Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol ‘Bestseller’ on BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on September 17, 2009Dan Brown’s latest novel The Lost Symbol sold a million copies in the first day, and this success has carried over to various file-sharing sites. Both the unabridged audiobook and the ebook versions have already been downloaded tens of thousands of times through BitTorrent.
Books that are popular on BitTorrent are usually not the same as bestsellers in book stores. The top 10 list of most pirated books of 2009 thus far is populated by geek literature and adult exercise handbooks.
Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol is one of the rare exceptions to this rule. The book appeared on several file-sharing sites just hours after its official release and has been downloaded by more than one hundred thousand pirates scattered across the globe.
For some people the ‘pirate’ route is the only way to get their hands on the much anticipated book, simply because it is not yet available in their country.
“Thanks a lot for sharing the book so early with us. I was eagerly waiting for this because it is still to be released in India. Now I can read it before anyone else,” a downloader of the high quality PDF version of the book commented.
Since it was uploaded two days ago the eBook has been downloaded by approximately 40,000 BitTorrent users. The unabridged audiobook copy is even more popular with close to 60,000 downloads since its release.
This most downloaded audiobook torrent currently has well over a thousand seeders, which is quote unusual as one commenter noted. “It’s really amazing to see thousands of people downloading and seeding an audiobook torrent because usually I see only a few hundred people downloading an audiobook torrent.”
Alison Barrow, associate publicity director for Transworld, the book’s publisher in the UK said that they are asking sites to take down links to pirated copies. “We are not being complacent about this,” she noted.
Whether or not the availability of unauthorized copies will have a negative effect on the book’s sales remains to be seen. Bestselling author Paulo Coelho has shown that giving away free digital copies of book can actually boost sales to quite an extent.
Coelho, who is an avid BitTorrent user himself and a passionate supporter of The Pirate Bay has encouraged many of his fellow authors to share their work. “A person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone,” Coelho told TorrentFreak. Perhaps Dan Brown took Coelho’s advice?
Previously: Minister: BitTorrent Will Not Be Blocked By Aussie Filter
Next: Pirate Bay Buyer Faces Bankruptcy
69 Responses
Dan Brown is a millionaire cause of P2P.
Specially Anti Piracy companies making $ from P2P and are rich as hell.
A-Holes !!!
TorrentDay – Your Gateway To The Scene.
http://www.torrentday.com
Anyway, Dan Brown is a massive fuckwit but not as much of a fuckwit as all the retards who bought his book. Him and his dumbass theories. Stop making morons like this guy rich!!!!!!!!!!
Never heard of this loser. Looking at the title I guess this is some rip on the lost room. Good tv show, lame book probably.
O first é um filho da puta.
Bittorrent made me a better person for allowing me to read a lot of technical stuff that otherwise I would have not found. I loved libraries now they should go online.
It really would be helpful if someone would try to compile statistics on this as it progresses.
http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/the-lost-symbol-the-ebook-tipping-point/
Now in come the anti-pirates to blather about how filesharers are starving this guy.
As it always goes on here.
what should i say ?
“are asking sites to take down links to pirated copies.”
yes, please ask them polite, every one of them, and don’t forget to inform the seeders :)
ROFL again :)
@Reasoned Bitch
What world do you live?
Dan Brown is the author of “Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons”.
maybe will dl later
i fucking hate dan brown i’d never download any of his shitty novels. the da vinci code and angels and demons were written at like a 2nd grade reading level
Im sure the author takes great that a ton of people are enjoying his work without contributing anything at all.. Freeloading is the epitome of moral dereliction.
@9 anonymous
both the davinci code and angels were both terrible movies and dan brown blatantly ripped off the authors of holy blood holy grail…the guys who did all the actual research and proposed the theories that dan brown claims to be his own in the davinci code
dan brown = plagarism,no talent hack.
http://www.Adult-Facebook.com
I don’t think books should be pirated because the authors deserve the money. Writing a book is a hard task which requires a lot of effort and they only receive a percentage of the income as the publisher takes a huge %. Its better to buy this one than to pirate it.
