The NBC morning program is expected to announce its first club pick, “The Bone Season,” a dystopian debut novel by Samantha Shannon, on Tuesday with an author interview.
Publishers who had been briefed on the show’s plans said they were giddy at the prospect of a potential successor to Oprah’s Book Club, which began in 1996 on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and, in its prime, consistently lifted books to instant best-seller status.
The “Today” selections, chosen every four to five weeks, will be emblazoned with stickers on their covers indicating their inclusion in the club.
“The show has been a home for authors over the years, but many of the books featured on air are typically books that relate to the news in some fashion,” said David Drake, deputy publisher of the Crown Publishing Group. “A book club is going to give an opportunity for books that don’t normally get exposure.”
Sara Mercurio, a spokeswoman for Bloomsbury, the publisher of “The Bone Season,” said that retailers’ orders of the book roughly doubled when they were told that it would be the first selection of the “Today” book club. The book goes on sale on Tuesday.
“One can’t overstate the importance of a nationally televised book club,” especially one with the audience of “Today,” Ms. Mercurio said. “I think it will have a huge impact on this book and on the publishing industry.”
“Today” has settled into the No. 2 spot among the network morning programs, just behind “Good Morning America” on ABC. In July, “Today” had an average 4.4 million daily viewers, “Good Morning America” 5 million.
The book club is the latest example of efforts by “Today” to position itself as a more substantive morning program than the frothier “Good Morning America.” A previous version of a book club on “Today” faded about a decade ago, a spokeswoman said.
The books, chosen by a team of producers and the show’s co-hosts, will include both fiction and nonfiction, newly released titles and classics, said Jaclyn Levin, the senior producer responsible for books and authors on “Today.” Discussion groups and excerpts will be featured online.
The idea to feature “The Bone Season,” a futuristic novel about a 19-year-old clairvoyant, came during conversations between Ms. Levin and Natalie Morales, the news anchor of “Today.”
Ms. Levin, who wields considerable influence in the publishing industry as the gatekeeper to books coverage on “Today,” “Dateline” and “Nightly News With Brian Williams,” said she campaigned for years for the show to resurrect a book club.
“The ‘Today’ show is so recognizable to so many people, and I just think it’s a great opportunity to use that leverage,” she said. “There are so many untold stories that want to be told.”
Publishers have lamented for years that bookings for authors have been more difficult to come by. While some shows, like “The Daily Show” and “CBS Sunday Morning,” can be counted on to promote books, others that did so have disappeared entirely or lost interest in books coverage.
Ms. Morales said that while the show has made a “concerted effort” to devote airtime to authors, it is often difficult to translate a book into good television.
“I think there is some truth to that, that in general it’s been more difficult for the publishing world to get authors on television,” she said, adding that she hoped the new club would have a sizable impact on sales. “The minute a book had that recommendation from Oprah, it would become a best seller. I could certainly hope that would be the same for the ‘Today’ show book club.”
Yet a “Today” book club would lack the passionate endorsement of a single person as beloved as Ms. Winfrey, one of the factors that publishers have cited as a key component to the success of Oprah’s Book Club. (Ms. Winfrey revived her own club in June 2012 as Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, more than a year after the demise of her weekday talk show.)
“There just aren’t television outlets that you can tune into on a regular basis and see authors,” said Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Knopf Doubleday. “Any media outlet that is willing to invest resources in creating a community of authors and their books is a win for our industry.”
Brian Stelter contributed reporting.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/business/media/today-is-starting-oprah-like-book-club.html?partner=rss&emc=rss