Yesterday, the book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Touched by an Angel, was
featured on the Dr. Oz show. The title of the segment was "Proof of
Angels: Can They Heal Us?"
Dr. Oz interviewed Gabrielle Bernstein,
who wrote the foreword to the Touched by an Angel anthology, and
he posed the question: How do angels help us heal?
As a believer in angels and a contributor to the anthology, I was
curious to hear both Gabrielle's explanation and Dr. Oz's thoughts on the
matter.
Dr. Oz spoke about neurotheology, which
was a new term to me, so I looked it up in the dictionary.
Neurotheology (also called neuroscience)
is defined as "the scientific study of the neural correlates of religious
or spiritual beliefs and practices."
To demonstrate, Dr. Oz showed side-by-side
graphics of a brain, which showed how much more active the frontal lobe is
during prayer or meditation. Fascinating!
The segment also included interviews with
three women who were contributors to the anthology. They shared their personal
stories of their encounters with angels. Inspiring!
From my point of view, the feature
combined the best of both worlds -- scientific method and anecdotal evidence as
proof of beliefs.
Before watching the program, I was curious
to learn about how being mentioned on the Dr. Oz show would affect book sales. I
had a gut feeling that having a book on his show would increase sales, but I wanted proof. So, I
did a mini-analysis of my own.
Hours before the show aired, I collected data from two major book sites then compared it to data collected within 24 hours after
the show aired.
Here’s what I found.
Hours before the show was aired on Wed, Jan 28, here are the book's rankings:
On Amazon
Kindle: # 102,888 in the paid Kindle store
#55 in Angels
#63 in Spiritualism
#74 in Faith
Paperbacks: #81,392 in sales
#66 on Angels
#13 on Faith
On Barnes & Nobel the book ranked #94,235 in books. I didn’t check
Nook.
Within 24-hours -- the day after the show aired, Thurs, Jan 29:
On Amazon
Kindle: #2,683 in the paid Kindle store
#1 in Angels
#1 in Spiritualism
#1 in Faith
Paperbacks: #736 in sales
#1 in Faith
#1 in Angels
#1 in Self-help
For Barnes & Noble it ranked #323 in books. Again, I didn’t check
Nook.
So, just as Dr. Oz pointed out how the frontal lobe of the brain
experiences a chemical effect during prayer and meditation, I discovered that a book
experiences a positive “retail effect” after being featured on the Dr. Oz show.
My brain has been overworked from all this data collection, so I'm going to take a break--just in time to watch today's Dr. Oz show.
