The Da Vinci Code Companion Blog

We are proud to announce the release of the Da Vinci Religion Bundle in the VitalSource Store this week. VitalSource has taken the Da Vinci Code Companion (DVCC) and bundled it together with several early Christian references.

Specifically, the bundle includes:

• The Da Vinci Code Companion (DVCC)
• The Nicene Creed
• The New Testament: King James Edition
• A Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D., with an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresies
• Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes Volume II: Greek and Latin Creeds, with Translations
• Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes. Volume I. The History of Creeds

The DVCC features Da Vinci Code chapter summaries, beautiful photography of important locations in the book, works of art, and over 450 links organized into folders by topic and also cross-referenced by chapter. In this latest update, the companion now has contains incredible imagery from the Temple Church courtesy of Neil101 on Flickr!

Please visit davincicc.com for product screenshots and the details on how to purchase the Da Vinci Religion Bundle in the VitalSource Store priced at just $7.99 for all 6 titles!

We are working to put together an awesome religion-oriented bundle which includes the Da Vinci Code Companion as a part of it. The bundle will likely include one or more Bibles and information about the history of the early church. This new bundle will release on the home page of the VitalSource Store in about two weeks. We will also updating the companion to include Neil’s excellent Temple Church photography.

Thanks for your patience while we put the finishing touches on this.

This is just a note for those of you who are thinking about checking out the demo or have already pulled it down. We’ve updated it today to include the entire Da Vinci Code Library for the duration of the 7-day demo. If you already tried the demo, it’s very simple to update your version of the library that accompanies the demo book.

Open Bookshelf Go to Help | Update License Sign-in Download completes

Should take just a minute or two to get this done and voila, instead of being limited to the first three chapters’ references, the library portion now shows all the references (almost 450). We did this because we want you to be able to really see the depth of what is there.

It is also worth mentioning that the demo companion book only contains the first few chapters, but the actual book has over a hundred chapters.

Of course, with the real companion you can take advantage of typical VitalSource features such as note taking, multiple highlights, and powerful search capabilities. If you have the demo, you can try these features out too! However, when the demo expires, the book and your test notes, etc., will just fade away into the ether.

Our thanks go out to Neil Wilkinson of Manchester, England. His photography of The Temple Church will soon be integrated into The Da Vinci Code Companion. Stay tuned.

We are proud to offer The Da Vinci Code companion. A collection of beautiful imagery, chapter summaries, and over 450 links, the companion is sure to be informative and a lot of fun if you are interested in learning more about the history and mysteries behind The Da Vinci Code novel. Check out our free demo today!

The Da Vinci Code is one of the best-selling books of all time. With over sixty million copies in print in over forty languages, few books can rival its reach. Its strong mass appeal most likely comes from the fact that there is something there for everyone…romance, a murder mystery, conspiracy theories, religious controversies, and a strong fascination with history (and particularly art history). It is not common for a book whose central character is a liberal arts professor to achieve such a mass market. We found the story fascinating…and a real page turner.

While we recognize that the story in The Da Vinci Code is fiction, many of the settings, art, architecture, cultural and historical references are indeed factual. Myth and history are intertwined so deeply that one who is not very knowledgeable of history will have a difficult time discerning where the fact ends and the fiction begins. This can be rather unsettling (as are some of the themes of book), and it led us to want to investigate the subjects in the book more deeply. This product represents a collection of resources which we’ve assembled for those who have read the book or seen the movie and are left wanting to know more.

The companion is a combination of a Vitalbook™ with an associated library. The library contains links to over 450 topics and the digital book is organized by chapter, complete with chapter summaries and related terms lists. There is a bonus appendix with imagery from actual locations in the book and these are cross-referenced throughout. Having the information available in different formats allows you to investigate the material in your own way. Screenshots of the product are available now.

Good Things Publishing is a small publishing house in Austin, Texas that focuses on using state of the art technology to deliver high value content in a unique digital format. The Da Vinci Code Companion is our first product. We’d love to hear your feedback at info@davincicc.com.

The companion will be available for sale in the VitalSource Store this week.

Today is Leonardo Da Vinci’s birthday! He was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy, according to Wikipedia.

In a recent Open Letter to Sony, Opus Dei sends out an informational notice about the upcoming Da Vinci Code film pointing out that the line between fiction and fact in the novel is difficult to distinguish:

As you already probably know, there are some aspects of The Da Vinci Code novel that distort the figure of Jesus Christ, and which affect the religious beliefs of Christians. Moreover, in the book it is said that the Christian Faith is founded on a lie, and that the Catholic Church has over the centuries employed criminal and violent means to keep people in ignorance. The novel mixes together fact and fiction, and in the end one does not know where the boundaries lie between truth and invention. A reader without much knowledge of history may reach false conclusions, and might even feel less sympathetically inclined towards the Church, which nonetheless is worthy of respect.

Opus Dei is just one of the featured links in the new Da Vinci Code Companion VitalBook, which is coming soon from the folks at Good Things Publishing. If you’d like to review a demo copy of the digital book (now available in VitalSource Bookshelf format), let us know!.

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The ruling has been handed down in the U.K. by London’s High Court. As expected, the judge ruled that you can’t copyright an idea and the author’s claim failed the test of copyright infringement, even though Brown had copied some language from the earlier book.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, the authors of the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail are going to need to dig deep.

The ruling clears the way for the Da Vinci Code movie’s release in May. Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh must pay 85% of Random House’s costs of almost £1.3m.

Ouch.

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Vitalsource is running an Easter-related special in their online bookstore. You get a few different Bibles, a commentary on the Bible, The Nicene Creed, Luther’s 95 Theses, Summa Theologica, The Confessions, and several others. If you have any interest at all in Christian history, definitely get a copy of Bookshelf (it is free) and add the Easter Collection to your cart and check out. You will need to complete a minimal sign up form to create an account, and then you’ll be on your way to downloading all 11 of these texts.

Here are a few links to get you started:

Download Bookshelf 3.9.5 for Macintosh

Download Bookshelf 3.9.5 for Windows

Enjoy.

Update: The special runs until April 30, 2006.