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.
OK, that… only sort of makes me feel better but I was up late wondering “FUCKIGN HOW” and I can absolutely see “local shitshow attracts attention of people who already had bones to pick and aneed for money and thus becomes way more popular than it needs to be”
It’s mildly comforting in a way, that it’s that kind of hyperbolic nonsense and not IDK, the work of some kind of creepy publicaction-house fetish club or something.
This isn’t the first time this sort of thing, for better or
for worse, has happened – back in the 1950s, when Bonjour Tristesse, by then-18-year-old Françoise Sagan, was
successful enough in France to get picked up by North American publishers, it
created enough of a mini-trend for “racy novels by precocious teen girl authors”
to get Pamela Moore’s Chocolates For
Breakfast published; the latter is now considered something of a minor LGBT
classic.
Mooncustafer 