Oprah Winfrey took the Cupertino stage today at Apple's annual spring event in order to reveal that she'll be bringing a book club to the company's new TV streaming service, Apple TV Plus. It'll be launched through the Apple Store and will include livestreams across all Apple devices of book club content including live conversations between Oprah and featured book authors.
"For me, there's nothing more thrilling than being transported by a brilliant book," she noted. Her new book club aims to be "the biggest, the most vibrant, the most stimulating book club on the planet."
Why Apple? Because, as Oprah explained, their platform's reach is on the "next level." "They're in a billion pockets ya'll," she said. "A billion pockets. The whole world's got them in their hands, and that represents an opportunity to make a genuine impact."
As usual, Oprah has nailed it: The reach and distribution that Apple (and the entire internet) represents is unprecedented, and it brings with it a shift in how we use book clubs. Starting a book club is now a great way to establish an authentic connection with a global audience, and everyone from major celebrities to micro-influencers are getting on board with the concept. Book clubs have been around for centuries, but in 2019, the book club is bigger than ever.
In person, book clubs are communal and physical, offering a break from the hectic internet... while still taking advantage of the internet's reach in order to broaden their following and structure their events.
Actor and entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon (who's incidentally also creating a TV show with Apple) has one of the biggest Instagram book clubs, Hello Sunshine. It has grown to nearly a million followers since 2015, and has launched bestsellers including The Alice Network and Little Fires Everywhere ( the latter of which Hello Sunshine is adapting for Hulu in its media company capacity). Instagram micro-influencers are also launching their own book clubs off the backs of the powerful Bookstagram community, and one book-centric subscription box, WILDWOMAN, launched in August to deliver a monthly box that includes a non-fiction self-help book in each package. Cost-conscious options are growing in popularity, too, with digital lending service Hoopla Digital offering a new Book Club Hub that makes it easy for small communities to launch a book club using their curated line-up of ebook titles.
"Book clubs are really having a moment right now, and we don’t anticipate that moment fading in the near future," Hoopla Content Strategist Tara Carberry told me last year. "What was traditionally a local gathering of neighbors, is now its own culture. It’s on social media, it’s at the office, it’s a part of our day-to-day conversations."
Oprah first introduced the Oprah's Book Club segment on her television show in late 1996, and she remains one of the biggest name in book clubs over two decades later. Thanks to Apple's huge presence, her new book club will have a bigger reach than ever before. Oprah's new book club initiative is the biggest indicator yet of the huge successes that book clubs have been seeing in recent years on Instagram, in libraries, and on our smartphones.
Oprah is also partnering with Apple TV Plus to create two documentaries: One with a working title Toxic Labor, on sexual harassment in the workplace; and another untitled documentary series focusing on mental health, addiction, trauma and the stigmas surrounding them. Apple TV Plus will be ad-free and arriving in over 100 countries by Fall 2019. We'll get more details on Oprah's Apple book club sometime before then.
