NEWS | By The Chapter & Verse Team  » First-day sales of Dan Brown's latest novel The Lost Symbol, which went on sale on September 15, exceeded one million hardcover copies in the US, Canada, and the UK, it was announced.

First week sales for the three countries passed the two million mark, beating out Bill Clinton's My Life in the record books.

The figures include hardcover, audio and e-book sales. Individual sales figures for Canada were not disclosed.

"We are seeing historic, record-breaking sales across all types of our accounts in North America for The Lost Symbol," said Sonny Mehta, Chairman and Editor in Chief, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 

In light of the unprecedented demand from retailers, Doubleday went back to press just prior to publication for an additional 600,000 copies of the book beyond the initial North American print run of 5 million copies. The total number of copies in print for The Lost Symbol is now 5.6 million copies.

Around 5 per cent, or 100,000 copies, of the novel were sold as e-books. Doubleday released the digital edition at the same time as the paper version despite industry fears that e-sales might cannibalize hardcover sales.

Amazon.com reported that first-day sales for The Lost Symbol were higher on its Kindle e-reader than in hard cover.

The book is Brown's first since his 2003 blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, which has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.