Has it really been four years since, inspired by a Publishers Weekly trend piece on “New Age” publishing, we took a look at early attempts to cash in on Dan Brown‘s fascination with Freemasons? Well, The Lost Symbol is finally coming out, and publishers are standing by with books to which they hope readers will turn for answers regarding all that symbology the novel’s going to toss around.
Some of the biggest names in pop mysticism want in on the action. HarperOne and Jay Kinney, the former publisher of Gnosis, have The Masonic Myth: Unlocking the Truth about the Symbols, Secret Rites, and History of Freemasonry ready for release just a few days before Brown’s novel, while Bantam tapped Tarcher/Penguin editor-in-chief Mitch Horowitz for Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation. But will books like these be able to establish a new stronghold in territory already staked out by heavy hitters like David Ovason‘s The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital? We shall see.