WINFREY'S WINNERS

By Paul Gray

After a typically hectic working day in September, Jacquelyn Mitchard returned from her journalism job to her Madison, Wisconsin, house and found a phone message from Oprah Winfrey. Mitchard, a recently widowed mother of five, ages 1 to 21, did what any sensible person would do: she erased the obvious prank. "I have a friend who calls and says he's Richard Nixon," she explains. Two days later came another taped call from Oprah, followed by another erasure. Then a third, a day or so later, with the sign-off "This really is Oprah Winfrey."

Boy, was it ever. When Mitchard finally returned the call, she learned that her just published first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, had been chosen as the initial recommendation of Oprah's Book Club, a new once-a-month feature on America's most popular syndicated talk show. Mitchard had no idea what this news meant: "I was so surprised that it really was Oprah, because there is not much of a tradition of writers on talk shows. Even as a writer I wouldn't want to hear myself talk about fiction for an hour on TV."

Here is what the news meant: Mitchard's novel, an account of the sudden disappearance of a three-year-old child, sold about 100,000 copies before Oprah recommended it to her 15 million to 20 million daily viewers. Now The Deep End of the Ocean has become entrenched at the top of the New York Times fiction best-seller list, ahead of works by Sue Grafton, Danielle Steel, Mary Higgins Clark, Scott Turow and Stephen King. As she watched her novel sweep past such household names, Mitchard says, "I felt I was having an out-of-body experience."

Publishers too began pinching themselves tentatively, wondering where they were. They have known for decades that TV exposure sells books, but experience suggested that doing it successfully was a matter of getting the right author in front of an appropriate niche audience: this one on Today or Good Morning America, that one, God and the producer Don Hewitt willing, on 60 Minutes. And maybe public TV's Charlie Rose would give a few minutes to the stray novelist. But now Oprah had altered the equation by pushing a first novel to her massive viewership.

All thoughts that Oprah's Book Club might simply be a novelty or a fluke vanished a month later, when the second recommendation was announced: Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, a phantasmagoric account of a black man's search for his identity and past, first published in 1977. Bingo! Bonanza time all over again. The current paperback publisher, which released 360,000 copies of Song of Solomon between 1987 and Oprah's selection last month, immediately churned out 730,000 more. On the day that Morrison appeared on air with Oprah, Barnes & Noble sold 16,070 copies of Song of Solomon nationwide. Oprah provided a bigger boost for Morrison's commercial clout than the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature did.

Oprah's third selection, announced last week, is Jane Hamilton's 1989 novel, The Book of Ruth, a stark, hardscrabble account of the life of a farm woman. The book has sold 8,000 copies in hardback and an additional 85,000 in paper, but the publishers are gearing up for what they hope is the inevitable demand: Houghton Mifflin has printed 50,000 new hardcovers, and Doubleday, which controls paperback rights, has ordered a new press run of 500,000.

As might be surmised from such numbers, the most urgent question in publishing offices these days is "How can we get Oprah to recommend one of our titles?" Answers Oprah, whose staff has been inundated with books and wheedling entreaties from publishers over the past month or so: "They may as well save their time. This is not something a publisher can influence." Translation: The lady makes the picks herself.

Oprah traces her interest in reading back to her childhood: "I've always loved books. When I was growing up in Mississippi and Nashville, that's all I had. My idea is to reintroduce reading to people who've forgotten it exists." As for the basis of her selections, "I chose these books because they are readable, poignant, thought-provoking. Our audience is predominantly female; all three books I've picked are strong stories with strong women."

Purists, that dwindling literary breed, may scoff: Don't expect Ulysses or Gravity's Rainbow to show up anytime soon on Oprah's Book Club. On the other hand, if Oprah can make books inviting and exciting to nonreaders, who are the purists to complain?

--Reported by David E. Thigpen/New York

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York