Led door Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, vampires devoured USA TODAY's Best-Selling boeken lijst in 2009.
For the seconde jaar in a row, Meyer swept the top, boven four spots. No other auteur — not even J. K. Rowling— has done that in the list's 16-year history.
Meyer's coattails pulled 16 other vampire titles onto the lijst of the year's 100 most populair books.
"Meyer had an unbelievable impact," says Michael Norris, boeken analyst for Simba Information, a market-research firm. He wonders what publishers will do when what he calls " 'the vampire industrial average' falls. Every cycle has an end."
But for now, Meyer — who has also benefited from Twilight movie adaptations, with meer to come — has turned "the YA (young adult) category into the PG-13 of books," he says. "She's not just read door tweens and teens, but door a lot of 30-year-old women."
No matter who's reading them, boeken for kids and teens accounted for 29% of sales tracked in 2009 — the highest percentage in the list's history, up from 28% in 2008 and 22% in 2007.
