“Dan Brown’s latest historical/conspiratorial/symbological mystery had a stellar first day,” said Keith Staskiewicz in Entertainment Weekly. Brown’s The Lost Symbol sold more than a million copies in the U.S., Britain, and Canada Wednesday, breaking Barnes & Noble’s first-day sales record for an adult book—“‘adult,’ in this case, being shorthand for ‘not Harry Potter.’” However you read the sales data, it “spells major success for the author.”
That’s great for Dan Brown, said Alexandria Sage in Reuters. But it’s also welcome news for publishers and booksellers, who’ve “wallowed in a slump in recent years,” especially during the recession. The first-day sales pushed shares of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders higher Wednesday, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch upgraded Amazon to “buy.”
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