Julie Bosman’s review on November 19, 2010, in "The New York Times" said the book is a four-pound, 500,000-word, $35.00 doorstopper more political than Twain’s previous works. The content is nonlinear although very readable. It seems like a reader could flip the book open at random to any part of it and not worry about plot. The book includes 200 pages of end notes. At first the publisher planned to print 7,500 copies. However, because it was being published a century after Twain’s death, as he wanted it to be, the book got in the news. Before the book’s November 15th publication date, magazines including "Newsweek", "Playboy," and "Harper’s" ran excerpts from the book. The book was quickly sold out and back-ordered. The publisher was University of California Press. A girl with them said, “We feel like, wow . . . people are interested in a 736-page scholarly tome about Mark Twain.” They rushed to send copies to bookstores in time for the holidays. The publisher hired a small printer in Michigan to print the books. They worked overtime producing 30,000 copies a week and got bigger trucks to bring the books to the warehouses. Instead of 7,500 copies, the book got on best seller lists with over 275,000 copies in November 2010. The book was the biggest success the University of California Press had in sixty years.