“To promote its new star title, Doubleday launched a Defcon-1 publicity blitzkrieg. It printed a surfeit of galleys and put them into the grasping hands of underpaid booksellers, and sprayed copies all over the Internet. … It hired six actors, dressed them in tails, top hats, and long red scarves — in Morgenstern’s novel, die-hard circus fans wear red scarves to signal their devotion — and had them pass out beribboned bags of promotional caramel corn.”