The Lost Web 2.0

The Lost Symbol may not be as hyped as Harry’s last run, but it’s on Twitter and Facebook.

Brown returns with Solomon's Key

Perhaps the only person left on English-speaking earth who hasn’t read The Da Vinci Code, I’m excited about The Lost Symbol. Ordinarily I boycott media-hyped books because I rebel against society in small and mostly irrelevant, unnoticeable ways. This means that Nora Roberts and her 10 aliases will most likely never make their way onto this blog. Unless she uses Twitter to make fun with her next title, like Dan Brown.

Later this month, Dan Brown is set to release his hugely awaited The Lost Symbol – the third installment of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon which almost wouldn’t interest me in the slightest, because I don’t care if there’s an American flag on the moon or not. The only reason I am interested in The Lost Symbol is because it allows me to play with social media. The pre-marketing hype of the book takes the form of a long line of “codes, cryptic trivia, puzzles, secret history, maps and aphorisms” on Twitter and Facebook. The book even has its own website countdown to the launch of the book – which is especially great if you don’t know how far away the 15th of September 2009 is from now, in seconds.

Very little is being released regarding the plot but what we do know is that exactly 6.5 million lucky readers will be able to purchase the book on launch day – a record first print for Random House international, only half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which is what anyone who isn’t J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer could hope for. Nine years after Da Vinci Code, which became the best selling hardcover adult fiction of all time, Brown steps up to reclaim his title as Best Seller.

By Jason Esch