I am a retail worker by day, master procrastinator and writer by night, and I stumbled upon something very interesting this week. I have been working for a large box retailer for many years now I remember way back in the day when the last few Twilight books and movies released. Back then, we would move entire aisles around and set up que lines for fans to wait in. We made limits for how many copies people could buy and it was a huge ordeal. We sold out of everything we had each time one of the books or movies came out. Back then I was a young writer with the hopes of finishing a book and praying that one or two people might actually want to read it. The thought of making it to that level was no even a dream back then. What happened after the movies though was the world moved on. The young teens, and some adults, who fell in love with the shinny vampires and suspiciously hair free werewolves grew up and moved on to other things. This is how the world works for most fads. They rise, they fall, they rise for something else. What makes Twilight so interesting to me though is that this week, Stephanie Meyer released another book in the saga. This one I believe is a redo of her first book but from the vampire’s point of view. I am not sure if my literature circle has shifted so much over the years that I just missed this but it seems to me that it flew under the radar. I happened to walk by the book aisle at my store, like I do every day, and see if anything new came out and there she was. A new Twilight book, and entire stack of them to be honest. Mixed in with all the other new releases. No banner like before, no que lines. Not even a display shelf for the book. There were books by first time authors that have more promotional material for them then this thing has. I have not seen any commercials or advertisements for the book on any of my feeds. The other people in my book circles aren’t even talking about it. This series got so big that it changed how publishers handle new authors. It became a craze that took the world by storm and almost everyone has heard of the series. It gained this massive following and now, several years later, there is a new book on the shelf and no one seems to care, or at least not like they did back then. I am sure there are still some fans of the series that went out and bought it but not like before. Times are changing, books are still celebrated but not like they were before. It is interesting to watch people walk past the shelves filled with stories and not even glance at them. I know Twilight was not the greatest series ever written, I know that. It has to be said though that a ton of people bought her books and read them so it had to be good to a certain point. Now a new book comes out and it did not even make a ripple in the writing world. Something to think about.
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