‘O’ we’ll miss Oprah

I’m such a big Oprah fan and sadly we are seeing the end of an era as we say goodbye to the Oprah Winfrey television show. What an amazing woman!
She empowered women to get on with their lives , strive to be the best they could and believe in themselves. Oprah led by example spreading the word about the power of positivity, integrity and the importance of passing the good in the world forward.
Being a reader and a writer I loved her book club so to hear she is still thinking about the book lovers out there is great news. Here’s a little of Bob Minzesheimer’s article for www.usatoday.com

How the ‘Oprah Effect’ changed publishing

By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY www.usatoday.com

America’s most popular reader, Oprah Winfrey, says she is not done talking about the books she loves.

As The Oprah Winfrey Show ends its 25-year run on Wednesday, its host says Oprah’s Book Club will follow her to her fledgling cable network, OWN. Without offering details, she vows, “I’m going to try to develop a show for books and authors.”

Book discussions never attracted her best ratings, but that “doesn’t matter,” Winfrey tells USA TODAY. “Some things you do because it is necessary. We’ve done OK with them. … We found the more I could connect the author and the book to the audience, the better the numbers would be.”

And in the book world, her numbers are beyond compare.

It began Sept. 17, 1996, with Winfrey’s announcement that The Deep End of the Ocean, Jacquelyn Mitchard’s novel about the kidnapping of a child, was the club’s first selection.

Fordham University marketing professor Al Greco estimates that sales of “Oprah editions” of the 70 titles in her book club total about 55 million copies, “and there wasn’t a James Patterson or a John Grisham among them.”

Winfrey’s critics cringed after some touchy-feely selections and after discussions that were more about the readers than the books they read. But no one doubted her power as the ultimate in word-of-mouth recommendations. It’s called the Oprah Effect. For example:

•In 2004, Leo Tolstoy’s tragic 19th-century love story, Anna Karenina, hit No. 1 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list after Winfrey embraced it.

•In 2009, she rocketed Say You’re Not One of Them, Uwem Akpan’s short-story collection about Africa, to No. 9 on USA TODAY’s list. (His publisher reports 77,000 copies in print before Winfrey; 780,000 copies reprinted with the “O” logo on the cover.)

“She made book discussions interesting, educational and entertaining,” Greco says. “Literature professors can be interesting and educational, but are they entertaining?”

Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch, who had four books that became Oprah’s Book Club selections, including Akpan’s, says Winfrey “didn’t originate the idea of book clubs, but more than anyone, she has spread the idea of reading a book as a shared community.”

I really enjoyed this article you can read more… http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2011-05-22-Oprah-Winfrey-Book-Club_n.htm?csp=34life&dlvrit=110941