@2
“Anyway, Dan Brown is a massive fuckwit but not as much of a fuckwit as all the retards who bought his book. Him and his dumbass theories. Stop making morons like this guy rich!!!!!!!!!!”
IRONY
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5090080/Dan_Brown_-_The_Lost_Symbol_%5BUnabridged%5D
:D
@12
For one, your post is still spam even if you include on-topic content with your spam link. I report spam whenever I see it and this post is no exception.
Two, the fact that publishing companies take so much revenue for themselves is part of the reason why people share (not “pirate”) books. People would be a lot happier if the majority of the money went to the authors, or artists, instead of to the publishing companies or record labels.
Should we also close down public libraries because the author doesn’t get paid when I check out a book?
Get as many eyes and minds to read your creation.. that will stand the test of time.. money however.. will not.
Let those can and want to buy it.. do.. let those who cannot or may not want to.. at least become a fan.
After all.. who are you if you are but lost among the sea of ‘writers’.
@11
Movies = bad. But the books were good.
who cares? honestly…..
@17
exactly
Not to mention it’s Dan Brown, someone about whose piracy woes we care a hundred times less than those of any other author.
@15
Philly already did that, they closed their public libraries. The idiots
What if Dan Brown did this to boost his sales…
@12
4nd is right about spam, and you can say that about anything thats shared: movies, music, games, apps, EVERYTHING
@15
Agreed, just like the small time artists who WANT their music to be shared so people will know who they are. And the big artists (Metallica for example) who are rich and famous already, and are just against it for the “lost record sales” (even though the labels are the ones losing out).
Dan Brown is just a writer, who makes stuff up. It’s not real. He takes a few facts, plays around with them and adds some imaginative flavor to it.
And the ideas for the Da Vinci code were circulating for many years and were available to anyone who took the time and trouble to write the book.
I find it funny though, ppl thinking he might be writing nonfiction or some kind of historical tome. He is a FICTION writer.
And he has so much $$ he hardly has to worry about torrents.
Dan Brown is one of my favorite writers and I am also tempted to download the ebook just because it is not yet available where I live.
With that being said, I prefer having hard copies of books and I will with a 99% certainty buy the book once it’s available to me :)
@14 4nd
I agree it works that way with music, books are a little different.
There isn’t really an equivalent to the concert that bands have where they make most of their money while record companies make money of CDs.
Many writers still have other jobs that brings in money other than their published works because just book sales do not always bring enough in.
Writers and publishes make money on the books sales so I buy books from people I like to support them.
And libraries pay for their books so borrowing a book in not the same as downloading it. Even if the book was donated to the library it was bought at one point so the writer has the money from that copy.
And libraries pay for their books so borrowing a book in not the same as downloading it. Even if the book was donated to the library it was bought at one point so the writer has the money from that copy
Except, in order to share the book, one must BUY it. So the author already got the profit out of that sale.
To be honest, I don’t see BT cutting into the sales of this book too much. For people like me who have to spend their day looking at a computer screen, reading a book is actually something I enjoy, helps me relax.
Personally I already bought my copy the day it came out (which is weird, China getting anything on release day is unheard of before :P) and is enjoying the read so far, which is all that matters. Hope those who buy/download it enjoy it too :)
@J
I imagine this is largely because publishers take so much of the revenue for themselves.
Which is good- except that I imagine that a good chunk of your money isn’t going where you want it to. (Unless you like paying the publishing companies.)
This is certainly true, but would you bet that if publishing companies had their way they’d eliminate libraries in a heartbeat? If you think about it from their point of view, libraries are huge sources of “lost sales.” After all (if we think like, say, the RIAA), if you hadn’t borrowed that book, you most certainly would have rightfully purchased it! Libraries should therefore be sued and made to pay for each checkout.
It’s totally insane thinking, I know. But this is the sort of thing that pro-copyright groups would force on us.
…yes, I just went off-topic to preach that. Don’t judge me! ;-;
Anyway.
I suppose my point is, if libraries were charged, for each book, a number of dollars determined by how much the publishing company thought each book would be checked out (and therefore, how many “lost sales” would occur), our libraries would have a few handfuls of books and that’s it.
just download it, after send it directly to the recycle bin…
Come on torrentfreak, can you not find anything interesting to write about????
