Hollywood’s 25 Most Powerful Authors

“I don’t expect anything to be like ‘Twilight’ again,” says Stephenie Meyer, who joins J.K Rowling, E.L. James and Suzanne Collins on the list of writers who have the industry hanging on their every word.

When THR contacted James Patterson about being on its inaugural list of the 25 most powerful authors in Hollywood, he scoffed. “Power list? More like powerless list”

But while conventional wisdom puts writers far down the totem pole, the truth is that from The Hunger Games to the upcoming The Hobbit, books remain the most durable source of content for films and TV.

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A prestige-free zone

J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and Suzanne Collins

The reason why women writers dominate young-adult literature is the reason why many guys avoid it

By Laura Miller

The prototypical YA (Young Adult, i.e., early teen) novel “The Catcher in the Rye” may have been written by the late, reclusive and definitely male J.D. Salinger, but nowadays, YA — like Elvis on “Happy Days” — is a chick thing. So says Meghan Lewit in a recent post to the Atlantic’s website, and she has the numbers to prove it, sort of: A little over half of the titles in a reader poll of the 100 “best-ever teen novels” are by women. This counts as “dominance” because in almost every other poll of best-ever books (whatever the category), works by men greatly outnumber those by women.

Ask anyone in the book business if Lewit is right, and they’ll probably agree; with a few exceptions, the most successful and prominent contemporary YA writers are women. Furthermore, the cultural infrastructure supporting their books — from agents and editors to librarians, teachers and that formidable new force in the YA world, bloggers — is predominantly female. Some observers blame this state of affairs for the drop-off in boys’ reading habits as they reach their teens; it’s a system ill-suited to producing books that will interest boys, they argue. But if YA has indeed become a gynocracy, few ask why.

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The Weird World of Fan Fiction

They’re amateur writers—with millions of readers. After years in the shadows, they’re starting to break into the mainstream.

By ALEXANDRA ALTER

What if Edward Cullen, the moody vampire heartthrob in Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling “Twilight” series, was an undercover cop? Or a baker who specializes in bachelor-party cakes? Or a kidnapper who takes Bella hostage?

It may sound like heresy to some “Twilight” fans. But those stories, published online, have thousands of dedicated readers. They were written by Randi Flanagan, a 35-year-old sales manager for a trade publishing company in Toronto.

Ms. Flanagan writes fan fiction—amateur works based on the characters and settings from novels, movies, television shows, plays, videogames or pop songs. Such stories, which take place in fictional worlds created by professional writers, are flourishing online and attracting millions of readers.

Ms. Flanagan started writing her own takes on “Twilight” three years ago, after devouring Ms. Meyer’s vampire books. She has since written 15 stories, including some that are as long as novels. In the process, she has gained groupies of her own. Some 1,500 readers subscribe to her account on fanfiction.net.

“A lot of people don’t understand why I would devote time to this,” says Ms. Flanagan, who writes at night after her young son goes to bed. “It’s just fun.”

Fan fiction has long existed under the radar in a sort of shadowy digital parallel universe. But the form has been bubbling up to the surface lately, as a growing number of fan writers break into the mainstream.

The publishing industry’s current overnight sensation, erotica author E.L. James, began writing her best-selling book “Fifty Shades of Grey” as “Twilight” fan fiction. She began posting her X-rated take on Ms. Meyer’s tame paranormal romance online three years ago. Her “Twilight” homage, titled “Master of the Universe,” evolved into a series starring a powerful CEO and a young woman in a sadomasochistic sexual relationship. The books were acquired by Vintage, a Random House imprint, this spring and have sold 15 million copies in less than three months. Now, in a sort of literary infinite feedback loop, fans of the trilogy have begun writing their own takes on “Fifty Shades,” including an inevitable parody that mashes up “Fifty Shades” with “Twilight.”

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LURID: Spanky Panky, Fifty Shades of O

LURID: vivid in shocking detail; sensational, horrible in savagery or violence, or, a twice-monthly guide to the merits of the kind of Bad Books you never want your co-workers to know you're reading.

