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"The Da Vinci Code" sells. And not just for Dan Brown.
His multimillion-selling novel has spawned scores of other books with the words "Da Vinci Code" or some variation in their titles books such as the newly published "Forbidden Faith: The Gnostic Legacy from the Gospels to 'The Da Vinci Code'" by scholar Richard Smoley.
"We might not have acquired this book without Dan Brown's popularizing of the (Gnostic) phenomenon," said Eric Brandt, senior editor at HarperSanFrancisco.
But, now, with the name of Brown's novel embedded in its title, the book is going to be on front-of-the-store table displays at Borders bookstores across the country. HarperSanFrancisco has printed 20,000 copies and has hopes of selling even more.
"Obviously, Dan Brown has created an effect in the publishing field that has benefited a lot of us," Brandt said.
Smoley's book is one of at least 48 works now on sale featuring "Da Vinci Code" somewhere in the title, no matter how far of a stretch they are from the religious, art and historical themes of Brown's overheated thriller. These include travel guides, a children's book, health books, works of history, refutations and affirmations of Brown's theories, biographies of Brown and even a speculative examination of the themes of Brown's as-yet-unpublished sequel.
The frantic efforts of publishers to work "Da Vinci Code" into the names of their books is possible because the titles of books can't be copyrighted.
"I can't imagine it hurts our sales. I'm sure we're helping them," said Russell Perreault, publicity director of Anchor Books, which has printed 6 million paperback copies of Brown's novel in anticipation of Friday's release of the film adaptation starring Tom Hanks.
"It's kind of fun to watch," Perreault said. "I just saw a funny story about ¿The Da Vinci Fitness Code.'"
Joseph Mullen, a 68-year-old Florida fitness expert, is the author of that self-published book, and he's a little ambivalent about the title.
On the one hand, he didn't want people to think he was trying unfairly to cash in on Brown's success.
But, on the other, he had the idea for his fitness program and had written about it 18 years ago.
And it was based on the Fibonacci numbers, a mathematical sequence that was used by Leonardo da Vinci in his "Vitruvian Man" drawing. And those numbers do pop up as a special code in Brown's novel.
So Mullen felt he had a right to call his book "The Da Vinci Fitness Code."
After all, he said, it was much better than another title he considered, "The Fibonacci Fitness Code."
And he could time its publication with the release of the Tom Hanks movie.
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