You’re making a mistake in making your target audience 13 year old kids who whack off to bittorrent statistics.
Time for some new management, I say.
Piracy has been the only way for me to get Peter Hamilton’s books for ages. I’d like to buy some, but they are simply unavailable in Russia and importing requires dealing way too many additional time and resource expenses.
Can’t wait till I get the novel, just ordered it of eBay!
Might read a few pages from the ebook.
Thanks for the information!
@Dave
If you don’t like it, don’t come here. Better yet, if you don’t like it, make your own p2p blog and surpass TF in quality.
care-o-meter
|-x——————|
@35
So you do care some?
@36
sure, but not about dan brown or his cut-and-paste books for retards. i just like piracy.
Once again, the majority of the piracy in this case could easily have been avoided simply by having a single worldwide release date and a fair price!
Yessssssss, thanx to me spotted it on BT sites, all over the Internetsss =D
I think it was only released yesterday(in book shops in the U.S.) and they had armed guards couldnt stop it getting on BT sites
Whoever released this can type fast! =P
Welcome to the Electronic age. I’d rather download and breath than chop down a tree just to read a book once and let it gather dust and take up space.
For some of the iD10Ts in this forum the auther is a fictional writer. So read the bloody story for the story that it is.
Can’t believe some people take it seriously.
ITS FICTIONAL NOT FACT RETARD!!!
@37 well said. would not spend a dime on this crap.
hm bought it ..
downloaded, seeded, deleted. some day I mayby do it again.
@3 Reasoned Bitch
“Never heard of this loser.”
Maybe if you got out of Mommy’s basement once in a while…..
My new favorite quote:
“A person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone,”
In your face, anti-piracy a-holes
@11 Seko
which is at least one grade higher
than your post.
Direct quote from Deception Point:
“We’ve got a five-tier level of defense,” Jabba explained. “A primary Bastion Host, two sets of packet filters for FTP and X-eleven, a tunnel block, and finally a PEM-based authorization window right off the Truffle project. The outside shield that’s disappearing represents the exposed host. It’s practically gone. Within the hour, all five shields will follow. After that, the world pours in. Every byte of NSA data becomes public domain.”
You can almost see him googling “computer security” and picking words at random to construct his ridiculous fucking plots. “Truffle project”? Since he’s just making shit up now, he might as well have used “SSH Squirrel Matrix”. Fucking tool.
Google Books added it ;)
http://books.google.ca/books?id=rhNZPgAACAAJ&dq=The+Lost+Symbol&lr=&as_brr=0&source=gbs_book_other_versions_r&cad=2
@45
COELHO is a genius. Dan Brown is a moron. Download Coelho without guilt, and don’t even seed Brown – he does not deserve to be read
paslendnij nah((
There is nothing as paper in your hands. Books are books. You can’t replace them. I only read the “pirated” version because I love to be the first who reads it from my group of family/friends.
I read the e-book first and then order the real thing, and then, read it again. It’s a natural thing to do.
With Love, 9fc33b8a9ffde1133222ac46068fe2e1
Bittorrent is dead. Following up eDonkey.
Lots of whining thieves will be left. Anonymous thieves.
L__E__N__A__R__T
R__E__N__K__E__M__A
IS
E__R__N__E__S__T__O
L__E__N__N__A__R__T
R__E__N__K__E__M__A
IS
E__R__N__E__S__T__O
good day everyone;
as Demonoid is down, and it happaened that this is the only site that i’m aware of where i can download Audiobooks. is there any other website where Audiobooks are available?
thanks in advance
Paulo Coelho a genious?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
And in the words of Salman Rushdie:
“Dan Brown isn’t a writer, he’s a typewriter.”
I feel giving away books on web for free will actually help authors and will definitely boost the sales.
Lost Symbol, with its million copies sold already, proves for once and for all that pirated copies do not hurt sales.
I have an e-copy myself, and I shared it with a couple of friends. They are going to buy the hard copies now BECAUSE after reading a few chapters they got interested and want to have hard copies. So, thank me Mr. Brown for another 60 bucks you are about to make!
