IT MAY have occurred to you, during the course of a dismal trawl round a supermarket indistinguishable from every other supermarket you have ever been into, to wonder why they are all the same. The answer is more sinister than depressing. It is not because the companies that operate them lack imagination. It is because they are all versed in the science of persuading people to buy things—a science that, thanks to technological advances, is beginning to unlock the innermost secrets of the consumer’s mind.

In the Sainsbury’s in Hatch Warren, Basingstoke, south-west of London, it takes a while for the mind to get into a shopping mode. This is why the area immediately inside the entrance of a supermarket is known as the “decompression zone”. People need to slow down and take stock of the surroundings, even if they are regulars. In sales terms this area is a bit of a loss, so it tends to be used more for promotion. Even the multi-packs of beer piled up here are designed more to hint at bargains within than to be lugged round the aisles. Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, famously employs “greeters” at the entrance to its stores. Whether or not they boost sales, a friendly welcome is said to cut shoplifting. It is harder to steal from nice people.

Immediately to the left in Sainsbury’s is another familiar sight: a “chill zone” for browsing magazines, books and DVDs, tempting impromptu purchases and slowing customers down. But those on a serious mission will keep walking ahead—and the first thing they come to is the fresh fruit and vegetables section.

For shoppers, this makes no sense. Fruit and vegetables can be easily damaged, so they should be bought at the end, not the beginning, of a shopping trip. But psychology is at work here: selecting good wholesome fresh food is an uplifting way to start shopping, and it makes people feel less guilty about reaching for the stodgy stuff later on.

Shoppers already know that everyday items, like milk, are invariably placed towards the back of a store to provide more opportunity to tempt customers. This is why pharmacies are generally at the rear, even in “convenience” stores. But supermarkets know shoppers know this, so they use other tricks, like placing popular items halfway along a section so that people have to walk all along the aisle looking for them. The idea is to boost “dwell time”: the length of time people spend in a store.

Traditionally retailers measure “footfall”, as the number of people entering a store is known, but those numbers say nothing about where people go and how long they spend there. But nowadays, a ubiquitous piece of technology can fill the gap: the mobile phone. Path Intelligence, a British company working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tracked people’s phones at Gunwharf Quays, a large retail and leisure centre in Portsmouth—not by monitoring calls, but by plotting the positions of handsets as they transmit automatically to cellular networks. It found that when dwell time rose 1% sales rose 1.3%.

Having walked to the end of the fruit and vegetable aisle, Basingstoke’s hard-core shoppers arrive at counters of prepared food, the fishmonger, the butcher and the deli. Then there is the in-store bakery, which can be smelt before it is seen. Even small supermarkets now use in-store bakeries. Mostly these bake pre-prepared items and frozen dough, and they have boomed even though central bakeries that deliver to a number of stores are much more efficient. They do it for the smell of freshly baked bread, which makes people hungry and thus encourages people to buy not just bread but also other food, including frozen stuff.

Most of the information that shoppers are bombarded with is visual: labels, price stickers and advertising. But the wafting bread aroma shows smell can usefully be stimulated too, says Simon Harrop, chief executive of BRAND sense agency, a British specialist in multi-sensory marketing. In the aisle by the laundry section he suggests introducing the smell of freshly laundered sheets. Even the sound of sheets being folded could be reproduced here and contained within the area using the latest audio technology. The Aroma Company, which Mr Harrop founded, has put the smell of coconut into the shops of Thompson, a British travel agent. Some suntan oils smell of coconut, so the scent is supposed to remind people of past holidays. The company even infuses the fresh smell of citrus into a range of clothing made by Odeur, a Swedish company. It can waft for up to 13 washes.

Such techniques are increasingly popular because of a deepening understanding about how shoppers make choices. People tell market researchers and “focus groups” that they make rational decisions about what to buy, considering things like price, selection or convenience. But subconscious forces, involving emotion and memories, are clearly also at work.

Scientists used to assume that emotion and rationality were opposed to each other, but Antonio Damasio, now professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has found that people who lose the ability to perceive or experience emotions as the result of a brain injury find it hard or impossible to make any decisions at all. They can’t shop.

