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| Hearsay: |
Picture this: DAN BROWN! takes up a third of your cover, and your name is in small type below. You wrote the book, and Danny Boy has no involvement. You’re not ghostwriting, or writing-as, or even co-writing in a James Patterson (ISO 9000 certified) sense. Your publisher is just hoping that the words DAN BROWN will encourage people to pick the book up and mistakenly buy it. Dude, do you feel like someone’s banging your partner on the side and telling everyone about it? You should. Isn’t this a kind of schlock novel version of three card monte? I’m a little confused. Was Brown in on this? I mean, it has a certain ham-fistedness to it, so I suppose he could be involved, but I rather doubt he takes much of an interest in Earth and its humans anymore now that he’s ascended to Turtania, the mythical realm of billionaires who wear black turtle necks and tan jackets.
I didn’t think The Da Vinci Code, which is a crime-thriller-cum-religious-tale, was a particularly well-written book when it first came out in 2003. But nobody can deny it has mass appeal and its racy and pacy plot has spawned a whole set of imitators. With more than 81 million copies sold so far and two hit films based on Brown’s novels, it’s one of the publishing successes of the century.
So I picked up Deadline. Would it be the story of a young female journalist struggling for the scoop of the decade against the odds? At which point, I noticed someone else’s name on the cover beneath Dan Brown’s: Simon Kernick. “Aha,” I thought, “The title is actually ‘Simon Kernick: Deadline.’ Perhaps Kernick is the fictional detective starring in this novel?”
But as I looked closer, it dawned on me that in fact, Brown had not written this book at all. And Kernick is not the detective hero of the piece. The front cover, which proudly boasted that it was “exclusive” to WH Smith, bears the legend: “Dan Brown. If you like your thrillers as fast, furious and unputdownable as Dan Brown, then we thought you’d enjoy…Simon Kernick. Deadline.”
I had got it entirely wrong. Kernick is, in fact, the author of Deadline. Brown is not.
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July 23rd, 2009 at 9:19 am
when people ask me what I’m working on now, I tell them my next book will be called “Yan Martel’s New Novel”.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:47 am
Turtania! Perfect. “The wig, the glasses, the catchphrase – brilliant!”
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Totally shameless. Why couldn’t a blogger just title every post “Dan Brown on …” to get tens of thousands of page views? Wait a minute, that’s not such a bad idea. Hold on while I revise today’s posts.
p.s. Love the Turtania reference.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:10 pm
dan brown’s name would prompt me to NOT buy the book …
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
The comments there, particularly from “stuart,” seem to suggest this might not be as shameless (or as insulting to Kernick) as it might at first blush appear — that it might, in fact, just be plain old marketing: pre-order Brown’s new book at W.H. Smith’s, get this free copy of Kernick’s book.
That doesn’t make either of the two books any good, but that’s another story.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:57 pm
What does it say about society when a book that is highly anticipated is, from what I’ve ready in most on-line forums anyway, assumed to be a short on plot, writing style, etc. Does anyone look forward to the publishing of literary fiction? Or is there even such a thing?
July 24th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
That original Marketing Week story was super-lazy. All shock value and can’t-sink-any-lower rage… but based on lies! As noted above by Fred, the book is a free edition designed to be an incentive to pre-order the Dan Brown at W.H. Smith.
Find it gross if you want, but at least let’s talk about the ACTUAL marketing, not the imaginary version in which people are being duped to pay $$ for a book that, hello, clearly has a “Free” sticker on the cover. And before we feel too upset for Kernick, he agreed to the plan, and this book has already had its first push over a year ago… AND he has a new book out. This will likely be a boon for someone other than Dan Brown.
The actual marketing, here? Bringing book buyers into a BOOKSTORE.
Some more info, with Simon Kernick’s responses, in the link above.