There’s been much fulminating in the books world lately that The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s eagerly anticipated follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, is bad for publishing. This week, former Publisher’s Weekly editor Sara Nelson even dubbed Brown a “Book Killer.” The theory is that Brown’s readers will only troop into stores (or go online) starting Sept. 15 to buy Symbol, probably at a deep discount, and they won’t buy anything else. Worse, the critics argue, the hubbub surrounding Symbol will drown out media coverage of other books — and eat into sales of those books too. So publishers have supposedly been shuffling the release dates of various titles so they don’t have to go head-to-head with the Dan Brown juggernaut.
It doesn’t take a Harvard symbologist to see that this is mostly sour grapes and a whole lot of hooey.
Our library is preparing now for moving loads of Brown
Our library is currently updating our circulation system to handle the anticipated extra workload by linking every book in our collection to Brown’s megablockbuster. Search for ‘Harry Potter’ and get a ‘see also’ link to The Lost Symbol. Search Norwegian Elk hound and get a link to The Lost Symbol.
We don’t expect that anyone will want any other book, but on the odd chance that someone comes into the library looking for something else, they will leave with a copy of Brown’s master-opus-as-God-whispered-to-Moses-genius-put-to-paper.
We’re also in the process of breaking out one of the exterior walls to create a drive through “Brown Hole” to dispense buttloads of his books with a quick “Brown movement.” Just drive up and we’ll dump some Brown in your front seat.