• Wall Street Journal, Detroit News, Tuesday, September 15, 2009 10:27 AM

Book retailers are heavily discounting Dan Brown's lastest novel, The Lost Symbol, which went on sale at midnight, but the industry is looking at it as a vehicle to generate the kind of buzz and excitement that it hasn't seen since the last Harry Potter installment was published more than two years ago. Amazon, for example, has cut the novel's $29.95 price by 46% to $16.17, Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg reports.

"Based on tens of thousands of pre-orders, we expect this to be a monster," says Sessalee Hensley, buyer at Barnes & Noble. Borders said 188 of its 511 superstores would remain open past midnight on Monday to accommodate fans.

Bertelsmann's Random House division could earn $30 to $35 million, pretax, if the North American print run of five million copies sells out; worldwide, the division generated operating profit of just $29 million for the first six months of the year. The book is also being published in 50 foreign languages.

Borders, meanwhile, is in the midst of what CEO Ron Marshall calls "very necessary, but highly disruptive" changes not only to its executive ranks but also in its store layouts. There are new sections for biography and teenage readers and fewer DVDs and CDs, Jaclyn Trop reports in the Detroit News, as well as more soft-covered seating and display tables.

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