So the long awaited day has come and gone and the race has begun.

I’m am talking about The Lost Symbol race of course. I approached the starting line last night as the wash cycle switched to rinse at my neighborhood laundromat. As I settled into the plastic chair and cracked the spine a woman commented, “That’s the new one, isn’t it?” Seemed to me she’ll be joining the race soon as well.

In the course of my brief (so far) career in publishing this is the first “big” book I’ve been around for — and with a massive print run it is the company’s biggest. This morning Jen, Erica, Dave and I compared page numbers. It seems I am winning so far (page 89 – waiting on laundry will do that to a girl) but Dave is swiftly gaining on me (page 86) with Jen at an impressive 62 and Erica, clearly with better things to do, has made a good start at 24. The contenders, ever eager about their performance, had this to say:

While I want to win The Lost Symbol race, I’m having so much fun reading the book, I don’t want it to end! (Jen)

I had just finished Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran yesterday morning and so was perfectly timed to open my crisp  new copy of The Lost Symbol on my commute home last night. I already can’t put it down! And that’s a good thing since I have to immediately passit along to my mother when I’m finished. I’m trying to get it to her before her reserve copy at the library is available! (Erica) 

Insomnia inciting. (Dave)

(For the record Dave also has better things to do than respond to my repeated harassment for a quote. Journalism is rough, folks.)

But there you have it. The race is well under way and the competitors seem to be enjoying themselves so far. While I am personally impressed by all of my 89 pages I’m sure there is someone out there, some die-hard Robert Langdon fan, who has me beat. Anyone?

Maybe we can get Dan Brown to preside over the medal ceremony.

-Marie

Hmm, well it turns out I can be pretty obsessive. I just spent my entire lunch hour playing the new interactive game called Symbol Quest on DanBrown.com. At first I was trying to win without Googling anything, but I soon realized that I was being soundly defeated even with Google and Wikipedia open. Ugh. Some of them are intuitive enough: “Age in the Hair of Broadway.” But then there’s stuff like “Casanova, Mozart, and Houdini had this in common,” to which I still don’t know the answer; I just guessed right.  (If you know, COMMENT!)

Then after an hour of window-hopping, I finally get to the end and it gives me this message:

“CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE REACHED THE 33RD DEGREE WITH ONLY 2 ERRORS. PLEASE NOTE: THOSE WHO ASCEND PERFECTLY (WITH NO ERRORS) WILL BE REWARDED WITH SECRET KNOWLEDGE.”

I don’t get the secret knowledge!???!!! You know what, Game? I don’t like your tone. Demanding perfection, psh. Who do you think I am? A librarian? I’m in a cubicle here. I don’t have the resources. I quit.

I wish all of you better luck. You may just emerge a more knowledgable person for it, even if you’re a little embittered.

-David

Soon, some of you will be receiving your shipments of our biggest book of the year, Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL. And we know you’ll probably have a few crazies hovering around the desk a couple days early, inquiring about copies, then inquiring again, then trying to peek around the desk, etc. But please, please don’t lend them out early.    

Even if our affadvits seem a little overblown, we’re strongly urging libraries to hold on to the books until the 15th, even though you’re not selling them.

Putting Harry Potter out early caused some major headaches for those who’ve done it, not to mention the chaos it causes above and below me here in New York. So if you have to keep the lurkers occupied, you can always give them a puzzle or two. God knows that’s what they want in the end.

-David

After his little post-DaVinci-Code vacation, Dan Brown is back in full force.  You’d have to live under a rock to not know about the impending publication of Brown’s next blockbuster, THE LOST SYMBOL.  Libraries across the country are already racking up holds on this book more than a month before it is available.  I just checked my local library in Greenwich, CT and there are already 73 people on the holds list for the book!  Good thing I can probably get my hands on a copy. 

To keep fans busy while they are waiting for their turn to read the new book, Doubleday is pleased to launch Dan Brown’s new website danbrown.com. The website includes information about all of Dan Brown’s books, bizarre facts, secrets and games. If you look closely enough you will find an Easter egg tipping to information about Dan Brown’s upcoming book THE LOST SYMBOL to be published by Doubleday on September 15th. Let the hunt begin.

And, as I said, Dan Brown is everywhere.  If the Official Dan Brown Site is not enough for you, find him just about anywhere in cyberspace.

The Offical Dan Brown Website

The Lost Symbol Website

The Official Dan Brown Facebook Page

And, of course, Twitter!

–Jen

With the publication of Dan Brown’s next book on the horizon, this little fact sheet has been circulating around the building here in NYC. (For more fun stuff, become Dan Brown’s fan on Facebook!)

Eighty million copies of The Da Vinci Code have been sold. The novel has been translated into more than 50 languages and has been read by an estimated 480 million people…or about 10% of the world’s adult literate population. So how much is eighty million?

• Eighty million copies of The Da Vinci Code are enough to give a copy to every man, woman and child in Washington DC, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, Sydney, Capetown and Rio de Janeiro.
• A stack of eighty million copies of The Da Vinci Code would reach into space…8 times higher than the International Space Station.
• Transporting eighty million copies of The Da Vinci Code would require a train pulling more than 800 box cars.
• Eighty million copies of The Da Vinci Code laid end to end would stretch from the North Pole to the South Pole.
• The weight of 80 million copies of The Da Vinci Code is more than 120 Boeing jumbo jets.
• The pages of 80 million copies of The Da Vinci Code laid end to end would stretch to the moon…and back…five times.
• If a person read one copy of The Da Vinci Code every day, it would take over 2000 centuries to read 80 million copies.

So that’s pretty cool, right? (That last one’s kinda “duh,” but still.)

