Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [138]
Dizzy with delight, the booksellers jumped up to give her a standing ovation, shaking the coffee cups with reverberations from their applause. Here was an author who was going to lift every bookstore in the country and sprinkle gold dust on an entire industry. Publication was set for September 20, 1993; Knopf had announced a staggeringly large first printing of 750,000 copies; the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild planned a direct mailing to five million homes; and, best of all, Oprah had promised to visit a different city every week in a thirty-city promotional tour from the fall of 1993 through the spring of 1994. Robert Wietrak, the director of merchandising for Barnes & Noble, was beside himself. “This will be the biggest book we’ve ever sold,” he said.
Hearing the tsunami of praise pouring out of ABA, where Oprah had generated waves of rapture, reporters began calling Knopf, wanting to know more about her book. On June 9, 1993, fifteen weeks before publication, Erroll McDonald, Oprah’s editor, told The New York Times, “Given that the media feeds off Oprah to a great degree, we don’t want people to cannibalize the book before it comes out.” He need not have worried.
Six days later Oprah called her publisher. “This is the hardest call I’ve ever had to make … but … I have to withdraw my book.… We can’t publish now.… I have to postpone it.”
After several anguished calls back and forth, the publisher pleading for Oprah to change her mind and Oprah apologizing profusely, at one point even offering to repay Knopf for the ABA party in her honor, she officially canceled publication with a statement that crushed booksellers: “I am in the heart of the learning curve. I feel there are important discoveries yet to be made.”
The next day’s headlines reflected the scale of the story that became national news:
“Oprah’s Book Delay Leaves World Guessing” (USA Today)
“Rumors Still Swirl as Oprah Stays Silent” (Los Angeles Sentinel)
“More Lessons to Learn Before Oprah Tells All” (New York Times)
“Oprah Pulls Plug on Autobiography” (Newsday)
“Oprah Wanted Book to Be More Than Recitation” (Chicago Sun-Times)
Not surprisingly, the tabloid Star was the most explicit: “Why Oprah’s Banning Her Sexy Tell-All Book.”
Legally, Oprah could back away from her commitment to Knopf because she had not signed a standard contract, simply a nonbinding letter of agreement saying she would forgo an advance against royalties, but that she and the publisher would split all profits fifty-fifty. Customarily, authors receive an advance, and when the advance is earned out by book sales, they receive a percentage of the price of each book sold as a royalty. Oprah’s copublishing arrangement with Knopf was extraordinary, and considering the early orders, was guaranteed to be phenomenally profitable for both author and publisher. The people at Knopf, where the book was now being called Noprah, tried to put the best face on what industry analysts estimated to be a $20 million loss.
“She felt she needed to put in more work,” Erroll McDonald told reporters. “I think that the book, as it is, is very powerful and revealing, but I’m not its author.”
The head of Knopf’s public relations and publicity department, William T. Loverd, tried to soft-pedal the knockout punch. “She felt this was not the best job she could do,” he said. “There was not enough of her in it. The book is only postponed.”
Arlene Friedman, editor in chief of Doubleday Book Club, said, “We felt it was the book that every woman would want to read.”
“The book is extremely strong and honest,” said Sonny Mehta, the president and editor in chief of Knopf. “[But] it is her book, and we will of course abide by her wishes. We look forward to resuming work on the project when she is ready.” And that, as Yiddish comics say, would be a year from Shavuos, the