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The British public's unabashed appetite for erotica is continuing unchecked as EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy smashes sales record after sales record.
- Fifty Shades of Grey
- by E L James
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- Buy it from the Guardian bookshop
- Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book
James, a London-based former TV executive, is now the first author ever to see three of her books sell more than 100,000 printed copies in just one week. She has also broken the weekly sales record for a paperback novel after the first book in the trilogy sold 205,130 copies in seven days, beating the previous record of 141,000.
And she looks set to continue smashing sales records: after just two months, paperback sales for the first novel now total 765,000, a number Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, the bestselling paperback of all time, took over six months to reach.
"Sales of the Fifty Shades series have been nothing short of phenomenal and records are tumbling," said Philip Stone, charts editor of book trade magazine The Bookseller, predicting that the first novel would have sold a million copies by the end of June. "Of course this is just sales of the physical, print edition. It is no doubt breaking ebook download records too, meaning Fifty Shades of Grey is perhaps the fastest-selling adult novel of all time," added Stone.
The story of the submissive-dominant relationship between a literature student and a business executive, which started life as fan fiction, the Fifty Shades trilogy has sold over 2.75m copies in the UK, on top of sales of 15m copies sold in the US and Canada. The trilogy, the fastest-selling books of the year in the UK, has already been reprinted 16 times in the UK and publisher Arrow has just signed off on an additional reprint of 2.75m copies.
Reader reviews are split between the rapturous and the dismissive: of 1,215 write-ups on Amazon, around 600 readers gave it five stars, while 330 plumped for just one. "We particularly enjoyed the way Christian manages most of his sexual exploits either fully dressed (just a quick unzipping and a coy fiddle with a 'foil packet') or with his shirt (always white linen) still on, while Ana bit her lip, and breathed 'Oh my!' for the umpteenth time. So, really, this is as bad as people say – but for barely more than two quid it managed to provide hours of derisive laughter," wrote one reader.
Another was more positive: "After being ill for some considerable time and all thoughts of passion put on a back burner, I found this book making me look at my husband in a new light. Well, not a new light, but certainly one that had been dimmed by the mundane and everyday. We now enjoy each other's company more and make time for each other."
Comments
21 June 2012 5:02PM
Sex sells and has always sold; it's no small mystery that there's a healthy market for porn and written porn is in the grand scheme of things probably better overall than the filmed porn industry.
One thing people keep saying is that the books are "Twilight Fanfiction" or something - could someone enterprising enough to have read them explain? From my limited knowledge of both things I'm not sure there's many millionaire playboys in Twilight, or indeed raunchiness and I'm not sure there's any kind of un-dead in Fifty Shades of Grey.
21 June 2012 5:02PM
I have to give it to EL James. She is...or was...in the same boat I am in now. A self published author who was just trying to get her readers to read and feel the same passions she felt.
This book put me in the element of where I wanted to be, although her content was a bit elementary.
For a man of such intelligence and depth into the BDSM as Christian was into, he shouldn't have been 'gasping' and 'fluttering' like a school boy. In parts of the book I felt like I should have been 12, sneaking a copy of a dirty story and giggling at the naughty parts. After reading some of the other reviews about this overnight sensation of a book, I was hoping for a bit more of an adult content given to me in an adult way.
I will continue to read the other books in the series and I do wish EL James well in her success.
'Her Own Serenity' by Julia Becca leads a reader down a similar path but with more fantasy and a higher maturity.
21 June 2012 5:24PM
I don't think I'm going to bother reading these books but I'll certainly have a look at the pictures.
21 June 2012 5:32PM
I read two of the books and found them to be juvenile, in a smutty way, and especially degrading to women.
Of course, I am also not a Twilight fan, so I am obviously not in their target demographic.
I do think almost anything that stimulates the desire to read is good.
21 June 2012 6:00PM
Rubbish sells ! What's new? The downside is that these dire books will be clogging up charity shop shelves for decades to come-no pun intended-(unless they have a pulping/recycle plan like Oxfam)
As the great Saul Bellow said (via a character in his books) "All you need to make a million is fools. And there's a whole world full of them out there." So well done to EL James in outing so many of them for her benefit ! We all wish we had her luck!
21 June 2012 6:42PM
@R024 -
One thing people keep saying is that the books are "Twilight Fanfiction" or something - could someone enterprising enough to have read them explain? From my limited knowledge of both things I'm not sure there's many millionaire playboys in Twilight, or indeed raunchiness and I'm not sure there's any kind of un-dead in Fifty Shades of Grey.
