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This column helps advise on which kinds of authors to watch out for and which ones to avoid when it comes to reselling. I will be highlighting one author in each Bookologist newsletter that you could look out for in your travels to buy books. Please feel free to write in and disagree with me or give your opinions. Please also email me on my Web site at http://www.camelotonline.net/aboutus.html and nominate authors you think should be included. By working together, we can perhaps compile a good list of authors that would sell well in your book business.
Dan Brown
I have one golden rule of bookselling, which is to avoid mass-market authors like the plague. But for this article, I am going to break that rule and talk about a mass-market author that is guaranteed to sell well, at least for the moment. That man is Dan Brown, a relatively new author with only four titles to his credit so far.
It's not often that a book has the ability to grab you by the throat and refuse to let go until you have reached the last page. But for me, that is what Brown's last two books did for me. His first two books ("Digital Fortress" and "Deception Point") showed some promise, but they showed, at least to me anyway, that Brown was just starting out as an author and that he had yet to "find himself." I think he created some rather annoying characters in his first two books and I am not a big fan of them as a result. Reading the reviews on the internet, it appears that many Brown devotees feel the same way.
It is his last two books that I am totally addicted to. "Angels and Demons" dealt with Vatican corruption, the emergence of an ancient secret society called the Illuminati all amid the backdrop of an election for a new Pope. The sequel to that book "The DaVinci Code," offers a very controversial view about Jesus' life and death, and I am impressed that Brown had the courage to broach the subject of Jesus and religion in such a controversial way. Again, Brown hints at Vatican plots including a Vatican-sanctioned religious group called Opus Dei. It is obvious Brown has a deep fascination for Vatican wrong-doings and shady societies! The movie version of "DaVinci Code" is in the works with Ron Howard as director and the sequel to "DaVinci Code" is being written at the moment. So this intense interest and focus on Brown and his books will keep his work in demand for some time to come.
Tips: Here in Germany, Brown is extremely popular and copies of his books can go on eBay for up to 10 Euros (around $12), sometimes more. Just to give you an example of how popular he is here, when the German version of "DaVinci Code" came out recently, his books sold out in one store on the first day, with lines of people stretching around the corner. Other stores also quickly ran out of copies and had to restock. One German bookseller compared the Dan Brown hysteria to when a new Harry Potter book appears.
On eBay.com and eBay UK, most of Brown's books are being bid on with bids around the $12 mark. Autographed copies fetch a lot more. Brown is not touring and autographing at the moment because he is writing his next book, so autographed copies are doing particulary well at the moment, with one signed copy at $222.50 at the time of this writing (http://digbig.com/4bnhn).
Related Web Sites
http://www.danbrown.com
The official Web site for Dan Brown. Includes code-breaking puzzles.
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