The popularity of Tom Stoppard's new play "The Coast of Utopia" has sent Penguin scrambling to reprint an older title after playgoers devoured NYC bookstores' stock of Russian Thinkers by the great Isaiah Berlin (no mean thinker himself). The reason? The book appeared at #1 on a list titled "For Audience Members Interested in Further Reading" that the producers of "The Coast of Utopia" had inserted into the show's playbill:
As a result, Mr. Berlin’s book is not only all but impossible to find in New York, it is also completely out of stock with its publisher, Penguin, which earlier this month quickly ordered two reprintings totaling 3,500 copies, the first time in 12 years the book has been printed, to satisfy more than 2,000 suddenly unfilled orders.
Before "Coast of Utopia" opened, "Russian Thinkers" sold about 36 copies a month in the whole country, placing it solidly in backlist territory. But late in November, customers began rushing to bookstores in search of the book, "Utopia" playbill in hand (or a Nov. 24 clipping from The New York Times about suggested reading for the play). "There was definitely a run on them," said Annie Shapiro, a manager at Labyrinth Books on the Upper West Side. "We sold out of what we had immediately."
The only question now is who do we call to get one of our fine Russia books on that list?
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