The publishers of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" remain guarded about their plans to mass-market the novel, but a Book-of-the Month Club subsidiary has quietly begun to ship the first paperback versions of the book.
A spokeswoman for the Book-of-the-Month Club, who asked not to be identified, said that since early September the Quality Paperback Book Club had been selling $9.95 editions of the novel that caused riots in the Moslem world and prompted death threats against its author.