When Oprah terminated her book club in April, there was little time for her legions of readers to mourn the loss before several willing replacements stepped in to fill the void. Just days after she announced her decision to end the six-year-old reading group, citing the difficulties of finding worthy titles to discuss each month, the would-be Winfreys of the media world-supporting America's need to read en masse-launched new clubs using Oprah's as a prototype.

Already a heavy-hitter in the publishing industry, the Today show featured books on a regular basis well before Winfrey cancelled her club. Starting this month, the show's producers plan to bump up literary coverage with monthly spots hosted by best-selling authors, who will recommend titles. To make things more interesting, the author of each pick will be an unknown, up-and-coming writer. Today will also bring members of book clubs from all over the country onto the show to meet and talk with the authors. [Kind of like Oprah, but not quite.]

Kelly Ripa, co-host of ABC's Live with Regis and Kelly, has also introduced a new club. The 10-minute segment, called Reading with Ripa, features titles Regis himself terms "beach trash." The first selection to be featured on Reading with Ripa was a glitzy thriller called If Looks Could Kill, by Cosmopolitan editor Kate White. Anticipating big sales, Warner, White's publisher, printed 50,000 extra copies of the author's mystery debut-a smart decision as the novel's sales moved up sharply after White appeared on the show. Authors hoping to be chosen for the program should keep in mind Ripa's requirements for reading a book: "It shall have no message whatsoever. It shalleth be fun." [Not at all Oprah-like, but what's a viewer-whoops!-reader to do?]

In what may be the oddest addition to the televised reading group boom, Court TV's Catherine Crier is planning a book feature for her show. [On a scale of one to Oprah, this club doesn't even qualify.] And finally, in April, USA Today announced that it would launch a monthly book feature in its Life section and on its Web site. Readers will also have the opportunity to chat online with featured authors. The newspaper's first selection was Empire Falls by Richard Russo. Winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the novel, recently issued in paperback, experienced a huge boost in sales after it was chosen and is now in its sixth printing.

America may be the land of 1,000 reading groups-both online and televised, not to mention the old-fashioned, in the flesh gatherings that occur in bookstores, libraries and homes-but Oprah's will be a tough act to follow. Each of the 47 titles blessed with the big O logo sold between 650,000 and 1.2 million copies. The popular segment of the show, which began in 1996 with Jacquelyn Mitchard's The Deep End of the Ocean and ended with Toni Morrison's Sula, often drew as many as 7 million viewers thanks to its unique peek into the lives of authors. Along the way Oprah did what few have been able to do: she made literary matters germane to the general public. In a way that was consistently interesting and occasionally controversial (who can forget the Franzen frenzy?), she got the masses tuned in and turned on-to books. Now everybody's doing it. That's right, reading-what a novel idea!-is sweeping the nation. It's the newest craze. What will they think of next?