Stephanie Meyer grew her books’ readership with a constant, open, grateful and helpful online presence
By Susan Carpenter
November 29, 2008
Mania is almost too sedate a term to describe the ongoing frenzy surrounding “Twilight,” Stephenie Meyer’s mega-hit young adult series about a devastatingly handsome vampire and the plain-Jane human he wants to sink his teeth into.
Since 2005, when the first of the four books was published, more than 25 million copies of the “Twilight ” saga have been sold worldwide. At least 350 fan sites have cropped up online. And the movie, which opened Nov. 21, has been the season’s breakout hit; it’s grossed close to $100 million in fewer than 10 days, the kind of numbers that guarantee sequels.
Yet only five years ago, no one had even heard of Meyer. In 2003, she was a 29-year-old stay-at-home mother who spent her days doing what any other Phoenix mom was doing: chasing her kids around and trying to keep her sanity. Going from maternal obscurity to cultural phenomenon in a scant five years is no easy feat. Like so many success stories, hers was a combination of hard work, dumb luck and being in the right place — and doing the right things — at the right time, including a brilliant and strategic use of the Web.
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