Oprah creates new web sensation
2008-02-16 20:53
New York - Talk show-diva Oprah Winfrey's touch does not just work for traditional books.
More than 1 million copies of financial adviser Suze Orman's Women & Money have been downloaded since the announcement last week on Winfrey's television show that the e-book edition would be available for free on her website, www.oprah.com.
"I believe Women & Money is the most important book I've ever written," Orman said in a statement released on Saturday by Winfrey. "So this was not about getting people to buy the book, but getting them to read it, and that was the intention behind this offer."
According to Saturday's statement, more than 1.1 million copies of Orman's financial advice book were downloaded in English, and another 19,000 in Spanish. The demand compares to such free online sensations as The 9-11 Commission Report, which the federal government made available for downloads, and Stephen King's e-novella, Riding the Bullet.
Winfrey's book club picks on her popular television show are publishing's swiftest and surest path to the top of best seller lists, resulting in tens of thousands more sales for authors whose titles are selected.
The publishing community has endlessly debated the effects of making text available online, with some saying that free downloading is a valuable promotional tool and others worrying that sales for paper editions would be harmed. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers each have sued Google for its plans to scan and index books for the Internet.
The offer for Women & Money, originally released a year ago by Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, Inc, has not kept people from buying the traditional version. As of Saturday, the book ranked No 6 on Amazon.com. The paper edition of The 9-11 Commission Report, published in 2004 by WW Norton and Co, was a best seller for months.
"I can tell you that with respect to the 9-11 Report, the free download did not seem to hurt sales at all," Norton publisher Drake McFeely told The Associated Press on Saturday. "There were people who wanted it quickly, in a less convenient form, and that was clearly a different market from the people who wanted the traditional book."
He said free downloading of books does concern publishers, but "if Norton had been given the opportunity for an Oprah Winfrey plug, and part of the deal was making the book free online, we would have gladly taken it."
- AP