Celebrity Book Clubs Are Bad for Literature

It started with Oprah, as many things do. In 1996 America’s most beloved talk show host launched her “book club” on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Each month a new novel was selected by Oprah, beamed into the homes of millions, and in many cases forever altered the fortunes of the writer. After a 2007 plug, Cormac McCarthy’s  The Road saw an increase in sales to the  tune of a million copies; when she chose Toni Morrison’s 1970 novel The Bluest Eye in 2000, it enjoyed a sales bump in the region of 800,000. Morrison had already won the Nobel Prize seven years prior.