Contrary to popular belief, Fifty Shades of Grey was not just picked up off of fanfic net or wherever the fuck she hosted that Twilight rip off, resulting in insta fame and riches. It was in fact a self published novel through a print on demand indie press, before being acquired by a “reputable” publisher back in 2012.
The erotica gods flipped a coin that year it seems, Crucifix Nail Nipples or Fifty Shades. What a choice.
Like I said, James was self publishing through a small print on demand company in Australia at the time, where it was largely unsuccessful and would have stayed that way if it hadn’t started to circulate through the word of mouth of a few well known book bloggers, some trashing it for the pile of shit that it was, and others who presumably have no idea what safe kink is, claiming it as revolutionary.
Which in turn lead to it being a sort of “oooh mommy porn on the rise, harmless fun or sinister decline in societal morals” think piece on local media, which in turn made more people interested in it, leading to legitimate publishers sitting up and going “but we want some of that money” and cutting James a deal and throwing a legitimate budget behind it, because presumably some people just want to watch the world burn.
To add insult to injury, the resulting success of Fifty Shades also caused Ann Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series to be reprinted, much to the dismay of anyone who had the misfortune to read it the first time.
Seriously. Don’t do it. It’s really not worth feeling like you need to remove your eyeballs and scour them with steel wool until the itching in your soul stops. I’m not trying to be funny here. That series is Not Okay. I draw the line at very few things, but Anne Rice and Sleeping Beauty went so far over that line it’s just a dot in the horizon. Love yourselves and read something else.
So yea. The short answer is: chance and luck. Oh she persevered with her fanbase to be sure, and that counts for something. But a lot of it was also luck, and being used as a rallying cry for white suburban mom’s everywhere to sassily inform everyone who didn’t even care, not to tell them what to enjoy and how sexual desire in women is healthy tyvm. Even if the book is a total odds with actual feminism, female empowerment, or anything remotely linked to healthy sex and resulted in a rise in sex related injuries everywhere.
Seriously, if I find out any of you are using zip ties in your kink for anything other than equipment storage, I will personally emerge from the void with safety cutters and a long talk about safe, sane consensual kink, so help me gods.
EL James is in marketing and what she did was brilliant
oh the book sucks worse than a black hole with something to prove and is just as dangerous [it’s fine the further from it you stay] but basically she manipulated fandom to a degree that is terrifying but genius
the chances were the story was written and waiting for a fandom when she picked twilight for its popularity, there is nothing in the books where you can say oh this character is Esme etc, even for AU this is basically an original novel, and they were clearly written beforehand because she posted them on schedule and never missed one
every fanficcer knows that this is the best thing to do with long fics for consistent hits because it keeps it at the front page of the posted fics, this attracted drive-by traffic and she started to create word of mouth, positive word of mouth doesn’t do much but negative word of mouth spreads like the flu
people started to read it – not because it was good – but because everyone said it was bad and it was basically mediocre but having been told how awful it was everywhere it seemed much better in comparison so they’d leave comments to that point saying how good it was
that’s about when she dropped the news it was going to be an original on Pay on demand, and took pre-orders. With those and the pages of comments she took it to a publisher who was interested in dumping it in their slush pile [ie published cheaply intending for it to be popular for a while and then vanishing into the ether] when James did it again
she sent out the book calling it a super popular fanfic [she had the hits to back that up but when your story has like 100 chapters it’s easy to generate hits, because people coming back the next day are a new hit] for reviews and it validated what people believed they already knew than fanfic was low quality
but the fans bought the book to support her and that generated worldwide sales, because it was a fraction of the price of the POD version and they wanted to support her, so reviewers went oh it must be popular because everyone bought it and so they read it, this meant the book started to appear more on search engines, it started to trend, and because everyone was talking about it they bought it to see what the fuss was
this made the book a bestseller [and the momentum had to be fast because the fact it was a stinking turd would destroy it] but to be a NYT best seller you only need to sell 5000 copies in a week, it becoming a NYT best seller and everyone calling it “Mommy porn” as in really bad porn for soccer moms to talk about at the PTA with no one being offended, it moved to super markets and EL James sold the licence to EVERYONE who would buy it, there were albums [which was entirely music in the public domain], etc and this looked like a juggernaut that would not stop when they signed the movies and everyone phoned it in, and all those people who didn’t read but wanted to know what the hype was went to see it and said what just about everyone who had read it already knew – it was a stinking turd and even amazing actors getting paid to be there phoned it in [Jamie Dornan is excellent in everything else]
and the films suffered from it – the box office was good for a week or two and then bombed because you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear
but considering how cleverly marketting was managed and how brilliantly the fans were manipulated [Marvel used the same technique for later comic book movies, get as much press built up before the film was revealed to stink] you kind of have to admire her
then you read the book and go you deserve nothing
Legit Question you might be able to shed some light on: How the FUCK did 50 shades get published? rapeyness and thematic issues aside, it reads like something that wouldn’t get past quality control, let alone something they’d build a goddamn campagin around. What happened?
Published
Tumblr backup 