Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol,” the follow-up novel to “The Da Vinci Code,” broke the first-day sales record for adult fiction at Barnes & Noble Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

The book, released yesterday, also had the highest number of preorders for an adult-fiction work at Barnes & Noble, the New York-based bookstore chain said. The electronic version ranked No. 1 at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. The Seattle- based online retailer’s shares rose the most in six months.

Publishers are counting on a flood of new titles by big- name authors to fuel sales this season. Margaret Atwood, Nick Hornby, John Irving, Stephen King, Jonathan Lethem and Philip Roth are all releasing new fiction. In the nonfiction category, the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s memoir, “True Compass,” hit shelves this week.

“This is going to be a very good next four weeks for books,” David Schick, a Baltimore-based analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co., said today in a telephone interview. He rates Barnes & Noble as “hold.” “A robust best-seller list or big- author list is going to bring people in the door.”

“The Lost Symbol” is Brown’s third best-seller featuring symbologist Robert Langdon -- a series that began with “Angels & Demons.” The latest book, published in the U.S. by Doubleday, follows Langdon to Washington, where a religious fanatic has kidnapped the head of the Smithsonian Institution.

First Printing

Doubleday, part of Bertelsmann AG, is making a first printing of 5 million copies for the U.S. market. The book’s U.K. publisher, TransWorld, will print 1 million.

Borders Group Inc. doesn’t plan to release sales of “The Lost Symbol,” Anne Roman, a spokeswoman for the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based chain, said today.

“The Da Vinci Code,” which debuted in 2003, has sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, according to Brown’s Web site. Brown’s novels have been published in 51 languages.

The film version of “Angels & Demons” came out this summer, earning more than $133 million in domestic box-office revenue, according to the Box Office Mojo site. It followed the movie version of “The Da Vinci Code,” which came out in 2006.

In 2007, the final Harry Potter title, J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” set records for publishers and book sellers. Barnes & Noble sold 1.8 million copies of the children’s book in the first 48 hours of its release.

The 509-page “Lost Symbol” carries a retail price of $29.95.

Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, climbed $7.15, or 8.6 percent, to $90.70 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, it’s biggest gain since March 10. Barnes & Noble rose 14 cents to $22.04 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Borders rose 2 cents to $3.29.

To contact the reporter on this story: Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at cguglielmo1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 16, 2009 16:19 EDT