Mama Oprah Save Me!

I like Oprah but, dang, now she's the center of the book universe? She's being summonsed to be saviour to the literary industry?

"Oprah, save us, we can't get by without you.

That's the message from a group of published and award-winning novelists in an open letter to influential television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, begging her to resume picking new novels for members of her popular book club.

'There's a widely-held belief that the landscape of literary fiction is now a gloomy place,' Word of Mouth, a loose alliance of women's authors, wrote. It said fiction sales began to plummet when the The Oprah Winfrey Book Club went off the air in 2002 and stopped featuring contemporary authors.

'Book Club members stopped buying new fiction, and this changed the face of American publishing,' said the letter, which was signed by 158 authors.

Among those signing the letter were Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri and Amy Tan, author of 'The Joy Luck Club.' Several male authors also signed.

The letter expressed thanks for Winfrey's contribution to book sales and asked her to 'consider focusing, once again, on contemporary writers in your book club.'

'The readers need you. And we, the writers, need you,' it said. 'Oprah "

Gaaawwwd (rolling my eyes)!