Oh, that’s what I want

Researchers are now exploring these mechanisms by observing the brain at work. One of the most promising techniques is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which uses a large scanner to detect changes in the blood flow in parts of the brain that correspond to increases or decreases in mental activity. People lying inside the scanners are shown different products or brands and then asked questions about them. What they say is compared with what they are thinking by looking at cognitive or emotional activity. The idea is that if, say, a part of the brain that is associated with pleasure lights up, then the product could be a winner. This is immensely valuable information because eight out of ten new consumer products usually fail, despite test marketing on people who say they would buy the item—but whose subconscious may have been thinking something different.

“We are just at the frontier of the subconscious,” says Eric Spangenberg, dean of the College of Business at Washington State University and an expert on the subtleties of marketing. “We know it’s there, we know there are responses and we know it is significant.” But companies commissioning such studies keep the results secret for commercial reasons. This makes Dr Spangenberg sure of one thing: “What I think I know, they probably know way more.”

We are just at the frontier of the subconscious

Retailers and producers talk a lot about the “moment of truth”. This is not a philosophical notion, but the point when people standing in the aisle decide what to buy and reach to get it. The Basingstoke store illustrates some of the ways used to get shoppers’ hands to wobble in the direction of a particular product. At the instant coffee selection, for example, branded products from the big producers are arranged at eye-level while cheaper ones are lower down, along with the supermarket’s own-label products.

Often head offices will send out elaborate plans of where everything has to be placed; Albertsons, a big American supermarket chain, calls these a “plan-a-gram”. Spot-checks are carried out to make sure instructions are followed to the letter. The reason for this strictness is that big retailers demand “slotting fees” to put suppliers’ goods on their shelves, and these vary according to which positions are considered to be prime space.

But shelf-positioning is fiercely fought over, not just by those trying to sell goods, but also by those arguing over how best to manipulate shoppers. Never mind all the academic papers written on how best to stack shelves, retailers have their own views. While many stores reckon eye-level is the top spot, some think a little higher is better. Others charge more for goods placed on “end caps”—displays at the end of the aisles which they reckon to have the greatest visibility (although some experts say it all depends on the direction in which people gyrate around a store—and opinion on that is also divided). To be on the right-hand-side of an eye-level selection is often considered the very best place, because most people are right-handed and most people’s eyes drift rightwards. Some supermarkets reserve that for their own-label “premium” goods. And supermarkets may categorise things in different ways, so chapatis may not be with breads, but with ready-meals of the Indian variety. So, even though some suppliers could be paying around $50,000 per store a year for a few feet of shelf space, many customers still can’t find what they are looking for.

Technology is making the process of monitoring shopper behaviour easier—which is why the security cameras in a store may be doing a lot more than simply watching out for theft. Rajeev Sharma, of Pennsylvania State University, founded a company called VideoMining to automate the process. It uses image-recognition software to scan the pictures from security cameras of shoppers while they are making their selections. It is capable of looking at the actions of hundreds of thousands of people. It can measure how many went straight to one brand, the number that dithered and those that compared several, at the same time as sorting shoppers by age, gender and ethnicity.

VideoMining analysed people in convenience stores buying beer. Typically it would take them two minutes, with the majority going straight to one brand. “This shows their mind was already made up; they were on autopilot,” says Dr Sharma. So brewers should spend their marketing money outside, not inside, the store. The analysis can also help establish the return on investment to a new advertising campaign by showing what proportion of beer-buyers can be persuaded to consider rival brands. Another study in a supermarket some 12% of people spent 90 seconds looking at juices, studying the labels but not selecting any. In supermarket decision-making time, that is forever. This implies that shoppers are very interested in juices as a healthy alternative to carbonated drinks, but are not sure which to buy. So there is a lot of scope for persuasion.

Reducing the selection on offer might help too. Cassie Mogilner of Stanford University and her colleagues found in a study that consumers like unfamiliar products to be categorised—even if the categories are meaningless. In a study of different coffees they found people were more satisfied with their choice if it came from a categorised selection, although it did not matter if the categories were marked simply A, B and C, or “mild”, “dark roast” and “nutty”.

Despite all the new technology, simply talking to consumers remains one of the most effective ways to improve the “customer experience”. Scott Bearse, a retail expert with Deloitte Consulting in Boston, Massachusetts, has led projects observing and quizzing tens of thousands of customers about how they feel about shopping. It began when a client complained that he had mountains of data on the one in four people that entered his store and bought something, but knew hardly anything about the vast majority who left without making a purchase. The “customer conversion” rate varies between types of store: it could be around 20% in some department stores but reach almost 100% in a grocery. And within the same store the conversion rate will vary in different sections.

