The Dan Brown Enigma (14 page)

But while Brown was beavering away every day, there was no guarantee that any resulting book would ever be published. In the 1990s large conglomerates had started to buy up as many independent publishers as they could because they saw there was money to be made, especially when a book could be tied into a film or other media channels that the corporation might happen to own. The days of nurturing talent quickly disappeared and that meant if an author’s first couple of books didn’t have a readership that was rising all the time then no further contract would be issued. This was all about money and Brown’s record so far was poor. Despite any critical acclaim, sales had been low on all three novels.
Deception Point
had had the poorest figures of the lot, so Brown’s prospects weren’t good.

In addition, Jason Kaufman, Brown’s editor at Simon & Schuster, had jumped ship in search of another publisher but he and Brown had developed a friendship and Kaufman wasn’t about to abandon Brown. Kaufman stipulated that the next position he took would be on the condition that Dan Brown came on board as well.

The publisher that Kaufman signed on with was Doubleday. Initially they said no to Kaufman’s condition but when Doubleday president Stephen Rubin read Brown’s outline for
The Da Vinci Code
it made him read
Angels & Demons
. From that point Kaufman came on board and Brown came with him. Brown’s new agent Heidi Lange negotiated an advance that for Brown must have been startling: $400,000 for a two-book contract.
[128]

Had Simon & Schuster offered Brown a new contract for
The Da Vinci Code
one has to wonder if they would have publicised it the way they did his second and third novels: a few review copies distributed to the press and a small print run of a few thousand. With hindsight they must have been kicking themselves as they had lost the chance to have the biggest-selling novel of all time. It sounds similar to the time when the Decca record company turned down The Beatles only to find that the band became the most popular group on the planet.

Finally Brown had some backing and this time it was big money, but that also meant the book had to be good, so he and Blythe continued working hard on it.

There are many strands running through
The Da Vinci Code
and Brown spent many days researching them. ‘The novel’s themes include: the Sacred Feminine; goddess worship; the Holy Grail; symbology; paganism; the history of the Bible and its accuracy, including the lost Gnostic Gospels; Templar history; the suppression of information by the church; the genealogy of Jesus; religious zealotry; and nature’s grand design as evidence for the existence of God,’ Brown wrote in his witness statement.

According to the author, these themes have been explored for centuries in literature, art and music. They are the themes of man’s past that seem to have been lost, become legend, muddied in the waters of time. ‘Of course, it is impossible when looking at secret history to know how much is truth, and how much is myth or fanciful invention,’ Brown said. ‘By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious – that is, that we are all trying to decipher life’s big mysteries, and we’re each following our own paths of enlightenment.’
[129]

He was also intrigued by the way Da Vinci blended fact and myth. ‘It’s one of the reasons why I love Leonardo da Vinci. Some of the most dramatic hints to possible lost “secret history” can be found in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, which seem to overflow with mystifying symbolism, anomalies, and codes.’
[130]

But beyond all the codes and secret societies Brown is quick to point out that
The Da Vinci Code
is ‘at its core, a treasure hunt through Paris, London, and Edinburgh. The story is a blend of historical fact, legend, myth, and fiction.’ He also says ‘the paintings, locations, historical documents, and organisations described in the novel all exist.’
[131]

After he’d sent the manuscript in to Doubleday, Brown waited. The pressure was still there. He’d had an amazing advance but if the book suffered the fate of the first three, he would have to think of something else to do.

However, Doubleday did not treat the book the way Simon & Schuster had handled his second and third novels. The publicity department sent out 10,000 advance copies months before the book was due to be published. They also did something his other publishers hadn’t done, which was to listen to his ideas about the book’s front and back covers.

