According to Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood:

“Publisher Little, Brown tells me Stephenie Meyer’s novella “for the fans” has sold 226,589 copies so far in the UK. Waterstones, the largest bookshop chain, expects it to be the biggest-selling book of the year.

The £11:99 ($17.8) Twilight novella is mostly selling at less than half price, mostly due to heavy supermarket discounting. What’s remarkable is that you can read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner for free on Meyer’s website until midnight on July 5.”

See more on Deadline Hollywood

This is pretty amazing for a novella rather than a full-length novel, not to mention one that you can also get for free!

For those of you who have read the Bree Tanner book, how do you think this compares to the book? (Obviously, spoilers will be in the comments. Don’t hit the comments if you are trying to stay spoiler free.)
Via TwiFans

Yesterday we reported how The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner rocketed to the top of the UK sales charts. Today, USA Today is reporting the same thing.

USA Today along with the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Publishers Weekly are the premier lists that booksellers want their products to appear on.  Publishers Weekly and The New York Times subdivide their lists into various subcategories whereas USA Today and the Wall Street Journal throw everybody in together.   What often happens, is that it’s very hard to tell how a book is really doing via the New York Times lists (there are over 30 subcategories) and Publishers Weekly (they don’t rate children’s/teen books).  In fact the New York Times subdivided its list as a direct response to the Harry Potter books clogging the top spots for over a year. On the other hand you can really see the domination of YA material on the USA Today and Wall Street Journal lists.  Last year the Twilight Saga, the Whimpy Kid Series, and the Hunger Games series dominated those lists for weeks.

USA Today published the following today:

“‘Bree’ rules: Like Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, Books 3 and 4 in Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight saga, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella enters USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list in the top spot. The big difference? Fans had a choice: Buy the book, which went on sale Saturday, or read it for free through July 5 at breetanner.com. Little, Brown reports 350,000 copies were sold in the USA in the book’s first 48 hours on sale; 15,000 have read it online so far. “Given all the time in the world … I could write a short story for every one of my characters,” Meyer says.”

You can check out the USA Today top 150 list here.

Here are where the Twilight Saga books currently rank:

1.   The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

9.   Eclipse

37.  Breaking Dawn

54.  Twilight

65.  New Moon

According to the UK newspaper The Guardian,

“Meyer’s The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, told from the perspective of a newly created vampire, was published in the UK at 5.05am on 5 June and went on to sell almost 90,000 copies that day – taking the number one slot “by a hefty margin”, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan. This is despite Meyer making the book available for free online until 5 July.

“People were queuing at our Milton Keynes branch from 4.30am,” said Waterstone’s spokesman Jon Howells. Copies of the strictly-embargoed book were delivered to Waterstone’s Piccadilly branch in a coffin.

“It’s our fastest-selling book so far this year and it may be the fastest-selling book of the year … it will be pretty tough to beat it,” Howells said. “It’s our biggest book since Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. Offering it online for free is a nice touch [but] I don’t think it’s a big deal. Pretty much every Twilight fan will want not just to read it, but also to own it. It’s shaping up to be a big ‘un.”

Pictured above is Heloise Devaux who won a competition to receive the book first at the flagship Waterstone’s store. Photo credit: Tim Ireland/PA

The New York Times Bestseller list that The Second Short Life of Bree Tanner qualifies for won’t be out until June 20. There is always a two-week lag between release and tracking for that list.  Other noted lists like The Wall street journal and USA today should be available next week.

See the full story on The Guardian.

The sound you hear are English fluent fans who live outside the USA in countries where the Bree Tanner novella doesn’t come out in their native languages for a few months. They are screaming because now they can read what the rest of us had a few days ago. Also screaming are fans who (let’s face it, the economy is down) were not able to purchase the book.

To ensure that you are getting a legitimate, virus free version of the book, only read it directly from the Bree Tanner official site!

According to the site, “This site will be live from noon EST on June 7th until midnight EST on July 5th. Please keep in mind that you can only read the book here – you won’t be able to download it to your e-reader or phone. And you can’t print it out.” For those of your emailing in asking why the text is too small to read, see the diagram below.

We would be stunned if the site is not slow today due to global demand, so please be patient!

Happy reading all. Please stop by and discuss the book on our forum!

So what did you think of the Short Second Life of Bree Tanner? Head over to our forums to discuss it, or leave a comment below. Obviously these links will contain spoilers, so click/visit at your own risk!

We’re also going to do a little article on the new book and fan feeling from what they first thought/felt when they heard about it and what they thought/felt after reading it. If you would like us to potentially use your feelings, put your commentary below. Please cover the following in addition to whatever else you may want to say:

Approximately when you first read Twilight
What is your favorite book in the saga
What is it about Twilight that captivates you
What is it that drives you to an online fansite
Any comments/thoughts you have on the Bree Tanner novella