About two months ago, Ms Oprah Winfrey was summoned to a meeting with the women who had introduced O: The Oprah Magazine to the world: Ms Ellen Levine, editor in chief of Good Housekeeping, and Ms Cathleen Black, chief executive of Hearst Magazines. They had some news for her: of all copies of Winfrey's new magazine placed on newsstands around the country, 75 per cent had been sold.
On hearing the figure, Ms Winfrey's hands fluttered to her throat aghast.
"I thought, '75 per cent?"' Ms Winfrey said in an interview last week. "We haven't sold all of them? That doesn't sound like we're kicking it."
In fact, in an industry where obscenely successful magazines sell 50 per cent of the copies offered on the newsstand, 75 percent is a figure almost without precedent. And the first and second issues of O, in fact, eventually sold out.
Ms Winfrey is apparently kicking it just fine. After four issues, O: The Oprah Magazine - buoyed by its famous editor's pop-cultural omnipresence, the magazine's ample opportunities for promotion and the soothing message that it is OK to be plump, divorced and maybe even broke - is now considered by many magazine executives and advertisers to be the most successful new magazine in decades.
The essays and articles about "real stuff", in Ms Winfrey's words, have made it a warts-and-all look at American womanhood. It is a magazine as much about reality as a glossy magazine can be, much as the CBS series Survivor purported to peer into the imperfect psyches of strangers. It is also Ms Winfrey's talk show in print.
After two issues, newsstand sales averaged 1.5 million copies, according to Hearst.
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