The ‘mummy porn’ author and the suburban bookshop
Fom BBC News Entertainment
The titillating Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has been whipping up eye-watering sales. Good news at last for bookshops. No. Wait. Many of these sales are digital.
“How many copies of the EL James book have you sold?”
“What?” says the mature grey-haired lady serving me in a small but well-stocked suburban bookshop. I repeat the question.
“Who?” she says, looking perplexed. “EL James, as in the novelist,” I explain. Nothing.
This is awkward. Although she is dressed in a standard bohemian granny outfit – loose t-shirt, shapeless skirt and sporty pumps, and has probably experimented with more substances than I’ve even heard of – the fact is she’s old enough to be my mother and therefore someone with whom I feel uncomfortable discussing “mummy porn” in any more detail than the author’s name.
I give it another try. “You know…,” I say, while supplementing my words with an unnecessarily gauche under-the-counter type mime “E… [nod] L… [wink]… James.”
She drops her thick-rimmed glasses below the bridge of her nose and looks at me with a pair of green-blue eyes that twinkle with intelligence and then speaks in a stage whisper, which I take to be a mark of respect for the great novels that line the walls of her store.
“I’m so sorry, do you have an ISBN number?” I think she’s becoming impatient.
But then how can anyone working in a bookshop anywhere on the planet not have heard of EL James, the subject of thousands of columns inches owing to her authorship of the erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, which has now sold over 10 million copies worldwide.
When our eyes meet again, Bohemian Granny suddenly clicks as if someone has actually dropped the proverbial penny in the slot.
“Oh her!” she says as if it’s me being dim. “Yes of course, what do you want to know?”
Well, not much. I’m across the basics. EL James’s real name is Erika Leonard, she lives in London, is middle-aged and tends to be described by the media slightly disapprovingly as “the mother of two teenage boys”. She started her literary career by posting stories on a fan fiction website under the heading Masters of the Universe, in which she took Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series as her starting point.
She then left that site due to the racy nature of her tales and started her own domain called 50shades.com. An independent Australian publisher saw the material and signed her up – turning a website into a book, which was then largely purchased as an e-book.
Sales were so good that the corporate publishing industry raced for the rights, with Random House winning the bid. The film rights went next, quickly followed by the unseemly sight of every major publisher in the world scrabbling around for some female-friendly porn to push.
I’m sorted on all that.
All I want to know is how many EL James books she has sold: a question I initially pose as a way of passing the time while she charges me £9.99 for Whoops! by John Lanchester. But having come this far, I’m now keen to know the answer.
“Two,” she replies.
“Two! Two? You must’ve shifted more than two over the past week.”
I’m astonished. This is a book that has sold 205,130 copies in the UK over the past week alone. A figure that has “obliterated the weekly sales record for a paperback novel”, according to this week’s The Bookseller (subscription only). It is, they say: “64,000 copies higher than the previous record set by Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol in 2010.”
If you add the sales of the two follow-up books in the saucy trilogy – Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed – to the total spent on her fiction over the past seven days, it would come to a combined figure of £1,934,500, which is more than the next 50 bestselling novels added together.
“Oh, you mean this week,” she says. “I haven’t sold any this week. Two is what I have sold in total.”
Surely not? I thought suburban Britain was supposed to be a hotbed of key-swapping swingers who would glory in EL James’s erotica.
“Who do you think is buying this book if not your customers?” I ask.
A look of inner confidence washes over her face. “Silly mothers,” she says with absolute certainty. “The giggly sort, not the type who would normally read a book.”
At which point a previously unseen presence makes itself felt in the shape of a younger woman who looks to be in her mid-30s. She has stepped out from behind a free-standing bookcase causing both me and the shopkeeper a little start of alarm as we thought we were alone. Nobody likes a lurker.
The woman is holding two paperbacks, neither of which is Fifty Shades. She wears tight jeans tucked into a pair of black leather boots, above which is a pink coat fastened by black horizontal leather straps and buckles. She has a short blonde bob and a feisty air.
“That’s a bit of a cliched caricature,” she pronounces.
Link to the rest at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18576914
I apologise for raising the spectre of the whips of 50 shades into your nightmares again, but not much. Will Gompertz is an intelligent fellow and a good writer. While I suspect there is more than a touch of agglomerated experience in this piece, the cold hard facts of the till-ringing this book has achieved is remarkable.
brendan
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
“…while she charges me £9.99 for Whoops! by John Lanchester.”
He doesn’t sound that intelligent to me. He could have bought that same book for £6.49 at Amazon UK, and it qualifies for Free Super Saver Delivery (if shipping to the UK, no minimum purchase price).
