In 2010, the University of California Press published Volume 1 of the Autobiography of Mark Twain and got a swift surprise. The Press hadn't taken into account that Samuel L. Clemens himself had outdone the publisher's marketing department more than a century before.
The editors had expected sales of about 7,500 to scholars and libraries. But the media got hold of a key fact: Clemens liked to say that his autobiography should not be published for one hundred years.
As we all know, the news went viral: A long silence was ending, Mark Twain's secrets were coming out. His ghost presumably looked on with approval as the first run vanished from bookstore shelves and customers clamored for more. The Press regrouped, and by the end of the year nearly three hundred thousand copies had been sold.
Of course, though the subtlety was beyond the grasp of many interviewers, scholars had...
