Influence
In Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America, Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading—a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act—and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."
Business Week stated:
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Oprah phenomenon is how outsized her power is compared with that of other market movers. Some observers suggest that Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's The Daily Show could be No. 2. Other proven arm-twisters include Fox News's Sean Hannity, National Public Radio's Terry Gross, radio personality Don Imus, and CBS' 60 Minutes. But no one comes close to Oprah's clout: Publishers estimate that her power to sell a book is anywhere from 20 to 100 times that of any other media personality.
In 2009 it was reported that the influence of Winfrey's book club had even spread to Brazil with picks like A New Earth dominating Brazil's best-seller list.
The club generated so much success for some books that they went on to be adapted into films. This subset includes The Deep End of the Ocean and The Reader.
At the shows conclusion in May 2011, Nielsen BookScan created a list of the top-10 bestsellers from the Clubs final 10 years (prior data was unavailable). The top four with sales figures as of May 2011:
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth (2005), 3,370,000 copies
- James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, 2,695,500 copies
- Elie Wiesel, Night, 2,021,000 copies
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road, 1,385,000 copies
Read more about this topic: Oprah's Book Club
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
—Rachel Carson (20th century)
“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)