Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Bloody Feeding Frenzy

While everyone’s been waiting for the next Harry Potter wannabe – someone to keep young male readers reading – someone has stepped in and brought young girls to the bookshelves. Stephanie Meyer has become the latest phenomenon in the Young Adult book world.

She’s now out with the fourth in her vampire series. And the frenzy is at Potter levels. Midnight release parties. Thousands waiting in line. Millions of books printed. And it’s not just here in the U.S.

The Vancouver Sun reported:
Tom Best, vice-president of marketing for HB Fenn, the Canadian distributor for the Twilight Saga, says the appetite for Meyer's work isn't just strong, it's seemingly unending.
Meyer is just as popular in Australia. According to The Age:
Since 2005, when the first book, Twilight, appeared, the series has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, while 10,000 books a week are bought in Australia.
The Twilight movie is already in production and should be released in mid-December, January 2009 in Australia.

6 comments:

  1. Meyer has been in more than one of my Blogs and for good reason. I am not on eto buy into the hype, but I broke down and bought the eBook and read it. More than read it, I truly enjoyed it

    I have never read any of the Potters, there just wasn't enough to make me want to. I could not buy into the hype, not sure why, but Meyer was somehow different for me.

    I will tell you an author who is sorely underrated and should be getting a LOT more play is Kirsten Miller with her Kiki Strike books.

    Kiki is a remarkable character and I wish I saw more of her work being praised.

    Karen Syed
    http://www.karensyed.blogspot.com

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  2. Thanks for the heads-up. I'll have to check Stephanie out.


    Marvin D Wilson
    Eye Twitter 2 - http://twitter.com/Paize_Fiddler

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  3. I've read both the Potter Books and the Meyer books. I liked them both. Although they're both "fantasies," they're different. I started reading Meyer because I wanted to see how she introduced the vampire character, and have now read all but the latest.

    I will look into the Kiki Stike books. Are they YA "fantasies" also? (I keep putting that into quotes because I'm really not sure of the definition of fantasy.)

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  4. Hi Helen,
    I saw this phenom first hand the other night when I took my daughter to the midnight release of the latest book. The interesting thing is that there were only about 5 boys there. The rest were all teen and pre-teen girls. The excitement was contagious and though I have read the books yet, I must admit to being very curious about the draw of them. Anyway, it would be nice to think that someday I could have a book that would draw that much excitement.

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  5. Interesting. I find it amazing that though publicity says young people aren't reading, this kind of "frenzy" can be created by a fantasy for young people.

    I think it's great. Thanks for the report. It give me hope for our readers of the future.

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  6. It's nice to see the frenzy among female readers. I know that the stats say girls read more than boys, but the last frenzy-causing book was Potter and it was the "one" that drew in the boys (although girls were big readers).

    I've read all but the latest vampire book by Meyer. I can see why young teens would like it, why girls would identify with the protagonist. I'm not a big reader of YA, though, and was surprised by the sexual overtones, knowing that preteens are reading these books. Shows you how long ago it was that I read YA books!

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