Making a Best-Seller the Old-Fashioned Way?

David Card | March 28, 2007, 05:31 PM

Colleague Joe Laszlo posted on HarperCollins' clever new media viral YouTube promotion for The Average American Male. But if you want to see clout, check out good old fashioned media. Oprah's picked Cormac McCarthy's The Road for her Book Club. Amazon puts that news on the front page, and The Road is number three already. I liked it -- kinda bleak for the masses, perhaps (Amazon's consumer-supplied tags: "depressing," "end of the world," "horror") -- but I like McCarthy in his Faulkneresque mode better.

Of course, Random House (Knopf, Vintage) has no control over Oprah's picks. I hope they talk McCarthy into appearing, though. Not like some people.