In a bid to shore up her flagging media empire, former talk show queen Oprah Winfrey is resurrecting the Oprah Book Club.
Oprah will use social media to promote books, as well as her cable network OWN and O, the Oprah Magazine.
The first book for what she is calling “Oprah Book Club 2.0” is “Wild” by Chery Strayed, a memoir from the Knopf imprint of Random House. The book is already a bestseller.
Oprah’s Book Club will launch digital editions at noon tomorrow and make the book available through Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and other e-book platforms.
But the announcement may go down as the just the latest PR misstep since the talk queen left her top rated TV show in the spring of 2011.
Originally, the announcement was to have been made on Monday, sources say, where it would have been welcome news to the book industry, which is gathering at the Book Expo Trade show at the Javits Convention Center in a three day extravaganza where authors and publishers try to ignite interest in their upcoming lists for book retailers.
The book club was a kingmaker from its start in 1996 until it went dark in May 2011. Every book, from unknown authors to old time classics, would soar when deemed worthy by Oprah.
Since then, Oprah’s media buzz factor has sunk. The last episode of “Oprah Next Chapter” on OWN drew a paltry audience of just over 250,000 viewers last Sunday for an interview with Cory Booker.
Newsstand sales for O, the Oprah Magazine plunged by 30 percent in the second half of 2011 and advertisers have deserted in droves.
Said one publishing executive, “It seems she had a lot of businesses that worked well when she was on TV everyday, and now that she isn’t, they are not working.”
News that Oprah was gong to restart the book club began leaking out to On The Money early Friday. Knopf publicist, only days away from the announcement, insisted he knew nothing about the pendng news.
Scrambling to get in front of the story, Hearst, the joint venture partner with Oprah;s Harpo Productions put out a press release around 5 p.m. OWN, a joint venture between Harpo and Discovery, put the same press release out shortly before 6 p.m.
The news was so rushed that Hearst Magazine president David Carey by late Friday was unaware the release was out from his joint venture partner.
News released late on a Friday afternoon in the post-Memorial Day period is generally to announce dire news — with the hope that it will not be covered extensively.
Announcing the book club late on a Friday afternoon may go down as the latest PR blunder for someone who rarely misstepped as a talk show queen. -Keith J. Kelly
Real McCoy
This isn’t your mother’s Avon calling.
New CEO Sherilyn S. McCoy, who was given 200,000 shares in restricted stock on top of a $1.9 million signing bonus, isn’t wasting any time dipping into the company’s advertising budget.
Her first major move since replacing embattled former CEO and current Chairwoman Andrea Jung — who saw shares and profits drastically tumble under her watch — was to reel in a sexy A-lister for Avon’s new fragrance, City Rush for Her.
Mission accomplished!
Model/actress Milla Jovovich (pictured), who just finished an elaborate photo shoot in Gotham, will pocket a cool $5 million, an insider tells OTM, who also informed us McCoy is just warming up.
“[Avon] enticed McCoy with a mind-blowing ad budget to help sway her decision to bolt Johnson & Johnson, where she had a lucrative retirement package in place,” our insider says.
“Avon voted to give McCoy upwards of $78.7 million to play with, and she’s focusing on her next moves.” -Joseph Barracato
Captain video
Bob Pittman, the visionary founder of MTV, isn’t one to rest on his couch-potato laurels.
Pittman went on to run Clear Channel, where he is CEO, but he’s keeping it real by joining the board of Airtime, the forthcoming video-chat service co-founded by Napster creators Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning.
Parker just happens to be the original president of Facebook, but he left well before the IPO debacle.
Sean, if you decide to go public, having a little talk with Bob first. -Post staff