A Winfrey pick no longer ensures blockbuster sales, but it retains a special status within the industry.
FILE - Oprah Winfrey, a producer of the documentary"Sidney," about actor Sidney Poitier, appears at the premiere on Sept. 21, 2022 in Los Angeles. Winfrey announced that she had chosen Ann Napolitanos book"Hello Beautiful" for her 100th book club pick.
A Winfrey pick no longer ensures blockbuster sales, but it retains a special status within the industry; for authors, a call from Winfrey still feels like being told they'veWinfrey told AP that she is in “awe” of the club and its history, “the very notion” that someone might go and buy a copy of “Anna Karenina” or a little known book simply because she suggested it.
Thanks to Winfrey, contemporary authors such as Jacquelyn Mitchard and Jane Hamilton found audiences they never imagined, while picks published decades or even centuries earlier, from “Anna Karenina” to “As I Lay Dying,” placed high on bestseller lists. Winfrey didn't invent the mass market book club, but she demonstrated that spontaneous passion can inspire people in ways that elude the most sophisticated marketing campaigns.
“I would just call Wally Lamb,” she says of the author of “She’s Come Undone,” her fourth pick. “In the early stages, I would finish the book and then find the author. When you’d go to the back of the book, it gives you the bio of the author and it would tell you what city the author lives. And, this is when we had phone books, in every instance I was able to get the author’s phone number because the author was listed.
Winfrey's book choices are still in-house and intimate — mostly just determined by herself and Newman — although Winfrey says she made a rare exception for “Hello Beautiful,” recommended to her by the co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency, Richard Lovett. Otherwise, Newman will seek out books she thinks Winfrey might respond to — fiction or nonfiction, as long as the story is “compelling,” Newman explains. Winfrey will also come upon books on her own.
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