Oprah Unhappy With Clarkson Potter

Posted on January 24, 2005

Oprah Winfrey's "My Favorite Things" is one of the show's most popular episodes and manufacturers lobby hard to land a spot on the coveted list of items that Oprah just can't do without. The New York Post reports that Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Random House refused to cooperate when Oprah wanted to feature one of their books in last year's Christmas show.

Oprah tells TV trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable what happened. "There was this book that somebody had given to me, a book called The Way We Live [by Stafford Cliff and Gilles de Chabaneix]. It was a great coffee-table book, and it had pictures from all over the world of different homes and how people live in all these different homes. Do you know that we called the publisher and they said no? And they said no!"

Publisher's Lunch contacted Crown Publishing Group executive director of publicity Tina Constable to get the publisher's side of the story. Apparently, the book was a 2003 release, was quite expensive, was produced abroad and they knew they couldn't meet the demand for more books that such a feature produces, and didn't want to disappoint people. We'd love to hear what the authors thought about the incident -- or if they were ever even told that Oprah liked their book. Well, the word's out now -- so congratulations to Mr. Cliff and Mr. de Chabaneix!

The Way We Live can be found here on Amazon.com.