Why Stephenie Meyer isn’t the next J.K. Rowling

Stephenie Meyer “is no J.K. Rowling,” said Denise Martin in a Los Angeles Times blog. The author went for an “epic” finale to her popular Twilight vampire series in the fourth and last installment, Breaking Dawn—just as Rowling did in the final chapters of her Harry Potter series. But, unlike Rowling, Meyer blew it by leaving out “a larger story arc” and by “quickly and disappointingly” resolving all her conflicts.

If anyone doubts that “Meyer has all the chances of becoming the next J.K. Rowling,” said Raoul Railey in eFluxMedia.com, they might want to consult the “more than 225,000 fans” that “attended midnight release parties” nationwide for Breaking Dawn. They flooded “costume contests, trivia competitions,” and “debates,” and should flock to a movie based on the first book in the Twilight series coming out in December.

Judging by the numbers, though, Meyer has a long way to go, said Julie Bosman in The New York Times. Breaking Dawn sold 1.3 million copies in its first 24 hours on sale. That broke all previous first-day sales records for its publisher Hachette Book Group, but it didn’t even “approach the 8.3 million copies that the final book in the Harry Potter series sold in its first day last summer.”

True, but it was Meyer who last summer “ended Rowling’s reign at No. 1 when Eclipse knocked Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows off the top spot on USA Today’s list,” said Carol Memmott in USA Today. “It’s not a stretch to suggest” that “Rowling may be handing her magic wand off to Meyer.”