KRAMER: Frazier had a tremendous success, but it's hard to believe that that's necessarily a safe bet. It's an exciting bet.
KAGAN: Jerome, real quickly, you know there is a lot of want to be authors out there, probably taking a little break from the word processors to watch CNN this morning, and they see this $8 million advance that just whets their appetite even more. Any keys to the trade of getting published?
KRAMER: Oh, I think you've got to do what you've always had to do, you have got to write a great book, and that's first and foremost. Then, certainly, you want to have the -- you want to have the good fortune, you want to have the good luck of having the right connections, be it through an agent or through having somebody find your book, and then -- that is what of Oprah really was, was lightning striking, she was bottled lightning, something everyone could count on happening fairly frequently, that had never happened before. So, is there a way -- is there a way to guarantee that that's going to happen again? Is there a way that someone can write a book that they know that's going to happen with? I don't think so.
KAGAN: Write well, and be lucky. Sounds like that's what you have in mind.
KRAMER: That's right.
KAGAN: Jerome Kramer from "Book" magazine. Thanks for joining us.
KRAMER: Thank you.
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