not my tweet.

[Mark Kohut]

I think limiting Pynchon's ARCs is a way to limit the creation of collectible copies. To limit creating all that " value". To try to make sure they, the ARCS, go to committed reviewers, committed readers. It happens with other writers too. W

ARCs are usually a function of marketing judgment as to the ultimate audience size for a novel. 
When publishers feel that they have some book which can be big ( in sales) , they often decide on more. Dan Brown's big one had 10,000 reading copies at least. EVERYONE in the industry talked of it; every bookseller who wanted one could get one. 

Once the judgment is that you will sell by the quality of your book within the nature of your brand name, ARCs are usually limited. From Pynchon, thru Stephen King, thru later Dan Brown. My guess is Sparks' sales are tailing off a bit. His movie ones sell but not such a brand as he was. 
Hence, a marketing game. 

Sent from my iPad

> On May 15, 2016, at 6:09 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Yes, Mr. Nelson has an admirable collection. It is of interest to note that his AD proof is one of 200 and that the Jonathan Cape AD ARCs were were limited to 77. That's a relatively low number of copies for reviewers. Compare that to someone like Nicholas Sparks (the Anti-Pynchon) who offers "one winner will be chosen at each stage to receive a hand-numbered Limited Edition Advance Readers Copy (only 1,000 have been printed!)", that's 5 times as many! 
> 
> I don't think Pynchon limits the number of ARC's due to it eating into his sales. (Remember, that ARC doesn't matter much to the publisher but to the writer that can end up being a missed sale if people buy the ARCs on Ebay before the book's release date; and it does happen.) I believe it is an attempt to maintain some control over the conversation that developes around a newly released book. It's not a new tactic either. VL also had a limited number of ARCs and there was apparently not much lead time for reviewers, see Slaman Rushdie's complaint in his review of VL.
> 
> In the end it's not a bad way to keep the critical bite in check and leave readers the opportunity to form their own opinions.
> 
> Ciao
> mc
> 
>> On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 11:00 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Wow! Now online: Thomas Pynchon's previously unobtainable articles for Boeing's Bomarc missile newsletter (1960-62) https://staging.airflowsciences.com/rkn/Pynchon/None.bomarc/index.html …
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160515/b082c75e/attachment.html>