So I will be writing a book on Avril's life and career.

The extent of my experience with Avril was seeing her in concert on her last tour. I never met her.

However Bandaids has had several opportunities to meet her at events, such as launching Abbey Dawn at Boathouse in Canada, the Avril Lavigne album release party, and several other events. We even got the chance to interview her backstage at rehearsal for a performance during the Avril Lavigne era in 2013. I'm sure we can manage to dig up some photos or videos from those events.

This is basically her only supremely active fansite at the moment, there are some others but they are in other countries. This is her most active English speaking one. It used to be far more active a few years ago but unfortunately the staff who ran it dropped the ball and we had to start over from scratch. A lot of the old members have left for various reasons. The reason you're having a hard time finding fans who remember her from her early career is probably honestly because a lot of them have outgrown Avril since then. The old site we had disappeared for awhile without any explanation and I think that caused a lot of our active members to give up and leave and they never returned. She's also not really active in music right now so there isn't a lot of reason for people to visit the site as they do when she has new music out. 

I have been a fan since 2002, starting with LG, but I was very young then, didn't have access to much Internet stuff, and so I don't really have any recollection of the events that occurred at that time in her career, I only have seen videos online, but I never "experienced" it as it happened, so to speak. Anything from the GL or AL eras I have followed directly as they happened in real time. There's probably still a few fans from the early days kicking around somewhere, but you may not be able to find them easily. As I said, I think unfortunately in the last few years of her career some of her fans outgrew her. 

As far as getting in touch with her management goes, I'm really not sure who you can contact. I know her current manager is Larry Rudolph of Reindeer Entertainment. In the good old days of the site we had connections with Avril's team and were able to communicate with them more but now we've kind of lost those connections due to those people leaving the staff of the site. There are some members/fansites who Avril follows on Twitter and they are able to DM her. But as far as getting in touch with her team, I really don't know of anyone you can contact besides maybe her manager. And he only began managing her since a few years ago. The team she had back in her early career no longer works with her and it'd probably be pretty difficult to try to get in touch with any of them at this point. 

In this thread avrilbandaids.boards.net/thread/1386/knock-on-door-cliff-fabri you can find a blog post that was written by Avril's very first manager Cliff Fabri, where he speaks about a lot of things that went down when they were getting LG together. You may be able to find some info there. Unfortunately I think if you even managed to be able to contact him or anyone else who worked with Avril early on, they probably are under some kind of contract where they aren't allowed to discuss Avril because she's no longer a client of theirs or there is probably certain information they can't reveal. 

I think a lot of Avril's old fans also moved on - with her style changing and all that.
Have you thought of visiting Napanee if it is at all possible for you? I'm sure that some people who have worked with her/knew her still are around there. Even the simple pizza place.
I was very young when I became a fan of Avril and I've never met her or even seen her live, so I may not be of much help personally.

You could also try to branch out to other countries. I speak fluent Russian, Spanish and Polish and could try to find some active fansites and spread your message there if you want?

Gosh I don't really know how to help you out here aha

There are so many old books on her but I don't really see a market for a book on Avril. I mean, fans wouldn't buy it because we already know everything there is to know about her. The only book on Avril fans would buy and the GP would buy is one written by Avril. Other than that, you are probably going to waste your time.

Have you ever watched some of her old documentaries like Born to Be? The Skater Girl one is unauthorized but it contains interviews with people who knew her before she was famous. You may find some of that useful.

I've been a fan of hers before complicated got big. She was on Much MOD and I thought she was soo awesome. MuchMusic use to make up new shows just to have something Avril on. It was go great. I still have so many shows recorded on VHS. Some of the show they had was so pointless but whatever i got to watch avrils music videos. and all the entertainment shows use to have something about Avril every other day if not every day. haha i miss those days when Avril was on the tube everyday.