Calling it “the big surprise” (if they do say so themselves)–and pretty much confirming the importance of those pre-publication deliberations on issuing a simultaneous ebook edition–Amazon makes this report by e-mail to the WSJ. Of course the pre-orders were significant, so that exclusion is a big one. Also, Doubleday clarified yesterday afternoon that they sold over 1 million units–print and electronic–in the book’s first day on sale. Separately, while Twelve declined to quantify opening results for Ted Kennedy’s TRUE COMPASS, spokesman Cary Goldstein says “our opening day reports have unquestionably exceeded expectations.”
New Releases/Forthcoming
Record Breakers: Lost Symbols Moves More than 1 Million Copies and Doubleday Goes Back to Press
By late afternoon yesterday Barnes & Noble was ready to exult that Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL had set a new one-day sales record for adult fiction at the chain (without specifying which book held the previous record, or quantifying the new record). It also set a new mark for adult fiction pre-orders and perhaps most importantly, “the company said that sales for the book were exceeding expectations.”Release In the UK, Waterstone’s fiction buyer Simon Burke reported similarly unquantified but record-breaking results to The Bookseller: “We have seen phenomenal sales for the new Dan Brown. The Lost Symbol is Waterstone’s […]
Brown Thanks Maslin
At a launch party in New York last night for THE LOST SYMBOL, Dan Brown was lavish in his thanks to all the departments at Knopf Doubleday and throughout Random House that engineered the 5-million-copy laydown of the new book. (“Let’s hope we never see them again,” he quipped.) As he noted at the beginning of his remarks, “I realize technically we’ve only published one book together–so far, so good.” For anyone who thought the publisher might be miffed by the New York Times’ early review of the new book, Brown added to his thank-you list “a woman I’ve never […]
Dan Brown Has A New Book Coming; The NYT Keeps Breaking Embargoes
Last night the NYT broke the embargo on Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL, posting Janet Maslin’s review (which runs in today’s print edition). She likes this “rip-snorting adventure. As Browniacs have long predicted, the chase involves the secrets of Freemasonry and is set in Washington, where some of those secrets are built into the architecture and are thus hidden in plain sight…. Within this book’s hermetically sealed universe, characters’ motivations don’t really have to make sense; they just have to generate the nonstop momentum that makes ‘The Lost Symbol’ impossible to put down.” (Maslin’s most quoted graph is bafflingly nonsensical: […]
Briefs: Amazon's Amends; Robert Jordan eBooks; Pullman on Christ; Another Traditional Party Cancelled
* Over a month after violating its own terms of use and deleting unauthorized versions of George Orwell books from Kindle owners’ machines, on one of the quietest news days of the year Amazon e-mailed customers offering financial amends. The NYT reported that Amazon offering to give customers replacement copies of 1984 and Animal Farm, along with restoring any deleted personal annotations. Alternately, they are offering a gift certificate or check for $30. Though the article doesn’t address this, presumably the belated offer is designed in part to moot litigation that was filed against the etailer following the deletions.NYT * […]
NYT Breaks Kennedy Embargo
The Times “obtained” a copy of the forthcoming TRUE COMPASS, set for release on September 14, and shares generously and broadly: “The book does not shy from the accident [on Chappaquiddick in 1969], or from some other less savory aspects of the senator’s life, including a notorious 1991 drinking episode in Palm Beach, Fla., or the years of heavy drinking and women-chasing that followed his 1982 divorce from his first wife, Joan. “But it also offers rich detail on his relationships with his father, siblings and children that round out a portrait of a man who lived the most public […]