I thimk that was just an excuse to ask. Also, HOLY BATMAN, a bookstore selling a book for 9.99. Sorry, I’m used to $15-20, which is why I don’t go to bookstores anymore.
I don’t want to sound rude about anyone, but in my experience you could have a similar experience in any UK small indie provincial bookshop, about any big-time seller as revealed by the bestseller lists. I had a similar conversation about Jamie Oliver’s 2010 book, which at the time was the fastest-selling non-fiction book in history.
I wonder how some of these shops survive. But then, of course, increasingly, they don’t.
There is a tipping point coming.
And soon.
Fixed costs, smaller “bestseller” print runs, less print volume overall… not a good mix.
The publishers are stampeding to ebooks, bringing the backlist to digital to beef up their bottom line against the tipping point and the culling to follow. And in the process fortify the case for ebooks and undercut bookstores.
Tipping point just down the road.
And a second one a couple years beyond that will echo the LP to CD transition.
If the publishers had any sense, they’d translate these backlist e-books into POD titles.
Bookstores saved.
People will always want their favorite books in DTB format. Readers are collectors.
Absolutely. If I am looking for an older book it ussualy means the book means enough to me I want in in print.
B.S.
I would say it depends on your love for a book. If eBooks from traditional publishers become cheaper I think they will become the dominant purchase. However, if I ended up loving the book I’d definitely buy the print copy. A bookcase in whatever room still looks great, especially when filled with personal classics.
If I really like the book I want the digital version.
Paper decays, particularly cheap pulp used the mass market paperbacks and POD books. Not to mentions water damage, spills, fire, etc.
Digital is forever. You can get around the DRM, which isn’t that hard, and store the files locally or just keep them in Amazon’s cloud.
I have written to a number of authors asking them to hurry the (bleep) up and get their books online. A couple have actually responded which was interesting.
Don’t you love it when the pulp gets old? It has character digital can’t match, and that matters when you love a book.
Smelly, with cracked binding and missing pages? Sure, love that “character”.
Ha ha, that is annoying. But I love sniffing old books. Not all the time mind, just when one presents itself.
The smell gives me a headache.
You know ‘the I heart paper’ is such a writer thing. I’m not connected to paper myself because I’m writing for money (and a lifestyle), not love of books and writing, and will/would stop if the money dries up. Thankfully, I do ok without the writing bug. However, what I’ve realized over time is that most people younger than me, -30yrs, don’t care ‘much’ for paper. On the otherhand writers, esp. older ones, love paper. I wonder how many new writers care about paper (who aren’t initiated into the older writer’s group or some English major) and whether young kids will when they get older. Not many? I could be wrong.
When Tracy and Laura Hickman started their Dragon’s Bard series as a subscription service Tracy did several interviews. He explained that the Book was not the story but was a souvenir of the experience of the story. Its a concept the Trad Pubs have found difficult to understand.
B.S.
Mummy porn makes me think of something entirely different.
Somehow, I don’t think EL James fortifies the case for anything. Except for maybe the need for gatekeepers and professional reviewers.
Well, she benefited from the top editing money can buy through her New York publisher, turning what was originally only a casual piece of fan fiction into the literary masterpiece and runaway bestseller it has become.
When I think of New York traditional publishing, I turn again and again to the high and consistent quality of editing that refines and hones a book into such a polished final work that any flaws are virtually undefinable.
What traditional publishing brings is that extra care in crafting a polished prose with sharp dialogue and perfect pacing. And it’s quite obvious how “Fifty Shades” is the truest example of how this kind of keen eye toward bringing out the best in a project can lead to sales that reflect the added value that expertise can bring.
Bazinga!
Mummy porn makes me think of something entirely different.
Heh. 50 Shades of Tut? Bestselling papyrus of all time. (You know the Egyptians loved their sex. Ramses and Horus are obviously porn star names.)
Mummy porn makes me think of something entirely different.
Well, there are fetishes that involve lots and lots of plastic wrap or self-sticking bandages…
So, ah, same here. >_>
I have been waiting for paranormal romance to wander over to mummies. AFAIK the only “mummy” book was an episode of BtVS and “The Mummy” by Anne Rice.
One of Tanya Huff’s excellent Blood Ties books involves a mummy. (No mummy sex, though.)
The initial four volume set involved the four classic Universal monsters, reinterpretted: a vampire suspect in one, werewolf victims in another, a mummy villain, and a mad scientist/body snatcher in the fourth. The fifth featured a ghost at which point she took the narrative to a different protagonist.
Highly recommended series, in both print and video.
Too bad the series didn’t last.
It WAS very, very good. I enjoyed the books.
As for the series well…Henry can bite me any night. LOL
I’ve read “mummy porn” before. (Just sampling the erotica market at random – I didn’t look for it.)
