Random House announced this morning that on September 15h, Dan Brown's new novel will hit bookstores around the world. With a print run of five million copies, Random House says its the largest print run in their history.
The Lost Symbol
According to the press release, the book will be called The Lost Symbol as opposed to the long-rumored The Solomon Key and will take place over a 12-hour period.
"This novel has been a strange and wonderful journey,” said Brown in the release. “Weaving five years of research into the story’s twelve-hour time frame was an exhilarating challenge. Robert Langdon’s life clearly moves a lot faster than mine.”
Brown's New Landscape
In the release, Brown's long-time editor, Jason Kaufman, Vice President and Executive Editor at Doubleday said that 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.”
That has some people questioning whether part of the book's delay was because Brown abandoned a rumored plot depending on the Freemasons and replaced it with something about the 2012 end of the world paranoia; something that was suggested by Ron Hogan, editor of galleycat.com, back in February.
Worldwide Sensation
Da Vinci, which was published in 2003, has been translated into more than 60 languages. It debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller List and stayed at number 1 for 54 weeks, more than a year. It stayed on the list for almost three years — 144 weeks.
There are more than 81 million copies of Da Vinci in print and it made best sellers of Brown's earlier work, Angels and Demons and Digital Fortress.
It was then made into a movie starring Tom Hanks that brought in three quarters of a billion dollars. A sequel — Angels and Demons, which is actually a prequel to Da Vinci — is scheduled to be released in theaters next month,
Given the fact that The Solomon Key generated a tremendous amount of press — even books written about what people thought might be in it — imagine what will happen now that the book has officially been announced.
While Sonny Mehta, the head of the publishing house bringing out Symbol said the announcement makes today a great day for readers and booksellers, it is also a great day for Columbia Pictures, which made the movie versions of Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.
Variety reports that they've already started pre-preproduction work on the third movie, giving them a second global franchise to go along with the Spiderman movies.
Colin Miner - An award winning journalist twice nominated by his editors for a Pulitzer Prize, Miner is the former City Editor of The New York Sun. He ...
