Dan Brown's fans have waited six long years for "The Lost Symbol" his follow-up to the mega-blockbuster novel "The Da Vinci Code" that is being published in hardcover on Sept. 15.
Will those who want to read it in e-book form wait a little longer?
It is a question that Brown's publisher, the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, is weighing as it plans the rollout of what it hopes will be a book-selling sensation. The publisher has announced a first hardcover run of 5 million copies, but Suzanne Herz, a spokeswoman for Knopf Doubleday, said the publisher had not decided when to release an electronic version.
Other publishers are mulling release dates for fall titles. Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, said it had not set a date for the e-book edition of "True Compass," the memoir by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy that is being released in hardcover on Oct. 6. Twelve has announced a first print run of 1.5 million copies.
No topic is more hotly debated in book circles at the moment than the timing, pricing and ultimate impact of e-books on the financial health of publishers and retailers. Publishers are grappling with e-book release dates partly because they are trying to understand how digital editions affect demand for hardcover books. A hardcover typically sells for anywhere from $25 to $35, while the most common price for an e-book has quickly become $9.99.
Amazon.com, which sells electronic editions for its Kindle device, has effectively made $9.99 the de facto price for most best-sellers, a price that publishers believe will reduce their profit margins over time. Barnes & Noble sells best-sellers in e-book form for $9.95.
Herz said Doubleday was primarily worried about the security of Brown's book, which is being kept under a strict embargo until the Sept. 15 publication date. But she acknowledged that the e-book's possible effect on hardcover sales was an issue, among others.
Similarly, Stephen King, whose novel "Under the Dome" is being published in November by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, said in an e-mail message that "we're all thinking and talking about electronic publishing and how to deal with these issues," adding, "but I can't say anything right now."
Until now, John Grisham has not allowed any of his books to be released in electronic book form. But according to his agent, David Gernert, Grisham has not resolved how his publisher, Doubleday, should release a digital version of "Ford County," a short story collection set for hardcover release on Nov. 3.
Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, the world's largest publisher of consumer books and the parent company of Knopf Doubleday, said that the company's standard approach was to release e-books on the same day that a hardcover is published.
But, he said, "we do have discussions periodically about either delaying or accelerating the e-book edition" on a book-by-book basis. Imprints of Random House, in fact, have committed to releasing digital versions on the same day as the hardcovers for upcoming titles from John Irving, E.L. Doctorow and Jon Krakauer.
Many publishers did not want to talk publicly about internal discussions concerning whether to delay the release of e-books specifically on releases by best-selling authors. The lost symbol book release
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