At the Frankfort book fair, publishers bid the novel up to a six-figure advance against sales in 30 different territories worldwide. The widespread success of Fifty Shades has clearly left publishers hungry for a repeat, but these particular publishers are clueless gits. I predict that S.E.C.R.E.T. will go just as far as the publishers' marketing machine can push it, there'll be no worldwide cascade of interest. After the marketing machine push is over, it'll drop like a lead balloon, going only so far as its astroturf runway permits.
It was the kinky sex, specifically the dominance/submission relationship between Ana and Christian, that made Fifty Shades of Grey so popular. The importance of the kinky sex is so freaking obvious that even the mainstream media reviewers sometimes saw it, but I can just SEE the publishers wishfully thinking, "Well this book has plenty of sex, and none of that problematical kinky sex!"
Fools. If S.E.C.R.E.T. were a stock and I were a stockbroker, I'd wait til it hit a hundred thousand copies sold (the outer limit of where its astroturf sales will go) and then I'd short it like crazy.
2 comments:
It's very petty of me, but I can't remember ever having wanted something to flop so hard as I want this to flop in my life.
It's not petty at all. We all want kinky erotic romances to succeed, if S.E.C.R.E.T. succeeds beyond it's marketing muscle, it may very well be the death knell for kinky erotica selling for big advances to mainstream publishers, bad news for us as well. It's simple self-interest, that's not petty at all. I have no animus toward the author of S.E.C.R.E.T. but I hope her book flops so hard the publishers' grandchildren wet themselves whenever they hear the word "secret."
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