Holy Blood, Holy Grail

In the original article I gave the example of "Touching the Void", a book about a British mountain climber that was fading into obscurity before "Into Thin Air" came out and (thanks to Amazon recommendations) pulled it right back up the Long Tail. Now David Pescovitz on Boing Boing finds an even better example of this phenomenon:

"I randomly happened to read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code right when it came out. When I told my pal Vann Hall about the novel, he said the basis of the plot sounded like a non-fiction book from the early 1980s called Holy Blood, Holy Grail. A few months after Da Vinci Code hit it big, I noticed that Holy Blood, Holy Grail had also made it to the bestseller lists, more than twenty years after it was first published."

Comments

[Ben Henley]

If there's any justice, the "Da Vinci effect" will also apply to Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, which, like Brown's book, fictionalizes the story propounded in Holy Blood, Holy Grail - but is much, much better written. It's currently ranked 2,035 on Amazon.com, so looks like there's only a flicker of interest as yet.

[Pete Ashton]

Both Holy Blood and Foucault's Pendulum have been core stock in high street bookshops (at least in the UK) for over a decade so it's not just the Amazon effect.

That said, bookshops have often used Long Tail strategies, pushing more obscure books on the back on current bestsellers, usually chosen by the staff, which might explain why I find this so fascinating as I used to be one of those booksellers.

[Tim Walters]

Foucault's Pendulum *was* a bestseller, at least here in the States, and has been popular ever since.

2,035 isn't the tail, it's the butt!

[romp]

I had read both Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the sequel The Messianic Legacy after being given the two by my ex-mother-in-law. First time I read a description of the Da Vinci Code novel I thought, "Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln either should thank Brown or sue him." With the extra royalties coming in I guess they decided to retain a lawyer and sue ...

[dthree]

You would think those authors would be grateful to Brown for the exposure, but the IP mindset doesn't allow them to think that way. Has anyone asked them if they were better off BEFORE "Code" was released?

[Glenn Vanderburg]

In my opinion, Touching the Void is actually a better example, because it's more surprising. Holy Blood, Holy Grail can be seen as the "source material" for The Da Vinci Code, and it's pretty common for people to become interested in the historical background of a novel and start doing informal research.

Touching the Void, though -- if my understanding is correct -- isn't directly related to Into Thin Air. Rather, it's another story in the same mold, and apparently the latter sparked interest in real-life climbing stories in general. That seems to me to be a broader impact that most observers wouldn't have predicted.

[Al]

Of couse, the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail are now suing Brown...

[dermot]

I remember thinking the same thing - this is very similar to the "holy blood and the holy grail". Then half way through the book "holy blood and the holy grail" is explicitly mentioned... not so much plagerism as using it as building blocks....

[Dan Calladine]

Interesting fact: The name of the ridiculous professor in The Da Vinci Code is Leigh Teabing, which is a very obvious anagram of the names of two of the Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors, Baigent and - um - Leigh.
I can't really see how you can sue someone for citing a work of non fiction in a novel.

[Doug Stone]

It would be interesting to see how the head and the long tail are affected by a severe economic downturn. Sales would probably fall across the board, but it would be interesting to see if the relationship between the head and the tail changes. Would people stick to buying big market items, or are they hooked on more obscure works that pique their interest?

[Warmongering Lunatic]

Since no text in The DaVinci Code is lifted directly from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the lawsuit is itself an implicit admission that Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a work of fiction. If it were a factual work of history, there would be no basis for a claim of copyright infingement. The inclusion of historical facts in a novel does not cause it to infringe the copyright of someone who wrote a history based on those facts.

However, if Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a work of imagination, then including its "history" is as off-limits as writing a novel about the grandson of a Jedi Knight named Luke Skywalker. Star Wars isn't about real events, so including its events makes the novel an infringing derivative work.

The fact that Holy Blood, Holy Grail looks and reads like a history doesn't change that, since the literary form does not determine whether the "facts" it relates are facts in the public domain, or fancies under copyright. However, Dan Brown could claim that the the authors, in presenting their work as history instead of fiction, voids their right to seek restitution for an inadvertent infingement due to the bad faith in the presentation.

Which means that the only way Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh can win money in the case is to argue that Holy Blood, Holy Grail is not just fiction, but a fabrication sufficiently obvious that a reasonable person could tell it was fiction despite the efforts to present it as a work of history (thus voiding the bad faith argument).

[Martin Dubeau]

In the preface to holy blood and holy grail, the authors go on about how their work was a puristic historical research and in hope of interesting people in holy grail romances and how money was not what they were looking for. Given Brown's Da Vinci code has done a lot to pique interest, So how do you then explain the lawsuit against Brown? Hopefully, the publisher is behind the lawsuit because any other alternative would in my view degrade the integrity of the authors which should be a core value of any historian.

[Barbara Phillips]

Brown's Da Vinci code was such a page turner, it prompted me to buy Holy Blood, Holy Grail. While I appreciate the research done in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, it hardly justifies the lawsuit, since it was so boring an poorly written, it took me months to read. I applaud Henry Lincoln for not joining the lawsuit, but Baigent and Leigh should stop to think that Holy Blood, Holy Grail would never have been brought to full public attention without Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code".