When Oprah Winfrey, then the brightest star on daytime TV, began her book club in 1996, inexpensive e-books and e-readers seemed more futurist rumor than everyday reality. Social media could have meant friendly reporters. <\/p>\n
Now, as Winfrey, co-owner of a struggling cable network, launches Oprah's Book Club 2.0, she's seeking a literary home on a digital landscape. Comparing today's fragmented do-it-yourself media with the world of 1996 is like comparing Winfrey's 42-acre estate near Santa Barbara, Calif., with her birthplace amid the rural poverty of Kosciusko, Miss. <\/p>\n
Publishers and booksellers cheer her club's revival, despite questions whether the new Winfrey, with a much smaller TV audience, carries the influence of the old Winfrey, who turned 70 books into best sellers. <\/p>\n
On Sunday, Winfrey's interview with memoirist Cheryl Strayed, the first author chosen for the new book club, airs on OWN's Super Soul Sunday (11 a.m. ET\/PT) and simultaneously stream on Oprah Radio and on OWN'S Facebook page. (OWN is short for Oprah Winfrey Network.) <\/p>\n
Ratings show that the audience for Winfrey's weekly show Super Soul averaged only 114,000 viewers in the past month -- a sliver of her more than 5 million to 6 million viewers when her daily syndicated show ended its 25-year run last year. At its peak, The Oprah Winfrey Show averaged 12 million viewers. <\/p>\n
What hasn't changed is how Winfrey, America's favorite reader, reacts when she loves a book. <\/p>\n
This spring, she read Strayed's inspirational memoir, Wild, about the author's solo 1,100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail after the death of her mother, the destruction of her marriage and experimentation with heroin. <\/p>\n
Winfrey, who says she read Wild in part in hardcover and on her Kindle and iPad, writes in the July issue of O, the Oprah Magazine: \"I love this book. I want to shout it from the mountaintop. I want to shout it from the Web I knew I had to reinvent my book club.\" <\/p>\n
She still moves product <\/p>\n
On June 1, Winfrey announced an interactive and multi-platform book club that uses Twitter, Facebook, Storify and GroupMe. Readers can post questions that Winfrey and Strayed answer in videos. The print editions of Wild carry a new version of the familiar \"O\" book club logo. The special e-book includes Winfrey's notes on her favorite passages. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Read the rest here:<\/p>\n
Oprah's Book Club Dives Into Social Media<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Oprah Winfrey, then the brightest star on daytime TV, began her book club in 1996, inexpensive e-books and e-readers seemed more futurist rumor than everyday reality. Social media could have meant friendly reporters Continue reading