Shadow Ticket. Group Read 2026. Extra credit (which means not on the text itself.)..

[rich]

I remember the big promotion spreads for M&D (at a bookstore in Brooklyn
Heights) and for AtD (at Coliseum Books, by that time on 42nd St, near
NYPL, closed soon after in 2007).

I don't remember IV or BE having such promotion, certainly not ST, at least
here in NYC

One could argue Pynchon is just not a name that provokes such attention
anymore, at least with the general reading public.

On Thu, Jan 8, 2026 at 1:01 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Scheduled to be published October 7, just in time for if---I I think it
> delusional but not because he doesn't deserve it--
> he won the Nobel...(awarded the next week)...seemingly all finished the
> usual number of months ahead--or more---maybe they held it back
> for this propitious award time? Because good books which sell by reviews
> and word-of-mouth mostly get planned for Earlier a bit, early september
> or even get them into stores in August---August is the worst month for
> reviews---"everyone" is supposedly on vacation--so early sales would be to
> fans who learned
> of it and Pynchon has that cult as we know...
>
> Remember how rushed was the publication of* Against the Day*....I have
> publishing guesses about this for another post...)
>
> The publisher tightly controlled all reviewers' copies,allowed no reviews
> to appear until pub date and anyone who got a lucky
> Advance copy was also approved and had to promise to not talk about it
> publicly in any substantive way....a common enough practice
> for important books, esp non-fiction ones full of factual spoilers and
> medis grabs....
>
> The result of so many reviews hitting all at once....be nice to know how
> many reviews there were and where is ....the early 'Advanced--advance by
> being ordered in advance--' copies as
> we called them flew out of the stores and there was an immediate
> out-of-stock state--even Amazon.  This state usually creates
> a supply  judgement problem and some lost sales......( Penguin for this one
> did NOT follow the known lead of the publishers of Mason & Dixon and
> Against the Day,who overprinted willfully. First editions of Mason & Dixon
> were on remainder tables years later...
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>