Though it didn’t get top billing in our News section 20 years ago, the closing of Oprah’s Book Club was a big deal. Started by talk show legend Oprah Winfrey in 1996, the club was a huge sales driver in its heyday and made stars of debut and established authors alike. Winfrey would bring back the club in various incarnations in later years, but its impact was never the same. (And for those who want to know what happened to LPC, the distributor was forced to liquidate that summer.)

From the Archive: April 8, 2002 by Publishers Weekly on Scribd