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  3. (1)Two years ago this month, Doubleday published a historical thriller with an announced first printing of 85,000 and high hopes

(1)Two years ago this month, Doubleday published a historical thriller with an announced first printing of 85,000 and high hopes

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问题     (1)Two years ago this month, Doubleday published a historical thriller with an announced first printing of 85,000 and high hopes that a little-known writer named Dan Brown would catch on with the general public.
    (2) "We surely expected to have a huge success, but I don’t think anyone dreamed it would become a historic publication," says Stephen Rubin, president and publisher of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group.
    (3)If the Harry Potter books stand as the essential popular read for young people, then The Da Vinci Code has captured the crown for grown-ups. A word-of-mouth sensation from the moment it came out, Brown’s controversial mix of storytelling and speculation remains high on best-seller lists even as it begins its third year since publication.
    (4)Twenty-five million books, in 44 languages, are in print worldwide and no end is in sight. Booksellers expect The Da Vinci Code to remain a best-seller well into 2005. A planned film version by Oscar-winning director Ron Howard should bring in even more readers. And at a time when consumers are supposedly minding their budgets, sales for the $24.95 hardcover have been so good that Doubleday still has set no date for a paperback.
    (5)"It’s been our No. 1 fiction book for two years in a row, and I can’t remember another time that happened," said Bob Wietrak, vice president of merchandising for Barnes & Noble Inc. "People come into our store all the time and ask for it or ask for books that are like it."
    (6)Thanks to The Da Vinci Code, about the only books that seem able to keep up are Brown’s previous novels. Deception Point, first released in 2001, now has 3.7 million copies in print, according to Simon & Schuster, Brown’s previous publisher. Angels and Demons, published in 2000 and featuring "Da Vinci" protagonist Robert Langdon, has more than 8 million copies in print.
    (7)As millions now know, The Da Vinci Code begins with the murder of Jacques Sauniere, curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris. As he is dying, he realizes he is the only person left to pass on an important secret. Later that night, a visitor from the French equivalent of the FBI awakens Langdon, a Harvard University
professor visiting Paris, summoning him to the Louvre. Langdon, who studies symbols, had an appointment with Sauniere, but the curator never showed up.
    (8)Sauniere is found naked, arms and legs outstretched. Drawn on his chest in his own blood is a five-pointed star. Langdon figures out that Sauniere is positioned like The Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous sketch. He also recalls that the curator was a scholar of all things Leonardo, and that Leonardo himself liked to hide messages in his art.
    (9)More clues are uncovered as Langdon is led to the Mona Lisa, the Madonna of the Rocks and The Last Supper. He recalls that Leonardo was part of a brotherhood that guarded an ancient secret dealing with the quest for the Holy Grail and the story of Jesus Christ. Later, Langdon discovers that Sauniere was Leonardo’s modern-day counterpart.
    (10)The unprecedented success of The Da Vinci Code has been helped by wide access, with the book on sale everywhere from Wal-Mart to airports to supermarkets, often proving more popular than the mass market paperbacks available at the same outlets.
    (11)The Da Vinci Code has also thrived during a time when both literary and commercial novels struggled, when a tight economy, competition from other media and election-year tensions drove the public to nonfiction works or away from books altogether. Publishers and booksellers say Brown’s novel has worked by combining narrative excitement and provocative—and disputed—historical detail.
Doubleday only sells the hardcover The Da Vinci Code because________.
选项 A、the consumers are supposed to control their budgets
B、the price of the paperbacks is too low for great profits
C、the book is so popular that readers don’t mind the price
D、the film version is expected to be more popular than the book
答案C
解析 根据题干中的hardcover定位到第4段最后一句。该句中同时提到了hardcover和paperback两种版本，通常前者较贵，后者较便宜，句中的so good that…表明连较贵的hardcover都卖得很好，所以Doubleday暂时没想过要推出较便宜的paperback版本，可见，这本书很受欢迎，而读者也并不介意精装本的高价格，C综合了这些内容，故为本题答案。
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