Editing Jonathan Livingston Seagull (section)

== Reception ==
The book was a sleeper hit; the first edition in 1970 was only 3,000 copies and it would take two years before reaching number one on the [[New York Times Bestseller List|''New York Times'' Bestseller List]].<ref name="Jordan" /> "Not a single magazine or newspaper — including ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' — so much as mentioned" the book when it first came out, ''The Times'' reported in 1972.<ref name="Jordan" /> Macmillan failed to secure any advance publicity for Bach, but he personally took out two very small ads in ''The New York Times Book Review'' and ''[[Publishers Weekly]]''.<ref name="Jordan" /> The first printing sold out by the end of 1970, and in 1971 an additional 140,000 copies were printed. Mostly a word of mouth phenomenon, it entered the ''NYT'' Bestseller List on April 20, 1972, where it remained for 37 weeks, and by July 1972 it had 440,000 copies in print.<ref name="Jordan" /> ''[[Reader's Digest]]'' published a condensed version. In 1972 and 1973, the book topped the [[Publishers Weekly list of bestselling novels in the United States in the 1970s|''Publishers Weekly'' list of bestselling novels in the United States]].{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

Book sellers didn't know how to classify it. "Some put it under nature, some under religion, some under photography, some under children’s books." Friede's advice was, "put it next to the cash register."<ref name="Jordan" />

Several early commentators, emphasizing the first part of the book, see it as part of the US [[self-help]] and [[Optimism|positive thinking]] culture, epitomized by [[Norman Vincent Peale]] and by the [[New Thought]] movement. Film critic [[Roger Ebert]] wrote<ref>Ebert Roger, [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jonathan-livingston-seagull-1973 ''Jonathan Livingston Seagull''], November 8, 1973, Chicago Suntimes. Retrieved November 9, 2020</ref> that the book was "so banal that it had to be sold to adults; kids would have seen through it."

The book is listed as one of fifty "timeless spiritual classics" in a book by [[Tom Butler-Bowdon]],<ref>Butler-Bowdon, T., 2003, ''50 Spiritual Classics: Timeless Wisdom From 50 Great Books of Inner Discovery, Enlightenment and Purpose,'' Nicholas Brealey: London.</ref> who noted that "it is easy now, thirty-five years on, to overlook the originality of the book's concept, and though some find it rather naïve, in fact it expresses timeless ideas about human potential."

[[John Clute]], for ''[[The Encyclopedia of Fantasy]]'' (1997), wrote: "an animal fantasy about a philosophical gull who is profoundly affected by flying, but who demands too much of his community and is cast out by it. He becomes an extremely well-behaved accursed wanderer, then dies, and in posthumous ''fantasy'' sequences--though he is too wise really to question the fact of death, and too calmly confident to have doubts about his continuing upward mobility--he learns greater wisdom. Back on Earth, he continues to preach and heal and finally returns to heaven, where he belongs."<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia= [[The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction]] |last1=Clute |first1=John |author-link1=John Clute |last2=Nicholls |first2=Peter |author-link2=Peter Nicholls (writer) |year=1993 |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press|St Martin’s Griffin]] |location=New York |page= 79 |isbn=978-0-312-13486-0 |title= Bach, Richard (David)}}</ref>