Well, sort of. The four books in Stephenie Meyers‘ mega-bestselling Twilight Saga, “Twilight,” “New Moon,” “Eclipse,” and “Breaking Dawn” are still hanging on to USA Today’s bestseller list–just further down toward the bottom than usual. While it has become ubiquitous to see (sometimes all four of) them sitting among the top 10 bestselling books, right now, for the first time in two years (!!) here is where they fall:
#23: “Eclipse”
#24: “Breaking Dawn”
#31: “New Moon”
#44: “Twilight”
This prompted USA Today’s Book Buzz column to ponder: “Is that old vampire magic beginning to lose its spell? Maybe just a bit.” Though, they added what I see as a sensible caveat, too: “expect another Meyer surge as the June 30 release of Eclipse, the movie, draws closer.”
Well, of course! A lot of folks picked up on this story though–the prominence of Meyer’s books on the bestseller list actually makes it a newsworthy story. The Christian Science Moniter just posted their thoughts in “Are Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” books losing a bit of their hold?” commenting that it’s “a shock to see [the Twilight books] disappear” from the bestseller list, and that “It could be that readers are restless for something more”–the more, in this case, either coming in the form of Meyer writing a completely new book in the series, or finishing “Midnight Sun” which she stopped writing after it was leaked online and she felt heartbroken about it.
My thought: of course the books, all four of them, will bounce right back up to the top 10 once we start seeing lots of press about Eclipse (the movie) and the release nears. Plus, the series is a great beach read. I don’t think it says much about the popularity of the series in general though, for the books to slip down the list–after all, eventually you are going to tap out the market just by having so many books in circulation. The Twilight Saga has been on top of the list for two straight years! That’s amazing.
But I do think that a new book in the series would be lovely. Don’t you? And what do you think this means, if anything, about the popularity of Twilight? Is the trend nearing its finish line?