The S.E.C.R.E.T. Of No Success

The S.E.C.R.E.T. ... going down ... but with nothing like the style of your average Kink.com model. 
This one was so predictable that I am surprised it has taken until now for it to happen. Publishers have decided that then Next Big Thing after Fifty Shades of Grey will be a sexy, sexy novel with lots and lots of vanilla sex and not all that problematical kinky sex, and they've found their book, they think: S.E.C.R.E.T., a relentlessly vanilla sexy novel by Canadian author Lisa Gabriele (writing as L. Marie Adeline).

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.