Oprah

By now, most have read this letter and seen this Reuters story regarding the open letter that over 100 women writers signed asking Oprah to reinstate her book club for contemporary books. Bloggers are talking.

Although I agree with a lot of what the letter says, I've got to be critical of a few of its assertions. First, what I agree with.

Few people have taken advantage of the extravagant scope and power of television to do good. But you have. From the start, you used your role in the media to encourage literacy, thought and intellectual curiosity.

This is 100% true, and is a pretty good point. Fact is, TV and books are generally thought of as bitter rivals, and it is true that Oprah succeeded in using TV to get people to read. Since so much TV is dreck that really does kill the urge to read, it is no small accomplishment that Oprah reversed this equation.

However much good Oprah has done, though, I think the letter misstates her impact. The letter continues

[M.J. Rose's] research suggests that the drastic downward shift [in fiction sales] actually happened six months after the [9/11] attacks: fiction sales really began to plummet when the The Oprah Winfrey Book Club went off the air. When you stopped featuring contemporary authors on your program, Book Club members stopped buying new fiction, and this changed the face of American publishing.

Every month your show sent hundreds of thousands of people (mostly women, who are the largest group of literary fiction readers) into bookstores. The contemporary books you chose sold between 650,000 and 1,200,000 copies apiece. Each Oprah selection gave readers a title to investigate and a subject to explore. Importantly, your Book Club also gave readers a chance to see these authors on the air and to hear their words. Not only books but the writers themselves became accessible to everyone, inviting all readers into the community of literature.

I don't doubt that Oprah generated book sales, and I can even believe that her refusal to highlight a living author each month was in part responsible for a drop in fiction sales. (M.J. Rose has not made her research available, so it is hard to evaluate her claims, but I think she's at least part right.)

Of course, there were other factors as well. 9/11 was a factor, as was the ongoing war with Afghanistan and a severe economic downturn that focused people's minds on things other than fiction. Also, maney doesn't go as far as it used to: During Bush's first term, real wages declined for the first time in well over a decade, and we now know that in recent months inflation has outpaced the increase in median wages.

So there are many factors for a decline in fiction sales, but I am sure Oprah was one of them. However, if it is really true that nowadays Oprah's "readers have trouble finding contemporary books they'll like," then I can't agree that Oprah really generated readers. Buyers, yes, but readers no.

If it's true that as soon as Oprah stopped making picks these readers stopped looking around for living authors to read, then I must question the quality of those readers in the first place. I must question how many of the 650,000-1.2 million copies bought of each book actually got read. What's clear is that Oprah generated sales, but if these people were really at sea without Oprah to guide them, then I don't think Oprah generated readers.

Another thing the letter says is

In the publishing world, there's a widely-held belief that the landscape of literary fiction is now a gloomy place.

I work in publishing, and I'm not privvy to this belief. In fact, I've never really heard this belief espoused anywhere. I don't exactly know what it means, that literary fiction is a gloomy place. Perhaps Vollmann and his huge, depressing books are bringing everyone down? I don't know. Honestly, I find many contemporary authors like DFW and Jonathan Franzen utterly hilarious, in addition to being incisive thinkers and excellent writers. When I read these authors, and many others, the last thing on my mind is gloom.

I think the landscape is actually rather exciting. There's more upstart small publishers than ever, and many of them are doing incredible work. There's McSweeney's which, say what I will, is doing intersting stuff and is definitely a vibrant presence. There's graphic novels, which appear to be genuinely climbing out of their niche, and are helping novelists re-think their notions. Perhaps the "publishing world" referred to in the letter has yet to be penetrated by these other publishing worlds?

The last thing I have to disagree with is this:

First novelists and literary authors felt emboldened to write because of the outside chance that an editor would see their work as potential Book Club material. You dared to take contemporary literary fiction seriously, and your daring enabled a new generation of writers to appear.

A novelist who needed Oprah to enable him or her is not worth reading. If they weren't writing from sheer love, and if they only started writing because Oprah opened a 1 in a million shot that they would make it huge, then they're probably not doing interesting work.

I can agree with the signatories that Oprah did some good, and it would probably be a good thing if the club was reinstated. However, I don't see evidence that Oprah did nearly as much good as some people would assign to her.

I think if Oprah is really interested in creating a more literate nation, she needs to be in it for the long haul. She needs to recognize that her book club, for as much good as it did, was a Band-Aid on multiple gunshot wounds. The reasons for the decline of reading in this country are far deeper than can be addressed in a monthly TV book club, and the fact that Oprah dropped out after the fracas with Franzen tells me that either she didn't understand this, or wasn't concerned with it in the first place. Oprah's club was a good first step, but, really, it's only the first of a thousand.

