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The real Oprah effect; Booki.sh goes into overdrive; serial winners at Adelaide; a dilemma for the SA government; a clue for Michael Williams; and time for the Elizabeth Jolley award. By Jason Steger.

Close look at Oprah power

AN ACADEMIC paper on the power of celebrity endorsements and publishing has raised some eyebrows with its analysis of the impact of the Oprah Winfrey book club. According to Craig Garthwaite, of America's Northwestern University, in You Get a Book! Demand Spillovers, Combative Advertising, and Celebrity Endorsements, there are three conclusions about the Oprah effect. First, and not surprisingly, sales of the titles she endorses can quadruple in the week after the announcement, before gradually declining but remaining large and statistically significant more than six months later. Second, other books by the chosen author get a fillip and the spillover sales impact continues to grow in subsequent months. And, third, rather than expanding the market for books, endorsements ''result in more business stealing … In the publishing sector, aggregate book sales do not increase following a [Winfrey] club endorsement - suggesting that non-readers are unaffected.'' Garthwaite suggests that in the adult-fiction sector - 85 per cent of Winfrey's book club choices - aggregate sales decline after endorsement. ''One plausible explanation is that endorsed titles are harder or longer on average than books that would have been purchased in the endorsement's absence. At the genre level, the post-endorsement period is marked by large sales declines in the romance, mystery and action categories.'' Garthwaite reckons endorsed titles required one extra year of education ''than is typical for romance, mystery and action books''. Post-endorsement sales decline was largest for classics, ''which require four more years of education to comprehend''. Each of Oprah's first 48 choices became bestsellers. The first, Jacquelyn Mitchard's The Deep End of the Ocean, had sold 70,000 before endorsement in 1996 and sold 700,000 in the next month. And Toni Morrison, whose Beloved sold nearly a million copies with Oprah's nod, said ''she received more notoriety from being included in the club'' than from winning the Nobel prize.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson.

Book.ish sold

VIRGINIA Murdoch, Joseph Pearson and Peter Haasz have sold their pioneering Melbourne-based e-book outfit, Booki.sh, to OverDrive, the American company that claims to be the leading global distributor of e-books and audio books. Booki.sh allows readers to buy digital editions and read them on any device that has a web browser. It also provides technology for independent bookshops such as Readings and Sydney's Gleebooks to sell e-books. Haasz told Bookmarks the trio had sold to OverDrive because it would allow them ''the freedom to focus 100 per cent on Booki.sh and have considerable resources behind us''. In the long run there would be many opportunities, including OverDrive's relationships with publishers and libraries in the US. ''There are all sorts of opportunities and it will be great to see things we've developed in the local market being taken to the US and a wider market.''

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Scott sweeps gongs

KIM Scott continued his winning ways with his most recent novel, That Deadman Dance, when it snapped up the South Australian Premier's Award ($10,000) and the fiction prize ($15,000) on the opening day of this year's Adelaide Writers Week. Scott has already won the Miles Franklin Award, the Victorian Premier's Award, a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Australian Literary Society gold medal and the WA Premier's prize for the novel. He wasn't the only serial winner who gained more glory in Adelaide. Mark McKenna won the non-fiction award ($15,000) for An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark, which has already won the Victorian and Queensland Premiers' awards. Other winners included: poetry, Les Murray (Taller When Prone); children's literature, Rosanne Hawke (Taj and the Great Camel Trek); and young-adult fiction, Vikki Wakefield (All I Ever Wanted).

Cost of more awards

NOW that Adelaide Writers Week is an annual event, will the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature be presented each year? The awards, started in 1986, are funded by the South Australian government and are worth a total of $135,000, so any increase in their frequency would in effect double Premier Jay Weatherill's financial commitment. Unless, of course, the prizemoney is reduced. Apparently, the SA government is still considering annual awards.

Payout for Pugh

AN out-of-court settlement has apparently been reached in a dispute between Sally Morrison, author of After Fire: A Biography of Clifton Pugh, and Judith Pugh, author of Unstill Life: Art, Politics and Living with Clifton Pugh. Judith, who was Clifton's third wife, took umbrage at material that Morrison, a friend and lover of the artist in the final decade of his life, included in her book, and launched proceedings. Settlement involved a payment to Pugh but, as I understand it, there will be no changes made to Morrison's book.

Word man

HIGH times for Wheeler Centre director Michael Williams. He awoke last Saturday to find himself the answer to a clue in The Saturday Age general knowledge crossword (one across: ''After a career in publishing and book promotion who, in 2011, was appointed director of Melbourne's Wheeler Centre..?''). And he will be part of the new Andrew Denton quiz show, Randling, to be screened on the ABC this year.

Jolley prize time

IF YOU want to enter this year's Elizabeth Jolley Short Story prize, run by Australian Book Review, get your skates on. You have until the end of May to submit a story of 2000 to 5000 words and have the chance to win $5000 plus publication in ABR. Runners-up win $2000 or $1000. Judges are novelist Gregory Day, joint winner last year; poet and novelist Maria Takolander; and ABR deputy editor Mark Gomes. Details: australianbookreview.com.au


POETRY

The Vampire Squid

Vampyroteuthis infernalis

Literally, from hell. Belling the vast dark

with a cape of rusted tentacles. Dante

drifting red-eyed through the underworld,

propelled by the blue blood of his own

strange order. Weak-muscled yet gelatinous

inventor. When attacked inverts his body

inside out: confusing detractors with the lit

lures of his regenerating arm tips. Scribbling

the abyss with a witchy filament spiralled

down from the ancestral mollusc. When unloved,

conjures a sticky blue cloud of glow-thought.

Expert in mistaken identity: exiled from families

of octopus and squid. Like all elusive creatures -

maligned, misunderstood.

Debbie Lim


EVENTS

TUESDAY

ROBERT Hillman launches Simon Cleary's Closer to Stone. 6.30pm, Readings Carlton, 309 Lygon Street.

CATHY Kelly discusses The House on Willow Street. 7.30pm, Malt Cafe, 23-25 South Concourse, Beaumaris. $30. Bookings: 9589 4638

WEDNESDAY

ALEX Miller and Jim Davidson discuss the legacy of the late Hazel Rowley. 6.15pm, the Wheeler Centre. Bookings: wheelercentre.com

LAUNCH of Christopher Morgan's novel Currawalli Street. 6.30pm, Sun Theatre, 8 Ballarat Street, Yarraville. Bookings: info@sunbookshop.com, 9689 0661

THURSDAY

TONI Jordan launches Paddy O'Reilly's The Fine Colour of Rust. 6pm, Union Bar, Trades Hall, corner Victoria and Lygon streets, Carlton.

HALINA Wagowska discusses her memoir, The Testimony, with Anna Epstein. 6.30pm, Readings St Kilda, 112 Acland Street. Bookings: 9525 3852

AN EVENING with Raimond Gaita, Robert Hillman and Najaf Mazari. 7pm, Montsalvat, 7 Hillcrest Avenue, Eltham. $12. Bookings: 9439 7712
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