Did Oprah’s endorsement hurt book sales?

For 15 years, Oprah’s Book Club was considered one of publishers’ favourite things, but a U.S. economist believes O’s endorsement had negative impact on overall book sales.

In his study on celebrity products, Craig Garthwaite reports that in the week following an Oprah endorsement, a selected title could experience a sales increase of up to 400 per cent. But in the 12 weeks following that, overall sales of adult fiction titles actually decreased by 2.5 per cent.

Sales of non-endorsed titles by book club authors also increased during that 12-week period, but romance, mystery, and adventure categories experienced significant decreases. Garthwaite speculates the decrease is “likely as a result of the endorsed books being more difficult than those that otherwise would have been purchased,” or as Mother Jones writer Kevin Jones joked: “While millions of Oprah fans were pretending to slog their way through Faulkner and Tolstoy, they were too drained to read their usual light fare. So the beach reading genres suffered.”

While Garthwaite’s theory is impossible to prove, he makes his case in a 49-page paper, available here as a PDF.

Daily book biz round-up: e-readers read you; manga crackdown; and more

Today’s book news:

• Your e-reader knows too much
• Oprah’s Dickens picks not flying off shelves
• Sorry boys: Japanese cracking down on “extreme sex acts” in manga titles
• Orange Prize judges announced
• Room and The Imperfectionists make B&N Best of 2010 list

Daily book biz round-up: book hunting on Google eBooks; when Franzen met Oprah; and more

Today’s book news:

• MobyLives goes book hunting on Google eBooks
• Salon’s Laura Miller picks the best fiction and non-fiction of 2010
• WikiLeaks defector writes tell-all book (but it’s in German, so don’t get too excited)
• EW on the long-awaited meeting of Franzen and Oprah
• Lisa Moore and Emma Donoghue make New Yorker‘s best of 2010 list

Daily book biz round-up: Oprah likes Dickens; Atwood likes Wilkie Collins; and more

Today’s book news:

• Oprah chooses two Dickens classics for her book club
• PW names the notable newsmakers of 2010
• Borders may take over Barnes & Noble
• Margaret Atwood likes Wilkie Collins
• A new web hub for teenage authors is launched
• Natalie Portman wears Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, a handbag

Daily book biz round-up: Google Editions ready for launch; new Oprah pick; and more

Today’s book news:

• Google Editions finally ready to launch, says Washington Post
• Let the guessing begin: Oprah to announce new book club pick on Dec. 6
• Judith Regan to look for “a funny guy” on The Millionaire Matchmaker
• iPad beats Kindle in consumer survey
• Indie bookseller launches Against Amazon blog

Daily book biz round-up: Oprah and Franzen all but confirmed; WSJ book section slammed; and more

Today’s book news:

• MobyLives breaks out the smoking gun: a copy of Freedom with an Oprah sticker
• New Wall Street Journal book section sparks conflict-of-interest concerns
• Michael Lewis tops Business Book of the Year Award shortlist
• Final David Foster Wallace title unveiled
• The Millions on reading YA as an adult

Daily book biz round-up: Oprah’s arrow points to Franzen again; Google mangles your literary faves; and more

Today’s book news:

• MobyLives says that Oprah is picking Freedom (We don’t know who to trust anymore!)
• President Obama to write dull-looking children’s book
• Amazon attacks iPad for being too shiny
• David Foster Wallace archive debuts today
• How Google Voice mangles literature’s most famous opening lines

Daily book biz round-up: Oprah picks Mandela?; books to make you weep; and more

Today’s book news:

• Is Oprah’s upcoming book club pick the Nelson Mandela memoir?
• U.S. Defense Department attempts to buy up new memoir in order to destroy it
• Al the cool kids heading to the Brooklyn Book Festival this weekend
• Meanwhile, actual kids head to Toronto’s Roald Dahl Festival
• Twitter users overshare about books that made them cry

Daily book biz round-up: new Oprah pick coming; money for Ontario textbooks?; and more

Today’s book news:

• Oprah prepares to announce new book club pick, and it’s not Freedom
• Scholastic Book Club takes new marketing approach
• Dalton McGuinty makes vague reference to helping Ontario schools cover cost of textbooks
• Penguin sues sports writer over undelivered bio
• Century 21 scoops up former Barnes & Noble space before corpse is even cold
• EW uncovers shocking Hollywood prejudice: authors not asked to be on Dancing With the Stars
• Delightful literary oddities available on EBay

Daily book biz round-up: battle over The Shack; FOX News attacked; and more

Check these out:

• The bitter legal battle over proceeds from The Shack
• Kitty Kelley’s Oprah to be turned into TV movie
• A Chicago librarian rips into FOX News library exposé
• Seth brings new look to CNQ
• A secret writer’s retreat, right in the middle of NYC
• B.C. author John Vaillant talks to PW about The Tiger
• Video: first look at an upcoming doc about children’s books