Twilight is now ruling North American box office. The movie collected around $100 million in the first ten days of its release. The novel, which was first published in 2005, turned novelist Stephenie Meyer from an orndinary homemaker into an American mainstream celebrity. Interestingly, internet played a major role behind Stephenie’s success.
In 2005, publisher Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers published 75,000 copies of the first book of Twilight series. For promoting the book, the company sent Meyer on a small author tour and set-up an “in-house web page.” Unfortunately, the site was not very successful. After this, Stephenie Meyers took things in her own hands. Henceforth, http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/ came into being. In the site, Stephenie wrote about her personal life, family and published photos. This gave people a chance to connect with her. She directly communicated with people and it gradually built up a strong fanbase over time.
Interestingly, one of the fans named Lori Joffs rewrote the book from a particular character’s perspective. She published it on fiction.net. Stephenie wrote a review and left her personal email address. The two chatted with each other. Then Lori Joffs and her friend, Laura Christiano, sought Stephenie's permission to set up a dictionary site for her novel. Stephenie agree and the two jointly set up http://www.twilightlexicon.com/ where fans would get reference. Last summer, the site even crushed from over use.
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