Why no hardcovers?

[Paul Mackin]

On 6/27/2012 10:59 AM, Tyler Wilson wrote:
> Paul --
> About three-quarters of the way down in this Bookforum article (which has a lot of great information, btw):
>
> http://www.bookforum.com/archive/sum_05/pynchon.html
>
> "Now the real problem presented itself: How to publish a seven-hundred-plus-page book at a price that would not be grossly prohibitive for Pynchon's natural college and postcollegiate audience. V. and The Crying of Lot 49 had each sold more than three million copies in their Bantam mass-market editions. (Let us pause here to contemplate what these numbers say about the extent of literacy in the America of the '60s. Then I suggest we all commit suicide.) According to a letter from Cork Smith to Bruce Allen (who reviewed Gravity's Rainbow for Library Journal but wrote to Viking complaining about the novel's price), Viking would have had to sell thirty thousand copies at the then unheard of price of $10 just to break even. By comparison, V. and The Crying of Lot 49 had sold about ten thousand copies apiece in hardcover. So how to reach even a fraction of the cash-strapped Pynchon-loving millions? Cork himself hit on the then unique strategy of publishing an original trade-paperback edition at $4.95 and "an admittedly highly priced hardcover edition" at $15, each identical in paper stock and format, differing only in their binding. The gamble: "We also thought that Pynchon's college audience might, just might, be willing to part with a five-dollar bill for this novel; after all, that audience spends that amount over and over and over again for long-playing records." The other gamble was with the reviewers, who rarely took paperback fiction seriously, but as Cork wrote, "We feel—as, clearly, you do—that Pynchon cannot be ignored.""
> --T

That's fantastically to the point good information.  Thanks, Tyler. Also 
I hadn't been sure that the practice was literally 'unique' but could 
think of no other cases.


P
>
>
>> Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:49:21 -0400
>> From: mackin.paul at verizon.net
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Subject: Re: Why no hardcovers?
>>
> But what I'm wondering is who made the decision do it this
>> way.  It was an unusual way to go. Was it an experiment to see the
>> bottom line effect?  Did TP have a role?  Don't suppose anyone knows,
>> but I do wonder.
>>
>> P
>