People say they leave shops empty-handed more often because they are “unable to decide” than because prices are too high, says Mr Bearse. Working out what turns customers off is not difficult, yet stores still struggle with these issues: goods out of stock, long queues at the checkouts and poor levels of service. Getting customers to try something is one of the best ways of getting them to buy, adds Mr Bearse. Deloitte found that customers using fitting rooms convert at a rate of 85% compared with 58% for those that do not do so.

Often a customer struggling to decide which of two items is best ends up not buying either. A third “decoy” item, which is not quite as good as the other two, can make the choice easier and more pleasurable, according to a new study using fMRI carried out by Akshay Rao, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota. Happier customers are more likely to buy. Dr Rao believes the deliberate use of irrelevant alternatives should work in selling all sorts of goods and services, from cable TV to holidays.

The notion of shoppers wearing brain-scanning hats would be ridiculous

A lack of price tags is another turn-off, although getting that right will become crucial with the increasing use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. These contain far more information than bar codes and can be scanned remotely. People have been predicting for years that they would shortly become ubiquitous; but, with costs continuing to fall, they eventually will. Tills will then become redundant, because everything shoppers put in their trolleys will be automatically detected and charged to their credit cards.

The basic mechanisms to do this are already in place. A store or loyalty card can be fitted with an RFID tag to identify customers on arrival. A device on the trolley could monitor everything placed in it, check with past spending patterns and nudge customers: “You have just passed the Oriels, which you usually buy here.”

Mind over matter

Technology will also begin to identify customers’ emotions. Dr Sharma’s software has the potential to analyse expressions, like smiles and grimaces, which are hard to fake. And although fMRI scanners presently need a crane to move, something that provides a similar result might one day be worn on your head. Researchers believe it is possible to correlate brain patterns with changes in electrical activity in the brain, which can be measured with electroencephalography (EEG) using electrodes placed on the scalp. Small EEG machines are already available, especially for computer gamers, which fit on the head.

The notion of shoppers wearing brain-scanning hats would be ridiculous if it were not so alarming. Privacy groups are already concerned about the rise of electronic surveillance that records what people do, let alone what they might be thinking. The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation is concerned that because RFID tags can be read at a distance by anyone with the necessary equipment they could create “privacy pollution”; being used to discover what is in not only someone’s shopping trolley, but also their cupboards.

To some degree shoppers would have to “buy in” to the process: a bit like having an account with an online retailer which comes with the explicit knowledge that your past purchases and browsing history will be monitored and used to pitch purchase suggestions. And if that makes shopping easier—especially if sweetened with discounts—then consumers might sign up to it. When Dr Sharma asks shoppers what they think about his video-monitoring he says most people do not mind.

But what if psychological selling is done stealthily? That way lies grave perils. It is the anger not of privacy groups that retailers should fear, but of customers at being manipulated from behind the scenes.

There have been backlashes before: “The Hidden Persuaders” by Vance Packard, an American journalist, caused a sensation when it was first published in 1957 by revealing physiological techniques used by advertisers, including subliminal messages. It is what got Dr Spangenberg interested in the subject. He thinks shopping science has limits. “I don’t think you are going to be able to make someone buy a car or a computer that they don’t need,” he says. “But you might persuade them to choose one model instead of another. And importantly, they wouldn’t know it.” But if they did realise psychological methods were being used to influence their choice, “the counteraction can be so huge it can put someone off buying anything at all,” he adds.

Which is probably why at the end of this shopping trip there is not much in the trolley. At least the temptations at the checkout are easy to avoid: a few celebrity magazines and bags of sweets at the eye-level of children. But that will change too.

Barry Salzman, the chief executive of YCD Multimedia in New York, has big plans for the area around a cash till. He is using digital video screens displaying ads that relate to what someone is buying and which can also be linked with facial-recognition software to refine the displays according to the customer’s age or sex. His system is already being used in Aroma Espresso Bars in America to present, say, an advert for a chocolate croissant to someone buying only a cappuccino.

