Vampire: The Masquerade, which is in the role-playing game genre rather than books or tv or movies. The Underworld movies were based on the world of Vampire and Werewolf (a related RPG by the same company). Also, the short-lived television series Kindred: The Embraced.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Fred Saberhagen has a series of books featuring Count Dracula. I’m not sure if it’s pre or post Anne Rice though. The first one, The Dracula Tape was written in 1975. I am unfamiliar with Ms. Rice’s oeuvre.
As Chuck wrote, genre isn’t a type of writing, it’s a publishing category. Critics have the luxury of talking about the contents. Publishers decide on a cover type, placement within the store, and promotion towards certain readers. Paranormal romance, its writers, and its readers may overlap fantasy and its writers and readers, but are almost totally separate worlds.
So many other people here hate me that it gives me a warm glow to finally be hated for the right reason. 
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Most popular in what way?
Let the Right One In. Blows Twilight out of the water and the vampire is a 12 year old girl (but she’s been 12 for a long time).
Forever Knight.
I’ll read some paranormal romance. I’ll even read some romance, if it’s good enough. But mostly I prefer to read SF/fantasy, and most paranormal romance is written just to cash in on the fad. It’s not much more entertaining than reading the backs of cereal boxes, for the most part. And I have enough books around my house that I can usually find one to re-read.
I won’t read formula romances or Westerns. Much paranormal romance is very much written to a formula. Most of the paranormal romance that I will read is fantasy with romance as part of the story, but I do demand an engaging story. I want more from a story than just “Heroine is being courted by two (or more) alpha males, and can’t decide which one”, which is part of why I gave up reading Janet Evanovitch’s Numbers series.
The sci-fi vampires of Blindsight.
I would imagine there have been many vampires post Anne Rice being that Interview with the Vampire was from 1975 or 76.
Her writing does have some romance, and there is at least one story involving vamps…
I’m not sure what you mean by that. Most popular as in enjoyed by the most number of people. Isn’t that tautological?
Then there’s Jane Austen, vampire…
(I saw one of the books & was tempted; but it wasn’t first in the series.)
I…never really thought about that. I was too busy with the snake-striking-at-inner-flower metaphors.
Speaking of, I never really understood the mechanism of birthing a Pearl. Sometimes they describe it in a way that makes me think of cutting open the stomach Bella-style, and other times it sounds like ye olde assbaby MPREG trope.
On the weeaboo side of things:
- Hellsing. Hey, let’s have the Church of England use an enslaved vampire to kill other vampires!
- Vampire Knight. You thought Twilight was bad? The Edward and Bella characters are siblings.
If you can’t think of a dozen meanings for “most popular” then you aren’t a word person.
Wouldn’t the books on the top of a Best list from fans tautologically be the most popular?
Tom Holland’s Lord of the Dead, 1998, was the first I read, and probably the best, in what has become a Lord Byron as vampire sub-genre. Uses a lot of Byron’s real history.
Tim Powers, The Stress of Her Regard, 1989, and winner of a Mythopoeic award, also has vampires, as well as djinni and succubi. The story centers around the English romantic poets, so maybe it inspired the later Lord Byron as vampire themes. I havent’ read it yet, but I will later this week, since a sequel to it is imminent.
Deborah Harkness A Discovery of Witches has vampires and witches and shapeshifters. Much of the first part takes place in the Bodleian library, which is very nice for lovers of libraries. And the vampire is doing scientific reasearch into genetics, to figure out why he (and the others exist).
Those are individual books. I’m asking you, what you would personally identify, based on your own experience and observations, applying your own favored definition of popular, what vampires/settings/series are most popular.
I wouldn’t read a vampire novel with a fang to my head, so I’m not the best judge of what fans think.
Based on what I hear, in the sense of noticing comments about bestsellers and authors from reading about books, I’d say that Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter and Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series are huge, with maybe Tanya Huff’s Victoria Nelson and Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter close behind. Twilight is up in its own pantheon. I’d never heard of J. R. Ward, who is Jessica Bird. Anne Rice and Stephen King have their own fanatic followings but they’re not really part of the current craze.
I am not the person to ask. I’m at most the person who knows where to point you to.
Thanks.
The funny thing about the genres is that “romance” used to mean what we would now call “fantasy”.
I see I’ve been beaten to most of my examples already, but it doesn’t look like anyone has mentioned the Bloodsucking Fiends humor/romance series by Christopher Moore.
In a more serious vein (heh) there’s Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula alternate history series.