Irrational exuberance

Courtesy Publishers Marketplace, this open letter to Oprah Winfrey in which over 100 authors beg the TV star to reinstate her monthly "book club," saying:

Fiction sales really began to plummet when the The Oprah Winfrey Book Club went off the air. When you stopped featuring contemporary authors on your program, Book Club members stopped buying new fiction, and this changed the face of American publishing.

The same part of me that thought, in the 1980s, that applying for grants was cheating, and kept me from pursing an MFA or going to Naropa in 1979 when I was ready to leave Austin, thinks that relying on some overblown TV personality to save "American publishing" is perfectly stupid.

How many years was Oprah's book club on the air? Seven. And what was the purported goal of those programs? To get people reading. So if "fiction sales really began to plummet when the The Oprah Winfrey Book Club went off the air," who's to blame? Obviously all those people buying books they saw on Oprah didn't read them because they were good books -- they read them because Oprah said so. And when Oprah stopped saying so, they all stopped.

You know, I don't want those readers. Instead of begging some TV personality with a slavish following to get her fans back on the bus and buy books, the authors' efforts would be better spent lobbying state legislatures to increase funding for education, so that schools will have enough money to staff school libraries and hire teachers who will inspire in students a life-long love of literature.

Here's the California Teachers Association: "School districts throughout the state are laying off teachers, eliminating counseling programs, closing libraries and cutting other vital student programs." In Massachusetts, "State agencies and municipalities in Massachusetts have been forced to try to do more with less. Public libraries are no exception. Cutbacks in state funding, decreased private funding, and competition from other municipal departments have taken a serious toll on our library system." In Ohio, "If lawmakers approve Gov. Bob Taft's proposed state budget that cuts $22 million to public libraries, critics say library patrons may find locked doors, outdated materials and smaller staffs. It's a situation public libraries across the nation are facing as local and state budgets remain squeezed by federal cuts, greater expenses in health care and education and less tax revenue."

This is a fucking national scandal, and these mid-list authors are worried about Oprah?!?