By Karina Wilson

Fifty Shades of Grey has caused all manner of sensation.  The Twilight fanfic turned erotic bestseller has garnered column inches and thousands of fans, reignited sparkless marriages, been the subject of a Hollywood bidding war, inspired a parody (Fifty Shames of Earl Grey) and made everyone look twice at the woman on the subway enthralled by the content of her Kindle.  However, erotic literature is nothing new.  In all languages, from The Song Of Solomon to Fanny Hill, from Catullus and Plutarch to Anais Nin and Henry Miller, people have been looking to fiction for kicks since writing was invented – the earliest surviving erotic literature in existence was hand-copied, by monks – and it’s only in our sexually schizoid times that the popularity of such a book comes as any surprise.

So, why all the fuss?  Despite the ‘Mommy Porn’ hype, FSOG contains little that’s genuinely scandalous.  It’s a straightforward tale of Girl-with-low-self-esteem meets ridiculously handsome Boy, gets Boy, has lots of sex, angsts.  It’s straight outta Barbara Cartland or Danielle Steele.  In keeping with the genre, the protagonist, Anastasia, is a virgin at the outset, therefore her belief that her lover, Christian, is the Best Thing Ever to occupy her vagina is not unexpected.

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Vampires: No Longer “The Ultimate Zipless Fuck?”

Breaking Dawn Part 1

Column by Karina Wilson

As Twihards throng the multiplexes for the release of Breaking Dawn Part 1, it’s time to reassess Stephen King’s 1981 hypothesis (in Danse Macabre) that the oral penetration promised by vampires constitutes “the ultimate zipless fuck”. Today’s vampires penetrate both ends simultaneously – at least they do in the stories aimed at grown-ups – and are looking for long-term commitment.  When a vampire says “I’ll love you forever”, he really means it.

There are a lot of Horror aficionados who turn their nose up at paranormal romance or urban fantasy, preferring the Kingly bulk of Justin Cronin’s The Passage, or the dry bones of Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, and their traditionally carnivorous vamps.  However, beyond the bland teen pap (“written” by the likes of Hilary Duff) there are plenty of guilty pleasures to be had with the children of the night.  Why should gangs of teens in “Team Edward” t-shirts get all the thrills?

The idea of welcoming a vampire into your home and bed might seem repellent, even downright warped to anyone who read ‘Salem’s Lot or Interview With The Vampire in the 70s and 80s, but somewhere in the 90s, between Anita Blake finally letting Jean-Claude have his wicked way and Buffy giving it up to Angel, vampires stopped being scary and started to embody the Ideal Boyfriend.  Did the vampires change, or did we?

Vampires are a nineteenth century creation: the first post-industrial monster was invariably represented as an aristocrat of the old school, perpetuating feudal hierarchies by treating the serfs as a free food supply.   The first literary vampire, Polidori’s Lord Ruthven (in The Vampyre) appeared in 1819 and was a caricature of Lord Byron and his cavalier view of women as playthings, to be used for dark pleasures then tossed aside.  Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Stoker’s Dracula are ghouls in this mold, bloodsuckers exercising their inviolable right to drain the weak and the needy, the 99%.  In the 1970s, Rice’s Louis was a landowner, her Lestat a rockstar. King’s Barlow was a wealthy immigrant  who buys up expensive chunks of property in ‘Salem’s Lot.  Vampires have always been our overlords.  And what use are fancy piles in the country and bank vaults groaning with centuries of accumulated lucre if you can’t use them to grease a little tail?

Money attracts sex.  And vampires have never been above flashing their cash: it’s what usually puts the “willing” into “victim”.  For the first century and a half of vampire writing, the two-fanged bite was all about sex.  Those who found themselves at the wrong end of a blood-sucker’s teeth had somehow transgressed, given in to forbidden sexual desires and unbridled lust, and were paying the ultimate price.  Unless a Van Helsing-type looked lively and staked the master vampire within a three-day window, the victim would be going straight to Hell.  The message was clear to generations of titillated readers – Tall Dark Handsome Stranger = Beware.

It would perhaps surprise Stoker and Polidori that we continue to devour vampire stories in these sexually enlightened, irreligious times, but they’re still the best pop culture metaphor we have for the discussion of oral fixation, Eros-Thanatos complexes, Transubstantiation, and even homosexuality.  As our attitudes towards sexuality have fluctuated, so have our attitudes to vamps.  The current popularity of the leather-trousered, Fabio-haired, benevolent vampire is a sign of our sexually schizophrenic age.  Penetration needs to be wreathed in fantasy as much as it did in the 1820s.

