David Steinberger, president of Perseus Books Group, said he expects over 100,000 copies of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tinkers to begin shipping early next week. The company has already printed some copies through print-on-demand to fill as much of the immediate demand as possible. The title will also be available in a number of e-book formats and will soon be available for the iPad, Steinberger said.
Perseus is parent company of Consortium, the distributor for Tinkers publisher Bellevue Literary Press. Steinberger said Perseus is working with Bellevue to make sure it has all the resources it needs to meet demand for the book and has been using the different elements of its Constellation service to produce Tinkers. Steinberger has high hopes for the book, pointing to statistics of other Pulitzer winners. Last year Olive Kitteridge sold 665,294 copies after it was named the Pulitzer fiction winner and in 2008 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao sold 497,632 copies. Sales figures are based on Nielsen BookScan data.
