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GalleyChatters
It seems unlikely, but the AP reports that a new study says Oprah’s endorsements suppressed the sales of books overall. Because “the books Oprah chose were longer and more challenging,” people ended up spending time with one book, when they might have been reading two or three less difficult books.
March 13th, 2012 at 9:35 am
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I read it as “Bad old Oprah chose books that are haarrrd!” which is insulting. I worry about the dumbing down of America. It’s a pet peeve.
However, as far as sales go, I think that thousands of women who would normally sit at home and watch TV decided to go buy a book that Oprah recommended. That’s a plus. Also, I know the article states that book sales in other genres dropped, but there’s no indication that book sales in ALL other genres dropped – just pulp-style fiction.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve never gone into a bookstore and left with just one book. People who are readers usually won’t, and people who aren’t readers bought one book when they normally would buy zero. I’m not a big fan of Oprah, but this sounds a lot like Oprah-bashing to get headlines.
March 16th, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Pul-leese! Finally someone picks books that have real literary value and subsequently is treated as an ogre to bookstores. Someone actually might have to pick up a dictionary. Readers might begin to realize that most of what is written and sold out there is not worth the money to buy it nor the time to read it.