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 rumour than everyday reality. Social media could have meant friendly reporters. <\/p>\n
Now, as Winfrey, co-owner of a struggling cable network, launches Oprahs Book Club 2.0, shes seeking a literary home on a digital landscape. Comparing todays fragmented do-it-yourself media with the world of 1996 is like comparing Winfreys 42-acre estate near Santa Barbara, Calif., with her birthplace amid the rural poverty of Kosciusko, Miss. <\/p>\n
Publishers and booksellers cheer her clubs 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 bestsellers. <\/p>\n
On Sunday, Winfreys interview with memoirist Cheryl Strayed, the first author chosen for the new book club, airs on OWNs Super Soul Sunday (11 a.m. ET\/PT) and simultaneously streams on Oprah Radio and on OWNS Facebook page. (OWN is short for Oprah Winfrey Network.) <\/p>\n
Ratings show that the audience for Winfreys weekly show Super Soul averaged only 114,000 viewers in the past month a sliver of her more than five million to six 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 hasnt changed is how Winfrey, Americas favourite reader, reacts when she loves a book. <\/p>\n
This spring, she read Strayeds inspirational memoir, Wild, about the authors 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
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. Print editions of Wild carry a new version of the familiar O book club logo. The special e-book includes Winfreys notes on her favourite passages. <\/p>\n
Sales of Wild, which was well-reviewed upon its March release, spiked. Within two weeks of Winfreys announcement, Wild went from No. 165 on USA TODAYs Best-Selling Books list to No. 14. Its now No. 35. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Oprah\u2019s Book Club 2.0 goes digital<\/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 rumour than everyday reality. Social media could have meant friendly reporters. Continue reading