Over on his blog, Fredrick Pohl talks about buying and publishing Samuel (Chip) Delany’s masterwork Dhalgren (which I am embarrassed to say I have never read):

But I wanted to be there for two reasons. First, because Dhalgren was a very unusual book. I thought it would sell well enough, but I didn’t think that your average route salesman would be able to figure out why that was likely by reading it — as though they would — or by having one of the higher-up editors tell them its plot. I thought I could tell them what to say to get the orders, and I thought I needed to tell them that myself, in person.