I was absolutely amazed when I stumbled onto a list of the bestselling books in America a few weeks ago and discovered that one author occupied the top four spots. I am guessing that this has never happened previously in United States book history, or at least not in a long, long time.
Image from StephenieMeyer.comI’m guessing that these books sold nearly four million copies combined in the month of December. That is a stunning number when you consider that in a typical week a book only has to sell about 4,000 copies to make The New York Times bestseller list.
Even more remarkable, I had never even heard of the author: Stephenie Meyer. Her books are vampire books aimed at teenagers.
I suppose it says something about me that when my laptop went dead just before a four-hour flight home, I couldn’t find a single book I wanted to buy in the airport bookstore — until I saw Twilight, the first in the series of Stephenie Meyer books. A vampire book aimed at teenagers is probably just about my speed.
Although I will say I was somewhat disappointed with the book, an outside observer would laugh at that description, given that I read it in less than a week. My kids would remind me that I told them they would have to make their own dinner because I had to finish the book to find out whether Bella would turn into a vampire or not. I guess the fact that I ordered the other three books in the series from Amazon also gives me away.
I’m not sure what I expected, but I found the book to be juvenile in a way that Harry Potter wasn’t. The seductive thing about the book is the way that Meyer creates an alternative vampire universe that is embedded into our own world, where the reader ends up liking the vampires more than the people. That, I think, was the secret to the Harry Potter books as well. Somehow both Meyer and J.K. Rowling manage to create a fantasy world that is absurd, and yet somehow vaguely believable.
Now we just need to figure out how to work some vampires into SuperFreakonomics to boost our sales.
and 
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Freakonomics already does the same – embeds airy-fairy economics and economic analysis in the real world
The fact that you, a respected intellectual, are wrapped up in the Twilight world amuses me a great deal. Not that I blame you! The books are rather poorly written and very juvenile, but incredibly engrossing. I read through all four in a week and a half!
How did you come up with 4,000,000?
So if all this success with young readers revolves around fantasy world set in our world, does that mean readers are so disillusioned and dissatisfied with our world that they’d rather drown themselves in fantasy than seeks solutions to real problems?
I don’t think this is limited to young readers. Looking at television dramas, there are three basic types: medical, criminal, and fantasy, and sometimes the medical or criminal dramas are fantastic too (and I don’t mean good).
Is no writer able to make a compelling story involving the real world?!?
Is there an expected date for the release of SuperFreakonomics?
Um, I’m pretty sure JK Rowling has occupied the top four spots before–at least before they created the children’s book list in order to prevent her from offing more “legitimate” books that couldn’t compete.
When I first heard of this Twilight series recently it struck me as a vaguely-sinister vector for abstinence-only nonsense. Then again, I didn’t really read too much about it, so what do I know?
If you use USA Today’s list:
http://content.usatoday.com/life/books/booksdatabase/default.aspx
and go back to the list for sales through Sunday, July 22, 2007 (you have to click on about the 27th or so in their date search tool) to get this one to come up, you’ll see J.K.Rowling holding down spots 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 13, and 14. I checked the release dates of the other six books and none generated enough excitement to get more than 2 or 3 of the top spots, but when the 7th came out it certainly took care of things even more than this vampire series.
The non-fiction top spots have been dominated by one man too: Obama.