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I was reading up for our 'The Great Gatsby' meeting and found out the first print run was a total flop | Book Club Debates - Vivisector

evan_davis•6mo ago

I was reading up for our 'The Great Gatsby' meeting and found out the first print run was a total flop

Our club picked it for this month, so I grabbed a copy from the library and got curious about its history. I looked it up online and found a piece from a book history site. It said that when 'Gatsby' first came out in 1925, the publisher only printed about 20,000 copies. Get this, almost half of them were still sitting in a warehouse when Fitzgerald died 15 years later. The book just didn't sell at all back then, which is wild to think about now that it's this huge classic. It made our whole debate about its themes feel different, knowing it was basically ignored in its own time. Has anyone else had a book's real-world backstory totally change how your club talked about it?

3 comments

3 Comments

finley_shah646mo ago

Wait, so it was basically a flop when it came out? I always figured a book that famous had to be a hit right away. That really changes how I see the whole story, like it's about chasing a dream that nobody even sees yet. What adams.vera said about the money really hits home too, it's so unfair. Makes the whole book feel sadder, but also more real somehow.

adams.vera6mo ago

Fitzgerald only made about $2,000 from the book in his lifetime. It really shows how success can be totally out of sync with quality. Makes you wonder what else we're missing right now that will be huge later.

charles7206mo ago

Yeah, that's crazy it just sat there. Didn't it make you look at the whole green light thing differently? Like it's not just about wanting something, but wanting it even when nobody else gets it. We read "Stoner" by John Williams last year and found out it sold almost nothing for decades, and now it's everywhere. Totally changed how we talked about the quiet life in that book.