Here are a few more, that I have compiled especially for you:

• 80 million copies of The Da Vinci Code would fill the bookshelves of nearly two-and-a-half Libraries of Congress. (Library of Congresses?)
• If cats were to read one copy of The Da Vinci Code in each of their nine lives, it would take 8,888,888 cats to read 80 million copies. That’s more than the estimated cat population in the USA!
• If a patron were to check out 80,000,000 copies of The Da Vinci Code from the Los Angles Public Library and return them 2 days late, the offender would face a $56,000,000 fine.
• If 50,000,000 copies of The Da Vinci Code departed from Chicago at 4:39am going 70mph and 30,000,000 copies of The Da Vinci Code departed from LA at 6:00am going 55mph, it would still be too early for me to do that kind of math.

-David

Whew! I’m back from ALA and, honestly, happy I survived it. It is quiet in the office here today as many of my lucky co-workers are enjoying a day off. So blogging duties fall to me. I’d like to thank those who stopped by the Random House booth at this week’s conference and chatted with us about books they love, their libraries, and what they are looking for where the two former are concerned. I hope you all had a wonderful time and it was so nice to meet you!

Dan Brown (you know, that Dan Brown) would also like to thank you. He’s written a letter to booksellers and librarians:

July 2009

Dear Booksellers and Librarians,

As I prepare for the September 15th release of my new novel, The Lost Symbol, I wanted to take a moment and thank you for all the important work you do… for authors, for readers, and, above all, for books.

The generous support you’ve given my novels along the way has made all the difference, and I am forever grateful. This fall, more than ever, let’s make it a season to remember.

With sincere thanks and best wishes,

Dan Brown

How’s that for a post-ALA treat? Hope you all enjoyed the conference and I look forward to seeing you again at Midwinter.

-Marie

Finally!  The cover for Dan Brown’s new book is revealed.  I think it looks pretty snazzy.  Do you like it?

The countdown is on, for more information on this blockbuster fall publication (including a chance to win a signed first-edition), visit the official site.

–Jen

Well, ok, maybe “site” is a stretch, but TheLostSymbol.com has a ticking countdown to the publication date of Dan Brown’s new book. You can also follow along on Twitter and Facebook, as well as sign up for the Lost Symbol newsletter. Brownophiles, get your fix!

-David

I read a lot of movie reviews, and one of my favorite critics is A.O. Scott of the New York Times. One of his lesser reviews, I thought, was 2007’s annihilation of The Da Vinci Code. I noticed that the normally even-handed Scott had devoted an entire paragraph to bashing Dan Brown’s sentence structure:

 It seems you can’t open a movie these days without provoking some kind of culture war skirmish, at least in the conflict-hungry media. Recent history — “The Passion of the Christ,” “The Chronicles of Narnia” — suggests that such controversy, especially if religion is involved, can be very good business. “The Da Vinci Code,” Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence, arrives trailing more than its share of theological and historical disputation…

…To their credit the director and his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (who collaborated with Mr. Howard on “Cinderella Man” and “A Beautiful Mind”), have streamlined Mr. Brown’s story and refrained from trying to capture his, um, prose style. “Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair.” Such language — note the exquisite “almost” and the fastidious tucking of the “which” after the preposition — can live only on the page.

Wow, I thought. This guy is jealous. This is elementary-playground-type bashing. He’s reviewing a movie, and he took time out to criticize the prose of the book? Grow up.

I’ve always thought of “envy” as a feeling of wanting what someone else has, be it fame, success, a promotion, or a romantic interest. “Jealousy” comes in when you want and feel like you deserve what someone else has, and therefore develop a certain malice toward him or her. Scott obviously feels he is a better writer than Dan Brown and was, at the time, probably shaking his head at how Dan Brown had become perhaps the most famous contemporary author in the country.  

I’m not saying A.O. is wrong. I think he’s a better writer too. But, really, YOU’RE REVIEWING A MOVIE, NOT A BOOK. I was disappointed. I was watching Superman throw a tantrum on his mother’s kitchen floor.

We come, now, to yesterday, when the NYT review for “Angels & Demons” came out. A.O. Scott again took the assignment, and once again, could not focus on what he was reviewing.

Since “Angels & Demons” takes place mainly in the Vatican, and is festooned with the rites and ornaments of Roman Catholicism, I might as well begin with a confession. I have not read the novel by Dan Brown on which this film (directed, like its predecessor, “The Da Vinci Code,” by Ron Howard) is based. I have come to believe that to do so would be a sin against my faith, not in the Church of Rome but in the English language, a noble and beleaguered institution against which Mr. Brown practices vile and unspeakable blasphemy. 

The blast this year is slightly more applicable to the review; it is appropriate to mention that he’s reviewing the movie independent of reading the book. But he still insists, in the film review, on disparaging the novel’s language, which is kind of  like writing a book review and criticizing the font or writing an art-exhibit review and criticizing the cab ride there.

I would love to weigh in at the NYT website, but they don’t have a real “comments” section. So I’ve taken it out on you librarians. Hope you don’t mind.

-David

He did it!

 Hold on to your book carts!

The Knopf Doubleday Group just announced that the long-awaited follow-up to Dan Brown’s mega-hit, The Da Vinci Code, is scheduled to drop this September. The book, titled THE LOST SYMBOL, also features protagonist Robert Langdon. Brown’s editor, Jason Kaufman, says of the novel:

“Nothing ever is as it first appears in a Dan Brown novel. This book’s narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, Dan’s readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Robert Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape. The Lost Symbol is full of surprises.”

Brown himself said the novel is a culmination of 5 years of research. The print-run is the largest in Random House, Inc. history: 5 million! Be prepared for plenty of questions and requests. We at Random House Library Marketing are very excited about this tremendous news! If you put your ear very close to the computer you can hear us cheering all the way in our New York offices. Visit his website here.

-The Library Marketing Team