ARC Prices

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 13:41:33 -0700 (PDT)
>From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Re: ARC Prices

>Again, the folks who are complaining about a lack of
>marketing seem to be ignoring the significant buzz
>that is happening out there in response to the
>publisher's marketing program so far.
>
>It's sometimes called viral marketing and is, in fact,
>the opposite of the behind-the-scenes control Big Bird
>jokes about - instead, the company, in this case
>Pynchon's publisher, releases a bit of info here, a
>bit there, strategically, in places where it will draw
>comment and be amplified and republished, eventually
>working up from the grassroots to higher echelon
>publications and other media outlets, in combination
>with more traditional placements of paid advertising,
>in-store promotions, etc. It is rather new, having
>been developed only in the past decade or so, so it's
>understandable that people might not know much about
>it. The Jackson Pychon article is just the beginning
>of what we'll see as momentum builds and more
>journalists jump on the bandwagon.
>

I think Doug has a point: The people at Penguin Press know that they don't 
have to tout their product in the traditional way. Let's face it: Pynchon's 
name in itself is enough to sell tons of copies of 'Against the Day', and 
our eager anticipation hardly suffers from the lack of a huge, traditional 
advertising campaign. Furthermore, this anti-advertising campaign is 
absolutely consistent with the author persona Pynchon has built up through 
these past five decades, and it is absolutely consistent with what I predict 
will be the absence of blurbs (and, of course, the absence of a mug shot) on 
'Against the Day'.
That being said, Penguin Press DOES seem to take this minimalism to its 
limit: there is not even a photo of the book on their website yet, and they 
still list the length of the book as 992 pages (it seems pretty clear by now 
that 1120 is the final number). Is this cool minimalism, or is it simply 
negligence?