Brown suggested that both have codes about the story for readers to spot and to work out, giving them an all-round experience of the book. Brown also had a say in designing the inside cover. ‘In my previous novels I hid codes in the text just for fun,’ he said. ‘I discovered that Leonardo da Vinci hid codes in his artwork and decided wouldn’t it be fun to hide codes right on the jacket of this book in plain view? Shortly after this book was published there were just a few readers who stepped forward and said, “Am I seeing this correctly? Have I found a code?” Of course they had.’
[132]

Brown has said there are at least four codes visible to the naked eye on the cover of his book, explaining: ‘What Doubleday has done is rather than blurting out where the code is, they’ve said, “Let’s make it fun.”’ Doubleday set up a website,
thedavincicode.com
, where readers of the book could go to look at clues or work out riddles that would give them the location of the codes.

The launch of the novel is still considered to be one of the best in publishing history. ‘Articles have been written specifically on
The Da Vinci Code
launch,’ Brown said in his witness statement. ‘Steve Rubin and his team should get the credit for the success.’ Months before the book came out, Rubin sent Brown on the road to meet the booksellers. ‘Many booksellers were in love with the book when they read the advance reader copies.’ What made it more amazing was that these copies were based on the first draft of the novel and not the final one.

‘I must admit, somewhat embarrassingly,’ Brown said, ‘that until
The Da Vinci Code
launch, with the tremendous support booksellers have showed my book, I did not fully understand the role of word of mouth in the process and its power to generate buzz and excitement.’

The 10,000 advance copies were more than the first printings of his three other novels put together. Realising the book had mass appeal, the publisher initiated an unusual grassroots marketing campaign to try and frontload some name recognition for Brown. The idea was to generate interest among the booksellers before the book was released, rather than buy massive advertising campaigns afterwards. The plan worked and bookstores started doubling and tripling their orders before the book came out.
[133]

This time it was the publisher that was scheduling the interviews, creating publicity material and sending out press releases – Blythe no longer needed to be her husband’s press agent. ‘I’ve had the experience of writing a book and not having many people care, and this has been the exact opposite,’ Brown said. ‘It poses many challenges as far as my time, privacy and level of visibility – all of which I’m very hesitant to complain about, because they’re all problems that most writers in the world wish they had.’
[134]

Early indications from the advance copies were extremely positive, so based on the orders that were flooding in, Doubleday took a gamble and ordered a print run of 230,000 copies, setting the publication date for 18 March 2003. Of course it could have all backfired and sales could have been nowhere near expectations, but one other thing happened that helped to push the novel skyward.

The day before
The Da Vinci Code
was due to be published, the
New York Times
ran a hugely positive review by the paper’s book critic, Janet Maslin. It was filled with accolades such as ‘an erudite suspense thriller’ and ‘the book moves at breakneck pace’. Maslin’s review set the wheels in motion when she compared the book to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. Brown believes this was largely because of the secret rituals, codes and other mystery elements in Harry Potter that people found in his work. According to Lisa Rogak, he likened it to a more mature version of Harry Potter.
[135]

Momentum was building. The booksellers could see the book had tremendous potential and so could the publisher. Everyone worked together to help the book succeed. By the end of the first week it had sold more than 24,000 copies. Brown was in Seattle on a book tour when he heard the news that
The Da Vinci Code
had hit the bestseller lists. It must been a sweet moment, because Brown has stated that had he stayed with Pocket Books, he feels
The Da Vinci Code
would have failed as his second and third books did. ‘Equally, I think
Angels & Demons
would have been a big success if published by Random House with as much fanfare as they brought to
The Da Vinci Code
.’
[136]

The first print run of 230,000 copies sold out very quickly and Brown became one of the publisher’s top authors in terms of money generated. He’d gone from a nobody to a very big somebody almost overnight.

In her book,
The Man Behind the Da Vinci Code: An Unauthorised Biography
, Lisa Rogak states that Brown’s agent Heidi Lange renegotiated his contract, landing him a four-book deal with Robert Langdon being the main character in each one. Not wanting to take the chance that Brown might go elsewhere after providing them with the second book to fulfill the original contract by, Doubleday agreed to the new contract. They wanted their new cash cow to stay put. Brown had become an industry in his own right.

