With the release of her autobiography, Hillary Clinton may have mastered the
art of turning the personal confessional into profitable commerce. But when
it comes to book sales she is still no match for Oprah Winfrey.
The former first lady’s pillow-talk confessions and intimate testimony
of her years at the White House, backed up by an aggressive global
publicity tour, was hailed a publishing sensation last month.
Just nine days after Senator Clinton’s book release, Oprah Winfrey
revived her book club, selecting John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden.
That very day Steinbeck’s 51-year-old classic leapt to No 2 on internet
bookseller Amazon.com’s bestseller list, leapfrogging Clinton and
chasing the record-breaking latest Harry Potter book. Within a couple of
weeks it had sold 750,000 copies and shot to the top of the New York Times
fiction paperback bestseller list.
Penguin now has in print 1.2 million copies of the book, a symbolic
recreation of the biblical story of Cain and Abel woven into a history of
California’s Salinas valley. It is a great victory for Winfrey, who
suspended her last book club after a spat with the author Jonathan Franzen,
who asked to be taken off her list.
”I’m back in the business of recommending books … but with a
difference,” she told the Association of American publishers in Washington
in February, where she was being honoured with a lifetime achievement
award.
Within a week of the club’s relaunch, 115,000 members signed up. Winfrey
said it was Steinbeck’s work that had prompted her to revive the club: ”I
was literally halfway through East of Eden and thought, ‘Gee, I wish I had
a book club again’.” — Â