Dan+Brown's+New+Novel+marks+a+Change+in+the+Literary+World

September 15th marked the release of Dan Brown’s new book //Lost Symbol// and the growth of a new market in the publishing world. Amazon.com reported that copies of the e-book, which can be read on a __Kindle__ or other electronic devices, out sold physical copies of the book on the first day it was available to the public. "The big surprise was that, despite sustained, strong physical books sales, yesterday we saw the Kindle edition outsell hardcover editions on the book’s release day," explained Amazon’s spokesman Andrew Herdener. (Rich, 2009, p.1). This new movement in literary technology is a sharp contrast to the theories of Stanley Baran, author of "Introduction to Mass Communication". Baran discusses his theory that, although the growth of electronic books will help unknown authors, it will not be useful for more popular authors. This theory may be proved wrong if Brown’s success is any indication of the change in the market, and while electronic books have not reached the same popularity as their physical counterparts, they are starting to make a greater impact in the book market. E-publishing, or the publication of books online, began in the early years of the 21st century, riding on the popularity of online commerce. Authors who had been unable to find a publisher, such as Manu Herbstein, award winning author of the book //Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade//, found that publishing their books in electronic form, allows them access to a wide variety of readers. (Baran, 2010, p. 72). This would not have been possible if the book had never been published. Popular authors, such as Steven King and Dan Brown, also use electronic publishing to boost their novel sales, however, e-books have not proved to be as profitable in the past few years. In "Introduction to Mass Communication" by Stanley Baran, the author discusses his belief that e-publishing will be more beneficial for unknown authors looking for a publisher than for authors who are already famous for their previous works. "Because anyone with a computer and a novel to sell can bypass the traditional book publishers, first-time writers of small, niche books now have an outlet for their work" (Baran, 2010, p.72). True, this new technology will be useful for unknown authors, Brown’s recent success with the electronic sales of his new novel, proves that substantiated authors can use this technology to their benefit as well and that e-books may be gaining more popularity than recently believed by publishers. The news of the growing popularity of e-books was particularly exciting for bloggers who have been using the e-book technology and hope to see it expand. "With Amazon’s news, bloggers were quick to claim a revolutionary leap for electronic books, which so far have represented somewhere between less than 1 and 4 percent of sales, according to publishers"(Rich, 2009, p.1). The first day of sales of Brown’s book, //Lost Symbol//, shows that there is a growing market for e-books, which will surely catch publisher’s attention and possibly influence publishing trends in the future. Although the sales of the e-books counted for a small amount of the overall profit made on Brown’s book, it does prove that e-publishing could be on the rise and become competitive in the literary market.

[]: This video, featuring the CEO of Amazon, looks at the changing ma Works Cited: Baran, S. (2010). //Introduction to Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture// (6th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Rich, M. (2009, September 17). ‘Lost Symbol’ Also a Big Hit on Kindle, But How Big?

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