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

Great post Scott! I think there was always a bit of a question as to just how many of those sold copies were being read. I have no data but do know that I've bumped into quite a few copies of books with the Oprah sticker on the cover in used bookstores.

As to the gloomy place - I, as I'm sure most LitBloggers do, converse with many publicists who deal with literary fiction and, while I realize it's their job, they are all excited about what they're reading and promoting.

What Oprah did was a great step 1. And even if the women (assuming the assumptions are correct) buying the books aren't reading every page, I hope their children are noticing the books in the house and getting the idea that reading isn't such a bad idea. I know why I read so much - my parents had four floor to ceiling bookshelves in our front room, packed two deep and stacks by their chairs in the living room and nightstands in the bedroom. It's what they did, and my sister and I followed suit and developed our own love for it.

If Oprah comes back to contemporary fiction, it would make a good step 1B.

Enjoy,

[Anne]

I am a fan of Oprah and was, from the start, a big fan of her bookclub. I think the authors of this letter have faulty memories. I don't have time to do the research to rebutt or qualify what M. J. Rose is suggesting, but I remember at the time, the statistics weren't telling such an upbeat story. Instead, readers were flocking to read Wally Lamb or Anita Diamant and then wouldn't read anything else--not even, sometimes, the subsequent books by the same writer. That is, the great thing of getting people to read one book was not creating the kind of readers that a house full of books (a la Dan Wickett's, for example, in the comments here) creates.

That said, Oprah's move now to steer people to classics is a response to the Franzen-effect, the weird publicity of her selections that some writers came to hate or scorn or mistrust. Now, it's Steinbeck and Hurston. Again, not a bad thing. Potentially, in fact, a terrific thing.

And, if you read her magazine, every single month, for years, she's been offering capsule reviews of a few really interesting books in addition to showcasing a bookshelf of five important books of a (usually decently smart) celebrity. I don't doubt that Nicole Kidman's selection is heavily massaged and edited. Nonetheless these lists, which usually include a great children's novel, a difficult classic, a quirky cult hit, and two solid interesting contemporary books, are also good ways to think about reading and find out about books.

In short, I bow down to Oprah but I think the letter to her is goofy and misguided.

Sorry to be windy. Thanks for the great post, Scott.

[patricia]

Yeah, I kinda agree with the goofy and misguided part. The last thing Oprah needs is another reason to massage her already out-of-control ego. Yeah, she did some good stuff to encourage reading. Blah blah blah. Most of the books she raved about were, IMHO, drek. And quite frankly, I can't respect the opinion of anyone who would get into such a bloody snit over something poor ol' Franzen said about them. Plenty of other ways and means to encourage reading, I think.

[M.J. Rose]

Just an FYI - my research isn't secret, I'm happy to share - or at least tell you where it's from --- all the monthly and yearly sales reports that publishers and booksellers report in Publisher's Weekly. Anyone who wants to go back through them can see when the changes occur. There's also an unofficial study I did last year asking over 100,000 people(via a newsletter they all subscribed to) who consider themselves "readers" how they find out about books & how that's changed over the years. Close to 1% responded .

[Scott]

M.J.,

I appreciate your candor, but I would assume that there's some analysis of those records that you performed. If you'd like to make it available, I would be interested in seeing it.

The Franzen factor.
http://www.complete-review.com/quarterly/vol3/issue1/oprah2.htm

[m.j. rose]

It isn't that complicated. If you make a chart of all sales data for the two years before 911 and the year after and notice where the fiction sales start to slip you see that it's not 911 at all. On a month by month analysis you see that it was after O closed the club - months and months after 911 that the numbers started to drop. b Add to that two surveys I did. One that went out to 150,000 readers - distributed through the contemporary literature newsletter of About.com that asked questions about reading patterns and where readers got their reccomendations and the huge percentage of readers who said that O had made such a difference in getting them to into the store and buying. And another survey done through Bookreporter.com that asked similar questions and got identical results.

[Scott]

M.J.,

I think your research has some valifdity, but it doesn't sound that scientific. For instance, how do we know that Oprah readers weren't overrepresented in the people who chose to respond to your survey? That would skew the results.

As for the sales. I agree that it appears that Oprah had something to do with it, but I think that other factors were present (outlined in my post).

Also I think it's possible that 9/11 actually resulted in a short term INCREASE in sales (people turning to consumption as a direct reaction to tragedy is not uncommon), but that months later, when the tragedy was felt differently, sales dropped off.

Overall, I think you indicate Oprah had something to do with it, but I don't think we can say more than that.