Oprah is batting 1.000. This time it's Sheri Reynolds who g s right to the top of the trade paperback charts less than one week after Oprah announced that the author's The Rapture of Caanan will be the next Oprah on-air book club selection. As noted last week, the book's in-print figures went from a combined 40,000 for hardcover and mass market to a very hefty 950,000 for the new trade paper edition. The only sell-in that Berkley needed for its massive nationwide distribution of the book was the fact that this was Oprah's sixth pick. Obviously, Oprah's track record is strong enough for a publisher to go out on a printing limb.
Just to review the record, Oprah's first pick was the hardcover first novel Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard, which, prior to being Oprahized, had about 100,000 copies in print -- a very respectable number for debut fiction. With a big push from Oprah, the book enjoyed a 29-week run on PW's charts -- six of them in the first slot -- and now boasts 915,000 copies in print after 20 trips to press.
From there Oprah went to trade paper for her next picks -- a format that combines affordable price with attractive and enduring packaging. That decision resulted in Oprah's books pretty much controlling the lead trade paperback bestseller slot. Since Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon took the #1 spot back on October 28, Oprah's choices had the top perch 18 times out of an available 25 (The English Patient took the lead five times during that six-month period). Even more impressive was Oprah's impact on copies in print. For Morrison's book, the pre-Oprah number was 300,000 copies in print; since then, the in-print tally for the Plume book has climbed to 1,390,000. Jane Hamilton's Book of Ruth had 85,000 copies in print in its Anchor edition before it was selected as the #3 pick; since Oprah's announcement on November 18, the in-print number has shot to 1.2 million. Wally Lamb's first novel, She's Come Undone, has 1.2 million copies in print in the Washington Square Press trade edition, almost all a result of you-know-who's endorsement. Pocket Books also went back to press for a 50,000 hardcover printing. And Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River had sold 157,000 copies before the February 28 Oprah launch; Scribner now reports 1.2 million copies in print.
Linda Millemann, general manager of the Tattered Cover in Denver, told PW that the store displayed the earlier Oprah picks with no signage last weekend and happily watched the piles of books quickly melt away. And for that, they have Oprah to thank.