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Christopher Paolini’s Eragon sequel is runaway hit

Christopher Paolini. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Inheritance sells more than 76,000 copies in UK in first week of publication.

By Alison Flood

Inheritance, the final title in Christopher Paolini’s young adult series about a boy and his dragon, has become the fastest selling book of the year so far, averaging one sale every five-and-a-half seconds since it was released last week.Published on 8 November, Inheritance sold more than 76,000 copies in its first week of publication in the UK, its publisher Random House Children’s Books said, the biggest first-week sale in all formats and genres since Stephenie Meyer released a new title in her Twilight vampire series, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, last June. That sold 90,000 copies in just one day, despite also being available for free online.Paolini started work on Eragon, the first novel in his bestselling series, when he graduated from high school aged 15, self-publishing it when he was 19 before landing a major book deal….read more

Young adult novels heating up the charts

Writer Elaine Dimopoulos attributes the books’ appeal to being deep inside the protagonist’s head.

Publishers, stores embracing trend

By Meredith Goldstein

Employees at the Brookline Booksmith kept getting the same questions, over and over.

‘‘Where’s ‘Twilight’? ’’ Or ‘‘Where are the Stephenie Meyer books?’’

The staff response: ‘‘Young adult books are in back.’’

Staff members noticed that, curiously, most of the inquiring customers were not young adults at all. Many were middle aged. And that led to a revelation: Young adult books are no longer for that audience alone – and, as a result, sales are often outpacing grown-up bestsellers, sometimes by millions.

The Booksmith now keeps its best-selling young adult titles in the front of the store, displayed prominently on tables among the adult bestsellers and new releases.

It all began with the “Twilight’’ series, which has the first of its two final movie installments, “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1,’’ hitting movie theaters this weekend. The book ignited a publishing industry trend that continues to see adults purchasing books written for teens.

The market shift is considerable. An example: Jonathan Franzen’s much-anticipated novel “Freedom’’ has sold more than 600,000 hardcover copies since it was released in August 2010, according to Nielsen BookScan, while Suzanne Collins’s “Mockingjay,’’ the third book in her “Hunger Games’’ trilogy – released that same month and geared to young adults – has sold more than 1.3 million single, hardcover copies to date.

Hardcover copies of books for young adults (known as YA books) are a few dollars less than adult releases, but the huge sales numbers still have the books earning more money at the register. As of last week, all three books in Collins’s “Hunger Games’’ trilogy were on the Amazon Kindle bestseller list. They beat out “The Help’’ and Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.’’

This reader-driven trend has changed the scope and priorities of the publishing industry. Six years after the release of the first “Twilight’’ book, literary agencies have restructured themselves to account for strong young adult sales. Publishers continue to increase the number of YA acquisitions.

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Reading fiction ‘improves empathy’, study finds

In touch with their inner vampires ... Stephenie Meyer fans in New York. Photograph: Brad Barket/Getty Images

US researchers measure impact of reading JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer.

By Alison Flood

Burying your head in a novel isn’t just a way to escape the world: psychologists are increasingly finding that reading can affect our personalities. A trip into the world of Stephenie Meyer, for example, actually makes us feel like vampires.

Researchers from the University at Buffalo gave 140 undergraduates passages from either Meyer’s Twilight or JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to read, with the vampire group delving into an extract in which Edward Cullen tells his teenage love interest Bella what it is like to be a vampire, and the wizardly readers getting a section in which Harry and his cohorts are “sorted” into Hogwarts houses.

The candidates then went through a series of tests, in which they categorised “me” words (myself, mine) and “wizard” words (wand, broomstick, spells, potions) by pressing one key when they appeared on the screen, and “not me” words (they, theirs) and “vampire” words (blood, undead, fangs, bitten) by pressing another key, with the test then reversed. The study’s authors, Dr Shira Gabriel and Ariana Young, expected them to respond more quickly to the “me” words when they were linked to the book they had just read.

Gabriel and Young then applied what they dubbed the Twilight/Harry Potter Narrative Collective Assimilation Scale, which saw the students asked questions designed to measure their identification with the worlds they had been reading about.

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