The Next Fifty Shades of Grey

"So you think you're gonna be the next Fifty Shades of Grey author, eh? I don't THINK SO!" she cried as she put her opponent in a full Authorial Submission Vagina Sleeper Hold. Image source: Ultimate Surrender.com.
Here you'll see the latest book being touted as the next Fifty Shades of Grey. I'm not even going to mention the title in this story, I've seen dozens of such stories since Fifty Shades of Grey came out, and you know what the title “The Next Fifty Shades of Grey” has come to mean to me? It means “Also Ran.”

The success of Fifty Shades was not a matter of being well written, it was a matter of time, and tides. It was the first time a bit of fanfic (of the Twilight books) with the numbers filed off had ever had great success. It was the burgeoning of the long-building move of romance books toward more powerful sex scenes, and of the transformation of the traditional old bodice ripper romances to straightforward stories with themes of bondage, dominance and submission, along with the breakout of romance writers from the stranglehold of traditional romance publishers to the freedom of self-published ebooks. Finally, it was the rise of ebooks as a valid format for good writers.

It was ALL of these factors working together that made “Fifty Shades of Grey” such a tremendous success. I'm not saying it wasn't a well-written book, it WAS a well written book, but it's quality had a lot more to do with the understanding of its subject matter and its audience's interests than it had to do with literary sylishness (the basic gripe most of the lit-crit types have with the book is over style, not substance). In fact, it was arguably the feedback and editing that James got from the Twilight fandom community when she was working on "Master of the Universe," the fanfic story that became Fifty Shades of Grey, that made the book work so well.

There will be other very successful bondage-themed novels, and many will be very well written books indeed. But they will stand on their own as what they are. There will never be “another Fifty Shades of Grey” and saying that your book is such is more an admission of defeat than anything else. But there will be many, many books touted as “the next Fifty Shades of Grey” because marketers think it's a good “hook” for touting a book.

They would not think so if they understand the success of Fifty Shades of Grey the way I understand it.

Sites of Grayness

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

50 Shades of Grey: The Next Mainstream Bondage Romance?

"You understand, I wouldn't do this for just ANY billionaire!" Image source: Kink.com shoot 14648, "Kara Price" featuring Kara Price and Mark Davis.
It's been a long time since there was a breakout bondage romance in mainstream media, and it looks like the drought is over: Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James, a London television executive who got published by a small Australian publisher and who is not getting wall to wall buzz for her book.

It's the story of a hot young woman seduced by a bondage-loving billionaire and all the deliciously naughty things he does to her. It's doing tremendously well in terms of sales and it has the buzz machine going on overtime. How successful is it? Well I linked to the Kindle version of 50 Shades because the paperbacks, which were printed in a small run initially, were going for $105.00 each on Amazon when I created the link. The Kindle version is only $6.95, so ... I figured most would prefer it. It's being called everything from Pornography for Mommies to Twilight for adults.

Now, there's an interesting story there. Fifty Shades of Grey apparently started out as Twilight fan fiction. And the Twilight fanbase adopted it as a tribute to the wonderful Twilight books (you know, Stephenie Myers' series about a vacuous high school girl who is inexplicably attractive to vampires). Then, the narrative goes, she somehow sneakily rewrote it as her own creative work, USING the Twilight fandom community to promote her book.

By all accounts, it's hard to see how 50 Shades is Twilight fanfic, so I'm not sure I buy this narrative, though it's apparently true that James wrote fanfic in the Twilight community as Icedragon Snowqueen. I really don't know enough to have an opinion, having read neither book. (Oh, I'm gonna read 50 Shades!) But it's some great gossip!

It's interesting, almost always, when a bondage story breaks over into the mainstream, it's a romance. Spicy romances, to be sure, with plenty of sex, but the feel of the genre is unmistakable: Story of O, 9 1/2 Weeks and 50 Shades all are about women who have relationships with a single man who brings out the submissive in them, while they bring out the dom in him. Secretary would be the film equivalent, I suppose.

I'm always interested in bondage that makes it into the mainstream, maybe 50 Shades will be the novel that becomes the gateway fiction that leads readers to find all the great erotic bondage fiction out there. Fiction like: Karg!

Did I mention there are already two sequels to 50 Shades out?