In Britain, the
New Statesman
suggested that Dan Brown should be the
New Statesman Man of the Year
. This tongue-in-cheek claim was the title of an article in the magazine on 13 December 2004 but the facts in the story by Jason Cowley speak for themselves. At the time of writing his piece,
The Da Vinci Code
was the bestselling novel in Britain and in the US. More than eight million copies had been sold worldwide and Sony Pictures had bought the film rights in a multi-million dollar deal which would eventually become a Hollywood blockbuster starring Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon.

‘Books are being written and scholarly articles published to refute its more outlandish claims and theological speculations,’ wrote Cowley. ‘The author’s previous three novels –
Deception Point
,
Angels and Demons
,
Digital Fortress
– are, as I write, second, third and fourth on the UK paperback fiction bestseller lists as well as being in the Top 10 in the US.’

But Cowley also suggested that something significant was taking place that the cultural elite seemed to be ignoring. ‘Like the
Harry Potter
books that are so popular with adults, it is a hugely accomplished escapist narrative,’ he wrote. ‘Brown knows exactly what he is doing, what he wants to say and how to say it. Beyond its huge generic accomplishment and obvious readability,
The Da Vinci Code
has something else to offer: it is a fascinating political text, underscored by an intense eschatological anxiety. In the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001 and the invasion of Iraq, in a world where a mysterious and opaque global network of religious terrorists called al-Qaeda threatens the West as well as, it is believed, communicating via encoded messages, a novel such as
The Da Vinci Code
carries a powerful political charge.’
[137]

As part of the publicity campaign for the book, Brown had appeared on ABC’s
Good Morning America
peak-time TV show to talk about the issues in
The Da Vinci Code
and Cowley claimed the sales of the book hadn’t stopped climbing since.

In his article, Cowley wondered how seriously we should take Dan Brown. Very seriously indeed was the answer, ‘not least because eight million people have bought
The Da Vinci Code
in less than 18 months and many millions more will do so in the months ahead. Many of these readers will enjoy the book and think no more of it; some will throw it across the room in derision. But others, judging by the number of dedicated websites it has spawned, will believe it just as some believe the astrological guides that are published each morning in the newspaper. They will believe that it is
historically
true.’

And yet Cowley himself, in considering Brown and his fourth novel, had only done what many others have done: jump on the Dan Brown bandwagon, caught up in the hype and momentum that is the Dan Brown industry. ‘With its pseudo-scholarship, religious zeal and conspiracy theories,’ he wrote, ‘
The Da Vinci Code
occupies the ambiguous space of all our “if onlys” while offering us its own stairway to heaven. Not a bad combination, then; in fact, a sure-fire winner.’
[138]

And it was a winner more than anyone could ever have anticipated. A million copies were sold in the US alone in its first ten weeks. A full year after it was published
The Da Vinci Code
had sold more than 6.5 million copies in the US and after two years that figure jumped to 10 million copies.

After the long, lean, hard years Brown had hit the big time with a novel that had captured the imagination of millions of people. The sales were climbing and he was smiling but what happened next was something that no one in the publishing world had seen before and Brown would discover there was a price to pay for the success he had finally found.

I’m not really a pretender. I like complicated ideas presented in a fun way. My best teachers were the teachers that made learning fun.There are hundreds of books that deal with the topic of The Da Vinci Code that are pretty hard to read. And here’s one that isn’t
[139]
.

A
fter
The Da Vinci Code
was published, the millions of readers who’d devoured
The Da Vinci Code
decided they wanted more Dan Brown, so they began to buy his first three novels. Both publishers of his earlier books were taken completely by surprise by the demand and at first had difficulty handling the volume of orders. As the two publishers finally managed to get their houses in order to handle the volume, the phenomenon happened. All four books appeared on the bestsellers’ lists in the same week, which was completely unheard of.
Digital Fortress
made the list five years after it had been published.
[140]
‘I really got the sense that people were ready for this story,’ Brown said. ‘It was the type of thing people were just ready to hear.’