Mike Baco reacts to Oprah ending her 25-year daytime TV run and what it means for book publishers. Oprah's Book Club drove bestseller sales, and her exit leaves the industry scrambling for new promotional channels. Publishers also face pressure from e-readers and tablets.
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After 25 years as the queen of daytime talk, Oprah Winfrey is leaving the airwaves. She was sent off in star studded fashion with the likes of Will Smith, Jerry Seinfeld and Tom Hanks, among others, coming to pay tribute to her at the United center in Chicago. So not only does Oprah leave a void behind in the daytime talk show setting, possibly filled by Katie Couric, but what she also leaves is a void in the book publishing field. A selection to Oprah's Book Club was a surefire ticket right to the top of the bestseller list. Oprah in many ways was her own economic stimulus for an industry that has been struggling, that will probably continue to struggle unless they find ways to turn people onto E readers and the tablet and the Nook and all those other things. But where does Oprah play into this? And where does her possible replacement play into this? It's hard to tell right now. Oprah had the magic touch to turn any book that she picked on her Oprah Book Club into a million million selling bestseller. So now book publishers are going to find have to find interesting ways to reach out to that audience. They may couple with Oprah and do different joint ventures with her, possibly on the OWN network. That'll be interesting to see. But viewership for the own network has been struggling be interesting to see on that topic. If Oprah spending more time on the OWN network, devoting all of her attention or will raise viewership, that remains to be seen. But right now for book publishers, they have a void. Now granted it was only one book per year that was on the Oprah Book Club, but there are all sorts of other ancillary things that came along with it. The more people that went into bookstores to buy those Oprah Book Club selections were buying other books as well. So they're going to certainly have to find a different pipeline, a different way to reach all those people, all those people that are very easily marketed for her books might be turned onto a Katie Couric talk show. It'd be interesting to see whether she has some sort of tie in for that. But for now, book publishers will need a new sugar mama. Oprah is gone after 25 years. I'm Mike Baco, vice president of Media Training Worldwide and lead commentator for Media Training Insider.