But the checkout in this Sainsbury’s comes to a halt because the teenager at the till is not old enough to sell alcohol and can’t attract the attention of a supervisor for permission to ring up a multi-pack of beer, which is therefore left behind on the counter. The science of shopping is a marvellously sophisticated business; the practice is still a little more primitive.

The way the brain buys

Dec 18th 2008 | BASINGSTOKE, ENGLAND
From The Economist print edition

Payoff Over a Web Sensation Is Elusive

Susan Boyle, the frumpy Scotswoman who became a worldwide singing sensation last month, may wind up as the winner this week of “Britain’s Got Talent,” the hit ITV show.

After a six-week absence, she returned on Sunday night to sing “Memory” from the musical “Cats,” wowing the crowd and advancing to Saturday’s finale. The producers immediately posted her performance on the Internet for the rest of the world to see.

She has already won a popularity contest on YouTube, where videos of her performances in April have been viewed an astounding 220 million times.

But until now, her runaway Web success has made little money for the program’s producers or distributors.

FremantleMedia Enterprises, a production company that owns the international digital rights to the talent show, hastily uploaded video clips to YouTube in the wake of Ms. Boyle’s debut, but the clips do not appear to be generating any advertising revenue for the company. The most popular videos of Ms. Boyle were not the official versions but rather copies of the TV show posted by individual users.

The case reflects the inability of big media companies to maximize profit from supersize Internet audiences that seem to come from nowhere. In essence, the complexities of TV production are curbing the Web possibilities. “Britain’s Got Talent” is produced jointly by three companies and distributed in Britain by a fourth, ITV, making it difficult to ascertain which of the companies can claim a video as its own.

Before the current season of the talent show started on April 11, the parties tried to cut a distribution deal with YouTube, but they could not agree on terms, according to two people with knowledge of the talks. The people asked for anonymity before they would discuss confidential negotiations.

YouTube, a unit of Google, has been keen to make money from its hulking library of online video by signing contracts with copyright owners and sharing the revenue from ads it sells before, during, after and alongside the videos. Major media companies have shown varying degrees of interest in these deals, in part because they are reticent to split much money with Google.

Then Simon Cowell, an “American Idol” judge who is also a producer and a host of “Britain’s Got Talent,” helped introduce Ms. Boyle to the world.

Her performance was a made-for-TV fairy tale: a dowdy 48-year-old makes awkward jokes, the audience engages in a collective eye-roll, then the performer shocks everyone by bursting into a soulful, Broadway-worthy rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream.”

Cut to the amazed faces in the theater, hear the judge Piers Morgan call her singing “without a doubt the biggest surprise I have had in three years on this show,” and cut to commercial.

On YouTube, though, where the segment was viewed by more people than could ever have witnessed it on TV in Britain, there were no commercials. The tens of millions of views swiftly brought YouTube and the producers back to the negotiating table, according to the people with knowledge of the talks, and soon they reached a deal for video clips.

YouTube was especially interested in a deal, according to the people with knowledge of the talks, because the company was essentially losing money by serving every video stream without recouping any of the costs.

FremantleMedia, which had registered YouTube accounts for the next several seasons of “Britain’s Got Talent” in advance, uploaded dozens of clips from the show in late April. But American viewers are not seeing ads on the video pages, suggesting that the companies still do not see eye to eye.

FremantleMedia “is investigating the best routes to monetize the channel in conjunction with relevant partners,” said a spokeswoman, Belinda Thomas, who said the company would not comment further.

The production companies and YouTube worked through the weekend on a more comprehensive deal, one of the people with knowledge of the talks said. The deal would enable FremantleMedia to place ads against unofficial copies of the show, using YouTube’s “Content ID” system, which companies like Universal Music already use. For now, the copies simply show a message directing users to the official talent show channel managed by FremantleMedia.

“We’re glad to be helping Britain share its talents with the rest of the world,” a YouTube spokesman, Ricardo Reyes, said. “It’s up to our partners to decide what to do with their videos on YouTube.”

How much money have the parties lost? In the days after Ms. Boyle’s debut, The Times of London published what it called a “crude estimate” suggesting that the parties involved had left $1.87 million on the table.

That is based on 75 million streams of the various clips of Ms. Boyle, which the newspaper estimated could get $20 to $35 for every 1,000 views in the United States, and more than that in Britain.