Well jokes apart, it proves my point. Hope authors will be more open-minded in the future.
@VisorMax: TPB has a nice collection of audio books… and it is (still) up and running.
Jim Baen, and his line-up of authors, figured out years ago that giving away copies of books on the internet did nothing but sell more books. And these are just hacks either: Eric Flint, David Weber, John Ringo, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Harry Turtledove, just to name a few. Don’t believe it? Check out the Baen Books Free Library.
Uh..these aren’t just…even.
A lot of Dan Brown haters here, bunch of hypocrites. Most of you don’t even know his books, just the movies and the novels are not even close to the movies they made of it, most of his books were great, numerous interesting theories (he doesn’t say it’s the truth, just what he’s been reading, learning etc. and he uses that to make a good thriller of it).
And because you have to pay for the novel, you blame him??? Never heard about a library, or indeed download it, what is possible, even without Piratebay.
You wankers, first read before you bitch about his books. It’s not meant to be difficult literature but a good thriller with a variety of interesting history, religion, art and what not, I loved it and love to read his new novel. Peacexxx
The Butler is the murderer
Paulo Coelho a genius? More of boooooringggggggggggggggggg *zzzzzzzzzzzz*
Dan Brown FTW!
Well, gee, if the artists only get paid a tiny portion when people DO pay for their work, how much do you think they get paid when they succumb to entitlement and pirate it? None? Are you trying to tell me that people are pirating books like this because they think is somehow helps the author?
Answer this : How can you condone taking something without paying for it?
Libraries get permission from the publisher. Nice try though.
Still, the fact remains that success is now depandant on the circumstances. If the person happens to have other sources of income, they will be fine, but if they have chosen to devote all their time to their passion, they run a very high risk of not making it.
Piracy deprives people of the opportunity to rightly profit from their own work. Who exactly are you to tell them how much money they should be earning?
Im pretty sure artists are aware of the downsides of publishing arrangements before they commit themselves to one. Look, it’s not up to you to “save” the author by not paying for any of their work. If you do pay for it, you will be atleast supporting them for that one copy you bought. It’s very simple from a moral standpoint.
Nice try again. Aside from the fact, that you have nothing but a hypothetical situation with no hard fact to boot.. Pirating something via torrents is not the same as borring a book. When you pirate, you have unlimited access to it. When you borrow a book, you are agreeing to a set of rules that govern how you use it. Usually you can’t keep it forever and you have to return it in good condition. Oh, and you aren’t garunteed to find an available copy. It might already be checked out.
If what you were saying were true, and libraries were harming things, then im sure they wouldn’t be around anymore. Most of this situation is self explanatory.
Logic fail. Just becacuse it sold a lot, how do you know it wouldn’t have sold MORE? What makes you think that piracy caused improved sales? Clearly, any one who pirated it is interested in the book, and I think that it’s arguably clear that a fair portion of them would have bought it.
@47 (Dan Brown Is A Fucking Gimp):
A bastion host definitely exists. FTP exists, but packet filters for X-eleven…? X-eleven (X11) is a window system…
A tunnel block is just something that blocks a tunnel, so would probably just be another bastion host somewhere along the tunnel. But don’t take my word for it, I know nothing.
PEM = privacy-enhanced e-mail, but I’ve never heard of an authorization window for PEM. Perhaps they mean “an authorization module”? And WTF at “the Truffle project”, you’re right.
And shouldn’t NSA data, being from a government agency, be public domain anyway? Even if it’s not released to the public at all.
I guess people will believe something if it’s complicated enough.
I repeat what several other people have said:
1) Brown RIPPED the concept from a British book called “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” – Plagiarism.
2) His litterary style is mediocre at best.
3) The “religious” claims in his books are ignorant nonsense and only somebody with serious gaps in their general knowledge would enjoy reading his books.
If you MUST read this book, do NOT under any circumstances pay a penny for it!!! Personally I wouldn’t read it even if he paid me.
@66 (Cordella):
Some people like to laugh at the factual inconsistencies in books. I do that, for one.
Don’t look at their eyes!
http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/001631.html
See also http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html
@2… jealous much
7 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.