Veni, vidi, vinci?

Loved this. The Guardian reports that “a group of statisticians laboured for months to crack the secret of producing best selling novels - only to find that under their formula The Da Vinci Code should have been a flop”.

This year's runaway bestseller should have had only a 36% chance of reaching the charts, according to Alvai Winkler and his team. Their model … gives only middling marks to the Harry Potter titles and rules out almost everything by Charles Dickens except for his lesser-known Christmas story The Battle of Life.

The methodology studied the structure of book titles to determine success probability and determined that metaphorical or figurative titles are better bets than literal ones. “The Da Vinci Code” was dismissed as being too literal.

Dan Brown, however, can take heart. The Lulu team predicts he will have a real bestseller next year with The Solomon Key.

We can’t wait.