While other TV networks act quickly to remove videos when users upload them without copyright permissions, ITV has “nonexistent piracy enforcement on YouTube,” said David Burch, a marketing manager at TubeMogul, an online measurement firm.

The broadcaster and producers allowed the copies to stay online because they created buzz for the program. The clips have received more than a half-million user comments.

The view counts continued to grow as people awaited Ms. Boyle’s next performance. Visible Measures, a company that tracks online video placements, said Ms. Boyle was responsible for the fastest-growing viral video in the roughly five-year history of Web video. Only three other videos have received more clicks, said the company, which tracks viewing across about 150 sites. (YouTube is the biggest by far.)

Matt Cutler, the vice president for marketing and analytics at Visible Measures, said the level of interest was “off the charts.”

“On TV, watching the content is the end of the experience. Online, watching the content is the beginning of the experience,” Mr. Cutler said.

The history of viral videos has shown that when new clips about a subject become available — in Ms. Boyle’s case, her new performance on Sunday — it “actually boosts the viewership of the existing assets,” Mr. Cutler said.

Six hours after the new performance, dozens of copies were already circulating on YouTube.

Miguel Helft contributed reporting.

L'Assemblée nous réserve parfois des surprises plutôt savoureuses. Ainsi, ce jeudi 9 avril, elle vient, dans sa grande sagesse, de rejeter le projet de loi Création et Internet, créant une Haute Autorité de protection des droits sur Internet (HADOPI).

Ce projet de loi très controversé (et qui faisait beaucoup parler de lui sur... Internet) prévoyait notamment des sanctions contre le téléchargement pouvant aller jusqu'à la coupure de l'accès à Internet pour les internautes.

Alors que les sénateurs venaient juste de voter les conclusions de la commission mixte paritaire Sénat–Assemblée, qui durcissaient encore le caractère répressif du texte, l'Assemblée a rejeté le texte que 15 députés UMP seulement ont voté, en étant présents lors d'un vote à main levée à 13h10. A gauche, nous étions une petite vingtaine auxquels sont venus s'ajouter au moins un député du Nouveau Centre (allié de l'UMP), Jean Dionis du Séjour ainsi que Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, député non-inscrit (ex-UMP).

Après de nombreux échanges avec des citoyens et artistes de Loire-Atlantique, j'avais défendu durant ce débat avec ma collègue Martine Billard, qui était la principale intervenante des députés Verts sur ce texte, les droits des internautes et le renouvellement du principe de droits d'auteurs par la licence globale.

Alors que j'étais ce matin dans mon bureau ou en réunion à l'Assemblée pour préparer une proposition de loi que nous devons déposer la semaine prochaine, une collaboratrice de notre groupe m'a appelé pour me signaler que le vote allait bientôt intervenir sur ce texte et que, compte-tenu du rapport de force, il y avait une chance qu'il ne soit pas adopté.

Lorsque j'ai accouru à l'hémicycle, j'ai constaté que plusieurs députés socialistes restaient groupés derrière la porte de l'hémicycle ou plus exactement derrière le rideau qui sépare le sas d'entrée du bas de l'hémicycle. J'ai évidemment compris qu'il s'agissait d'attendre là, la fin de l'intervention de la ministre pour faire une entrée groupée. Ainsi le groupe UMP se croyant majoritaire, sur la foi du décompte des députés effectivement installés à leur siège, n'allait pas tenter d'ultimes manoeuvres de procédures pour retarder le vote et «rameuter» à leur tour des députés UMP dispersés dans leur bureau...

A notre grande surprise, cette petite précaution de dernière minute a marché. Comme quoi le vote d'un texte tient parfois à un rideau qui se lève ou se baisse au bon moment !

Plus sérieusement, le très faible nombre de députés UMP présents en séance au moment du vote montre que ce texte était loin de rassembler au sein du goupe majoritaire. J'avais d'ailleurs entendu ces derniers temps des collègues UMP dire dans les couloirs qu'ils ne voteraient pas ce texte. Habituellement, on prend ce genre de propos avec une certaine méfiance car à mesure que le moment du vote approche, la détermination à se distinguer a en général tendance à s'émousser...

