Can talk-show host and media maven Oprah Winfrey do for Amazon’s Kindle what she’s done for her book club? That’s the hope of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was scheduled to appear on Winfrey’s show Friday for a not-very-well-kept secret announcement by Winfrey about her favorite new toy.
The online bookseller hyped Friday’s announcement with a video trailer on its front page entitled “What is Oprah’s new favorite product?”
“I’m unveiling my new favorite gadget,” Winfrey says in the promo. “It’s life-changing for me … this is the most amazing gadget … this is the wave of the future. I’m going to tell you what it is … Friday … live from Chicago.”
A carefully placed burst of light obscures the object Winfrey is holding, but publicity photos show her holding a Kindle-like object. The final clue is in the promo tagline as the announcer says, “Watch the Oprah Show, then order yours from Amazon.com.”
It’s difficult to imagine Amazon getting this excited if Oprah was talking about a new toothbrush or the latest flash drive. And this being the age of the Internet, it didn’t take long for bloggers to poke around in the headings of Amazon’s Web pages and find confirmation of Winfrey’s announcement. Bezos subsequently confirmed the news in an e-mail to reporters.
The market power of Oprah’s Book Club is well known. Authors regularly fantasize about the prospect of boosting sales by tens or even hundreds of thousands after spending 10 minutes on Oprah’s couch. But some question whether the Kindle book reader will see a similar benefit.
The biggest question mark stems from the fact that the Kindle costs about the same as 23 copies of the latest recommendation from Oprah’s Book Club. At $359, it isn’t clear that many people below Oprah’s tax bracket will feel…