In Your Face, Stephenie Meyer!

So you may have heard of a series of young adult novels called “Twilight.” They’ve sold, oh, maybe a few hundred copies.Okay – more like a zillion. And I’m happy for Stephenie Meyer. Really, I am. It is truly fantastic when a young adult novel (or in this case, novels) takes off like this. I’m sure Ms. Meyers never saw it coming, and how exciting it must have been. It’s great to see legions of young people with their noses in a book!

But for one brief, fleeting moment in time … in one solitary bookstore … I, Susin Nielsen, beat Stephenie Meyer.

Okay, not me, personally, but my book, “Word Nerd.” See, we have a fantastic bookstore here in Vancouver BC, called Kidsbooks. Kidsbooks is run by two amazing women, Phyllis Simon and Kelly McKinnon. These women and their staff know books. They have three locations in and around Vancouver. And, unlike some of the giant chain stores, their staff actually read the books. And get enthusiastic about certain titles. And hand sell them to people coming in looking for books for their kids, their friends’ kids, their grandkids.

And, lucky me, a few of them loved “Word Nerd.” So they hand-sold a lot of copies after it came out (it was published last fall, 2008). And one week, this happened …

Word Nerd – #2 on the bestseller list at Kidsbooks

The following week – for one week only – “Word Nerd” was the #1 bestseller at Kidsbooks in Kitsilano.