Le gouvernement et le rapporteur UMP du projet de loi ont évidemment crié à la manoeuvre d'obstruction de l'opposition. Ils sont pourtant pris à leur propre piège qui consiste à refuser de plus en plus les votes dits "solennels", votes qui sont organisés à un jour et à une heure connus à l'avance pour que chacun puisse s'organiser et être effectivement présent ou donner sa procuration. Le gouvernement refuse cette procédure, pourtant la plus transparente (le vote est nominatif – on sait donc qui a voté quoi), au motif qu'elle retarde l'adoption des textes (de quelques jours seulement). Il y a surtout une raison moins avouable: les divisions de la majorité, lorsqu'il y en a, se voient directement après le vote à la lecture du relevé des votes.

Il ne reste plus qu'à espérer que le gouvernement et la majorité UMP saisissent cette occasion pour remettre à plat ce texte. Internautes, faites monter la pression auprès des députés UMP : ils ne sont pas obligés d'accepter un passage en force du gouvernement !

François de rugy, député des Verts, Libération, 9 avril 2009

La success story de Stephenie Meyer

par Delphine Peras

 Comment une jeune mère de famille américaine a-t-elle pu emballer à ce point les foules avec sa saga Fascination, une histoire d'amour façon Harlequin entre une lycéenne et un vampire adolescent? Décryptage d'un succès monstre.

Qu'est-ce que tu lis, l'ado, dis donc? Parions qu'ils seront nombreux, ces jours-ci, à répondre dans un cri du coeur: Fascination! Soit quatre tomes d'une saga venue des Etats-Unis, Twilight en VO (prononcer «twaïlaïte» pour être dans le coup), signée Stephenie Meyer, 35 ans, mère de famille popote et sans aucuns états de service plumitif. Jusqu'au 2 juin 2003, quand elle se décide à coucher sur le papier son étrange rêve de la veille: l'histoire d'amour d'une lycéenne et d'un jeune vampire...

Voilà pour le pitch de ce qui est en train de devenir le phénomène éditorial à même de rivaliser avec Harry Potter - au point de monopoliser les premières places du palmarès de L'Express, du jamais-vu pour une série! La comparaison avec le succès de J. K. Rowling vaut surtout par l'ampleur des ventes, mondiales, fulgurantes, auprès d'un public essentiellement adolescent, et l'effet multiplicateur de son adaptation cinématographique.

A part ça, peu de rapport entre les aventures du jeune sorcier à lunettes et celles d'Isabella Swan, dite Bella, 17 ans, qui raconte à la première personne son coup de foudre pour le mystérieux et sublimement beau Edward Cullen, élève au lycée où elle vient d'arriver. Ah! Edward et son «magnifique visage d'albâtre», «son torse parfaitement musclé», son odeur «enivrante», sa voix «irrésistible» quand elle n'est pas «soyeuse», ses yeux tantôt «d'un noir d'encre», tantôt «topaze».

Sans oublier «ses dents étincelantes». Eh! oui, sans pour autant arborer des canines hypertrophiées, Edward est (aussi) un vampire! Version light, certes, puisque son clan a renoncé au sang humain et se contente de celui des animaux. N'empêche, il reste tiraillé entre ses sentiments pour Bella et son désir, encore vivace - on ne se refait pas - de s'abreuver du sang de la belle. D'où un amour impossible, CQFD. De là à comparer cette idylle à l'eau de rose, ou rouge en l'occurrence, avec Roméo et Juliette, comme Stephenie Meyer elle-même s'y est risquée, invoquant «la mythologie de l'amour», c'est aller un peu vite en besogne!

Assurément, Fascination relève moins des écrits shakespeariens que du roman Harlequin. Certes, Bella est une gamine cultivée, incollable sur Macbeth, inconditionnelle de Jane Austen et des soeurs Brontë, reconnaissant immédiatement le Clair de lune de Debussy (Edward épaté), ne s'intéressant ni aux fringues ni aux soirées entre filles. D'accord, l'auteur sait y faire pour donner un peu d'épaisseur psychologique à ses personnages. Mais sa saga reste passablement cucul la praline, avec son lot de clichés et de lourdeurs stylistiques (aggravées par la traduction?). Sans compter le côté conservateur d'une Bella très femme soumise, qui n'est rien sans l'amour de son Dracula relooké par Hugo Boss, archétype du prince charmant mâtiné d'homme providentiel (il passe son temps à lui sauver la vie).

