There are also berries

I wonder what the writer thinks when choosing a pseudonym for himself? If about Rus', then there must be something primordially-old, linen-cloth, fruit and berry. Raspberries? No, a direct reference to a bear, too loyal. Cranberry? Spreading. Strawberry? This is not from that opera. Blueberry? No, quit! Cowberry! Here it is - a Russian folk berry, not sugary-sweet, but unusually tasty and absolutely authentic. Perhaps this is how a new name appeared on the Russian book market - Anatoly Brusnikin.

The AST publishing concern, which “thrown” a new product onto this very market - the mystery book “The Ninth Spas”, from the time of Peter the Great, with a cover “under Palekh”, did not regret for the sake of promoting a new pseudonym author of its top authors. All of Moscow knows that Akunin is upset, Dashkova is fascinated, Minaev is delighted, and Lukyanenko is amazed. This, according to advertising, is the reaction of writers to the novelty. Logically, of course, something like “Robsky is crying” or “Sobchak has gone to the monastery” is missing, but for some reason the young ladies were out of work.

So far, no one has been able to repeat the trick with the “invisible” author, invented under Boris Akunin (two books by Master Chen, aka Dmitry Kosyrev, are too few for generalizations). But everyone really wants to. PR people are actively raising the fog - in particular, Newsweek journalists were offered to take an interview with the author only “by correspondence”, and even without any special guarantees that he would answer the questions. One such "interview" is already publicly available on the Internet.

The advertising budget for the new literary project has been announced - $1 million. The initial circulation is 110,000 copies, the publishing house shipped almost half of it in the first week of sales and plans to reprint ahead of the stated deadline.

Circulations of base reading, with names familiar from gossip columns on the covers, are not new for a long time. And here, the unknown Anatoly Brusnikin is really surprising - in fact, "The Ninth Spas" turns out to be a very good text. An excellent example of the so-called intellectual fiction, where until now only the monopolist Boris Akunin felt comfortable.

Read the full version of the material in the Russian Newsweek magazine (November 26 - December 2, 2007) No. 48 (172)