The Telegraph recently posted an interview with Amazon UK managing director Brian McBride, and in it the reporter makes mention that "the launch of the secret new offering from The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown later this year will be another major event for Amazon." Is the reporter taking a stab in the dark, or did they get some inside information from McBride?

In related news, a recent story on the 'Harry Potter effect' on the business of publishing quotes Brown's publisher Stephen Rubin: "I surely would hesitate before trying to do something like 12 million copies for Dan Brown's next book, but thanks largely to Potter, we can think about numbers we wouldn't have imagined before." So at least it seems there's something happening with the next book, however minor!