Breaking the Code

And if claiming the top fiction slot for 2003 isn't enough, Da Vinci is still way in the lead for unit sales so far in 2004. For the week ending January 26, it sold nearly twice as many as the #2 fiction book (The Five People You Meet in Heaven) and more than six times as many as #3 (Absolute Friends). Brown is also the only author to get his entire backlist on the weekly charts while still hogging #1. Angels & Demons is currently heading up the mass market chart and is also #12 on the hardcover list. Pocket reports 2.9 million copies in print for Angels in paper and Atria has 300,000 copies in print in hardcover. Deception Point, also from Pocket and Atria, is #6 on the mass market list, with 1.6 million copies in print in paper and about 120,000 in hardcover. Digital Fortress, from St. Martin's, #4 on the mass market list, has 1.2 million copies in print plus another 350,000 copies in trade paper. Additionally, many backlist religion titles have benefited from the Da Vinci phenomenon and there are several new books glomming onto its success. How Brown and Doubleday have kept the book in the lead and the growing list of books touched by Da Vinci will be the focus of next week's Book News department.