Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol the follow-up novel to The Da Vinci Code broke the first-day sales record for adult fiction at Barnes & Noble Inc and Amazon.com Inc.
The book, released yesterday, also had the highest number of preorders for an adult-fiction work at Barnes & Noble, the New York-based bookstore chain said. The electronic version ranked No 1 at both Barnes & Noble and Seattle-based Amazon.com.
Publishers are counting on a flood of new titles by big- name authors to fuel sales this season. Margaret Atwood, Nick Hornby, John Irving, Stephen King, Jonathan Lethem and Philip Roth are all releasing new fiction. In the nonfiction category, the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s memoir, True Compass, will hit shelves next week.
The Lost Symbol is Brown’s third best-seller featuring symbologist Robert Langdon — a series that began with Angels & Demons. The latest book, published in the US by Doubleday, follows Langdon to Washington, where a religious fanatic has kidnapped the head of the Smithsonian Institution.
Doubleday, part of Bertelsmann AG, is making a first printing of 5 million copies for the US market. The book’s UK publisher, TransWorld, will print 1 million.
The Da Vinci Code, which debuted in 2003, has sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, according to Brown’s website. Brown’s novels have been published in 51 languages.
The film version of “Angels & Demons” came out this summer, earning more than $133 million in domestic box-office revenue, according to the Box Office Mojo site. It followed the movie version of “The Da Vinci Code,” which came out in 2006.
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In 2007, the final Harry Potter title, JK Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” set records for publishers and book sellers. Barnes & Noble sold 1.8 million copies of the children’s book in the first 48 hours of its release.
The 509-page “Lost Symbol” carries a retail price of $29.95.
Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, fell 31 cents to $83.55 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Barnes & Noble, the biggest bookstore chain in the US, rose 30 cents to $21.90 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.