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Lost and found: Dan Brown’s blockbuster sweeps the stores

By Robert Booth
THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Thursday, Sep 17, 2009, Page 13

It was an act of ravenous readership that summed up the public’s astonishing appetite on Tuesday for The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s long-awaited follow up to his best-selling The Da Vinci Code, which has been launched worldwide.

The world champion speed reader Anne Jones claimed to have devoured the 506-page adventure of “symbologist” Robert Langdon in just 41 minutes and 55 seconds in a feat that raised hopes that Brown, the 45-year old son of a maths professor and a musician from New Hampshire, has produced a book so easy to read that The Lost Symbol will become the best-read adult novel in publishing history.

Yesterday, the UK supermarket giant Tesco was selling 19 copies a minute from displays next to its fruit and vegetables while rival Asda, part of the Wal-Mart group, shifted 18,000 copies by 4pm. Brown’s publisher, Random House, is so convinced of The Lost Symbol’s success it has printed 6.5 million copies, the most in its history.

In a display of “event publishing” usually reserved for the biggest sellers including JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer, crates of the book were sealed with legal agreements and could not be opened until midnight. Only four people in the country had read a copy before last night. It was all to safeguard a marketing campaign which some believe could come close to achieving sales on a par with Rowling’s last Harry Potter book, which sold 3.5 million copies in its first eight days.

The Lost Symbol charts similar territory to The Da Vinci Code, with the hero decoding puzzles and going on the run from shadowy forces, this time Freemasons. Some reviewers branded The Lost Symbol “moronic, derivative and clunky.”

Others applauded Brown’s ability to give his millions of fans what they want. For the publishing industry, the book’s strengths

and weaknesses were only being measured

in numbers.

Dan Brown has already sold books worth US$104 million in the UK since 2003 and The Da Vinci Code alone sold 5.2 million copies worth US$46 million, including illustrated editions, spin-off fictional journals and box sets.

“This is beyond books,” said Paul Baggaley, publisher at rival firm Picador. “It has become an event which is a phenomenon.”

But booksellers’ enthusiasm for Brown’s ability to draw in readers was tempered yesterday as a price war broke out. Asda and Tesco slashed the price of the US$31 hardcover to just US$8, Waterstones offered it for half price and Borders gave a 30 percent discount.

“It’s always good to see books making the news,” said Tim Godfray, chief executive of the Booksellers Association. “But with every mega-best-selling title comes a huge price war, often with the result that the trade as a whole makes very little money on its most valued assets.”

Baggaley said it remains questionable whether the soaring sales of Dan Brown books will have a beneficial effect for publishers of other books. “In Tesco this morning the book was on display, not in the book section, but as soon as you walked in, so it is not as if you are going to be drawn into buying other books as well,” he said.
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