Dan Brown Inspires FLC's Thriller Fans In Ukraine

"The Lost Symbol,” the long-awaited new novel by Dan Brown, was probably the most important book event of 2009. Although it was only published last September, Dan Brown's conspiracy thriller easily managed to top the annual bestseller lists in countries like the U.S. and Britain in 2009. After a brief delay, depending on the speed of the translator, fans in other countries were also able to enjoy the thriller. In Ukraine, it was the Family Leisure Club (FLC), a DirectGroup club and publishing company, which brought the new Dan Brown to bookstores in Ukrainian on Dec 18. FLC’s translator Vladimir Gorbatko took exactly 33 days to translate the 608 pages into the local language.

The initial print run for the Ukrainian Dan Brown was around 60,000 copies or roughly ten times the normal run for a book. Publishing books in the Ukrainian language is a small but steadily growing market. The majority of titles sold in the Ukraine are still published in Russian.

The FLC, which is now not only the country’s biggest club but also its largest publisher, took advantage of the annual book fair in Kiev for the first presentation of the novel. At a stand specially designed for the occasion, not only the book but also a video message from Dan Brown to his Ukrainian fans was shown along with a film about the genesis of "The Lost Symbol." The book fair visitors curiosity about the new book was just as high as in other countries – here too, production and delivery took place under stringent security precautions, mainly to prevent any incidence of pirate copies.

The highlight of the sales launch was definitely the big maze that the FLC had built for the week of the book fair on Kiev's main shopping street Khreschatik, where passers-by were invited to find the "Lost Symbol " themselves - and had a chance of winning the coveted book by correctly answering various questions. More than 20,000 people took part in the mystery hunt.

"It is natural to explain the success of the book by its mega-popularity, " comments Oleg Shpilman, managing director of the FLC, which also holds the Ukranian language rights to Dan Brown’s other novels. " But if a book is badly translated, badly published or it is difficult to find it on sale, then no star name will save it. "