The paperback edition of The Lost Symbol is due out on July 22nd in the UK (a mass market paperback will be released in the United States in October). Dan Brown’s British publisher says that interest in the paperback is extremely high:

Transworld says it has the biggest paperback subscription in its 60-year history for Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, out on 22nd July. The publisher also announced there will be more Brown to come for Christmas, with an illustrated version of the book and an enhanced e-book “in the pipeline” for November.

More than 750,000 copies of the new paperback have been subbed across the publisher’s UK and international markets, with over 1,300 free-standing display units also shipped out. Publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said support from all retailers had been “stellar”. He said: “Dan Brown started out here as a paperback phenomenon and The Lost Symbol is perfectly positioned to continue that momentum.”

The Lost Symbol has done some pretty huge business in the UK, but doesn’t seem to have had the media impact that The Da Vinci Code did. Not enough scandal and controversy no doubt – DB made those Freemasons far too nice…

In an ironic turn of events, Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol has topped The Bible as the most highlighted book of all time on Amazon’s Kindle eReader:

Amazon has built a “Popular Highlights” section that showcases the book passages underlined by Kindle readers–a 21st Century twist on literary quotation. So far, that list has been dominated by The Shack by William P. Young, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

Here is the most underlined passage from Brown’s most higlighted title–underlined by 1,161 Kindle users: “Langdon came face-to-face with a bronze bust of Masonic luminary Albert Pike, along with the engraving of his most famous quote: WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OURSELVES ALONE DIES WITH US; WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OTHERS AND THE WORLD REMAINS AND IS IMMORTAL.”

Does that make Albert Pike bigger than Jesus?

Okay, so it’s not like Robert Langdon cracked a code and found the secret passageway into the Vatican Archives…but it’s interesting to note the indirect influence that may apply here. So go easy on me for the headline.

After centuries of being kept under lock and key, the Vatican has started opening its Secret Archives to outsiders in a bid to dispel the myths and mystique created by works of fiction such as Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.

The archives, until now jealously guarded from prying eyes, provide one of the key settings in Brown’s thriller, in which Harvard "symbologist" Robert Langdon, played in the 2009 film by Tom Hanks, races against time to stop a secret religious order, the Illuminati, from destroying Vatican City.

…They have been open to carefully vetted academic researchers for more than 100 years, but in the last few months the Vatican has granted tours to select groups of journalists and members of the public, allowing a glimpse into one of its inner most sanctums.

Note though that the ‘secret’ archives remain off-limits; so hardly the Vatican’s dirty laundry laid out for all to see. Full story here.