Elle choisit le cursus de «mère de famille»
On est loin des audaces et de l'originalité d'une J. K. Rowling. Au moins les deux femmes ont-elles en commun d'avoir vécu un véritable conte de fées. Celui de Stephenie Meyer a donc commencé par son désormais fameux rêve. Mais la jeune femme n'a pas l'intention d'être publiée, bien que grande lectrice (d'Autant en emporte le vent à Orgueil et préjugés, en passant par Edgar Rice Burroughs, le créateur de Tarzan). «J'ai écrit Twilight juste pour moi», dira-t-elle. Née en 1973 à Hartford (Connecticut), au sein d'une famille mormone et nombreuse, Stephenie grandit à Phoenix (Arizona), puis étudie l'anglais à la grande université des mormons, dans l'Utah. A 21 ans, la miss se marie avec William Patrick Meyer, dit Pancho, 21 ans, mormon lui aussi, qu'elle connaît depuis l'âge de 4 ans. Elle se verrait bien entamer des études de droit, mais la naissance de son premier enfant la convainc d'opter pour le cursus «mère de famille» - ses trois garçons ont aujourd'hui 11, 9 et 6 ans. Convaincue par l'une de ses soeurs que son ébauche de Twilight est rudement bien, Stephenie relève sur Internet les coordonnées d'agents littéraires et leur adresse sa prose. Résultat: neuf refus, cinq non-réponses. Mais la 15e tentative sera la bonne, grâce à un assistant qui récupère le manuscrit végétant sur la slush pile, la pile des rebuts. Il est aussitôt adressé à plusieurs éditeurs, dont Megan Tingley, de Little, Brown. «Celle-ci a commencé à lire le texte lors d'un voyage en avion», raconte Elizabeth Eulberg, l'attachée de presse de Stephenie, laquelle vient de se mettre au vert médiatique, refusant même une interview à Vanity Fair. «Megan a tout de suite fait une offre.» Le deal: un chèque de 750 000 dollars pour trois premiers tomes. Tope là! Elle termine le premier en trois mois... et deviendra multimillionnaire. C'est Pancho qui gère aujour-d'hui sa fortune, après avoir quitté son job de comptable. Il assure aussi auprès des fistons, maman Stephenie répondant volontiers aux sollicitations de ses fans.

«Cette saga attire en majorité de jeunes filles bonnes élèves et grandes lectrices», décrypte Anne Clerc, rédactrice en chef de la revue Lecture Jeune, qui a enquêté sur le phénomène. «Elles ressemblent à Bella: réservée, un peu commune, mais intellectuellement très vive.» Autre raison du succès: «La jaquette assez chic des livres donne à ces lectrices le sentiment d'avoir un livre d'adulte, alors que le contenu reste très adolescent.» Et très efficace, justement, sur la psyché adolescente: le petit ami vampire ne traduit-il pas à la perfection ce mélange d'attirance et de répulsion, de fascination et de peur chez la jeune fille sans expérience amoureuse? Peur de se faire saigner, le coeur, l'hymen... Peur face au désir masculin, mais aussi excitation de la trangression. Que l'on se rassure, le vampire teenager de Stephenie Meyer se contente d'entretenir cette ambivalence: suffisamment dérangeant pour coller à l'époque, et ce qu'il faut de mormon pour sauvegarder la morale chère à l'Eglise de Jésus-Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours - abstinence avant le mariage et fidélité après, notamment... Fascinant, non?

A man sat at a metro station  in Washington DC and  started to play the violin; it was a cold January  morning.

He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.  During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to  work.

Three  minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was  a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his  schedule.

 A  minute later, the violinist received his first dollar  tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to  walk.

 A  few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to  listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and  started to walk again. Clearly he was late for  work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy.  His mother dragged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped  to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard  and the child continued to walk turning his head all the  time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In  the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money  but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected  $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no  one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

 No  one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of  the best musicians in the world. He played one of the  most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth  3.5 million dollars.

Two  days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100.00 each.

This  is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the  metro station was organized by the Washington Post as  part of a social experiment about perception, taste and  priorities of people. The outlines were: in a  commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we  recognize the talent in an unexpected  context?  One  of the possible conclusions from this experience could  be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing some of the best  music ever written, how many other things are we  missing?