I haven't read 50SoG, but it's simple enough - they aren't fanfic in their current form, but the first form of the story was about Edward and Bella, but with the romance playing out as a BDSM relationship (given the fact that Edward is creepy and controlling, I suspect that EL James has made the relationship much more healthy and functional). Then she re-wrote it as a story with a whollly human cast, but the same basic plot and relationship dynamics (so Christian is older and a millionaire, rather than a vampire). I can't say I'm keen to read it, but then I didn't like Twilight at all, so I wouldn't...
21 June 2012 7:00PM
I have never read anything as dull as this book. It has all the erotic power of a sledgehammer to the privates. Winsome gasps of 'Holy Crap' as Christian ripples out of his linen shirt causing he flower to moisten makes me want to dry heave, and endless dull emails going back and forth with nothing more than Christian very Grey extolling 'I am a lucky boy' and Anna whimpering to her flatmate trying to hide the fact that he has instructed her to buy an anal intruder. Jesus christ, we have brilliant novelists and poets and three quarters of Britain hasn't read Dickens or Ford Maddox Ford or Rushdie or Amis or even going foreign and reading Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. But no, the records are broken by this tawdry nonsense. Jeeeze!
21 June 2012 7:16PM
I've read an excerpt. It didn't encourage me to read any further, so my input here is qualified by that. If the standard of writing in a book doesn't appeal, there's nothing that will persuade me to carry on with it, short of putting a loaded gun to my head.
I think it's a pity that erotica has been so dumbed-down by these books - there are excellent examples of the genre out there just as there are dire ones, and this book / trilogy / whatever isn't excellent. Some reviewers in the media have said that it revived a flagging sexual relationship - maybe the good thing about these books is that they may encourage people to explore the genre a little more without embarrassment, and they'll find the writers who write erotica with intelligence and imagination. As it is, I fear that people will die laughing before they attain their little death.
21 June 2012 8:58PM
You know, there are plenty of really good erotic romance books and authors out there. Personally I think that 50 Shades is repetitive and overrated compared to some of the books I've read. If you want really good stuff there's a good site that specialise in it - total-e-bound. Some I would recommend if you enjoy this genre are Sierra Cartwright, Desiree Holt, Saskia Walker, Natalie Dae, Natasha Blackthorne, Justine Elyot. There are loads more, but that's a good start! :)
21 June 2012 10:00PM
This just says there is money in porn for women. Just most video porn currently features women doing the world's worst fake orgasms, which isn't convincing if you're female, or five blokes hitting a woman while choking her while forcing themselves on her in a painful way, which isn't rape but just looks like it.
21 June 2012 10:21PM
Trouble is, "50SofG" is outselling the whole lot of them put together, by a mile...!!!
21 June 2012 10:45PM
Fifty Shades of Shit.
21 June 2012 10:46PM
There are plenty of really good erotic romance books and authors out there. If you want really good stuff there's a great site that specialise in it - total-e-bound. Some I would recommend if you enjoy this genre are Sierra Cartwright, Desiree Holt, Saskia Walker, Natalie Dae, Natasha Blackthorne, Justine Elyot, Marie Haynes. There are loads more, but that's a good start! :)
22 June 2012 12:36AM
If people want literary smut, can't they just read de Sade?
At least he did filth and degradation properly.
22 June 2012 12:40AM
Fifty shades doesn't have vampires in it and it doesn't use the names Bella or Edward etc. It would be - presumably - against copyright if it did.
However Fifty Shades did start its life as a fan fic. It featured the characters Bella and Edward but put them into a different setting to the Twilight books/films. This is a common trope in fan fic.
So for example, take Star Trek slash fiction - man on man start trek action - which is where it all started. Many fan fic authors would write Kirk and Spock on the Enterprise as per the tv show - but many others might write Kirk as a clerk in a bookstore for example and Spock as the nerdy customer he falls in love with. The characters had the same overall characterisation but inhabited a different world.
Fifty Shades was called Masters of the Universe and was about Bella and Edward but it put them in a different world to the one in the actual books. So same characters - different world - as in Alternate Universe - an AU fan fic.
The book is almost the same as the fan fic, except she changed the characters names and their descriptions slightly. People have been writing 'fan fic' forever. If you take one of my fave books - Wide Sargasso Sea you could easily argue that it's a fan fic of Jayne Eyre. (not that I'm comparing that to Fifty Shades).
I bet right now there are publishers and agents trawling fan fiction net looking for the next big thing. Which is kind of amusing seen as fan fic was always so disparaged and now one has become the biggest selling paperback ever.