It wasn’t as wrapped up in the end as I expected.
“There is a tipping point coming.”
Felix (and Warren,)
I think that’s the point about what Gomperz was saying, also revealing his own realization of what is happening.
The tipping point has already arrived, it’s just the threshing that’s taking place hasn’t washed out yet. That bookshop is almost certainly heading South.
“And a second one a couple years beyond that will echo the LP to CD transition.”
LOL, Whoah on that one. CD’s are almost dead, and weirdly, Vinyl LP’s are coming back. Some artists are noting that certain fans prefer the softer tones in vinyl and are pressing limited runs.
In the music game, the wash out has been incredible, but artists are learning and much as writers, doing it by themselves. There are some awful records being produced by artists who haven’t realized that you cannot replace good side players and session men with samples, vocoders, drumbeats and Maschine/Komplete. Nothing replaces good session players.
Lot of crowd funding going on, and on all the one’s I’ve funded, there has been the option of vinyl, usually at about $20-30 a pop.
brendan
You’ve just shown how apt the anaology really is. I’m positive that once the didital book publishing shakedown has settled down some, and the vast majority of books published will be digital only, paper books will also make a “comeback” in limited copy runs created at high cost for collectors.
The LP business had one critical feature in common with pbooks: retailer returns.
The tipping point came when the studios/publishers could no longer afford to accept returns. Overnight, the majority of record stores became Tape and CD stores.
Without returns the economics of mass-market LP became untenable and the economics of print books–so dependent on mass market “bestsellers”–are close to that tipping point.
But we haven’t yet reached that point.
Sooner or later, retailers will be told: “You ordered it, you bought it.”
That’s when it hits the fan.
Cool finish!
I snark at the assertion she had to leave the fan fiction world because her book was too racy? I guess maybe for Twilight characters, yes, but for fan fiction, not even close.
Exactly. I’ve written smuttier fanfic than what I’ve heard of 50 Shades. *snort*
I don’t recall where Masters of the Universe was originally posted, but fanfiction.net, possibly the biggest fanfic site, doesn’t allow stories over a certain rating, so it could have been kicked off for that. There’s plenty of other places to post fanfic without getting your own site, though…
The “rule” at ff.net is you can’t have explicit descriptions of sex. The problem is that ff.net has so much content and so few staff that they really can’t monitor new stories. So racy sex stories are usually fine until someone complains or it gets too popular. My understanding is that MotU (Mo-tOOOOO, rhymes with Ah-choo)had both problems. It got popular and people reported the story for explicit content.
FF.net isn’t like AO3 or a kink meme. Hmmm… think I just revealed a lot about myself.
“I don’t recall where Masters of the Universe was originally posted, but fanfiction.net”
Clare,
That’s where. FFN had a problem with MOTU because, while they had stated in the TOS that they don’t allow mucky stuff, they hadn’t policed it too hard.
MOTU was so popular that it drew attention to itself.
At the moment, following the actions of some concerned citizens for decency, (or some such wallop) FFN are removing lots of filth.
They are also preparing for much greater advertising on-site, so that’s got something to do with it.
“There’s plenty of other places to post fanfic without getting your own site, though…”
That there is, but be aware that not all USA based host sites permit anything smutty. Some of them can get quite aerated at the mildest form.
Check the TOS very carefully.
brendan
brendan,
Based on your name I am going to assume that you are male, please forgive me if I am incorrect in that assumption.
I find it very funny that the two people who know ALL about fan fiction’s porn rules are male (contrary to the assumptions people make about fan fiction readers/writers, or maybe just affirming assumptions about porn).
“AO3″
Christian,
Is that, “An Archive Of Our Own.”
http://archiveofourown.org/
I love the presentation on that site, it looks so beautiful. Lawdy, they could teach FFN a thing or two:)
brendan
Yeppers. It’s very much FF.net 2.0 (or maybe 3G depending on how you want to use marketing speak to count things).
I prefer AO3 for usability reasons, though I do agree it looks better than the “new” FF.net design. Tagging, Kudos, searching by subject matter, Pseuds, Collections, Bookmarks, Series, these are all amazing features and the reason why I will wonder over to AO3 for something new to read before I hit up Amazon. It’s just more useful and far easier to find things. I hope that someday goodreads/Amamzon/BN etc borrow heavily from otwarchive.
“you are male”
Christian,
Yup, hairy armpits, knuckles dragging along the ground:)
“I find it very funny that the two people who know ALL about fan fiction’s porn rules are male (contrary to the assumptions people make about fan fiction readers/writers, or maybe just affirming assumptions about porn).”
I’m not sure I have too many assumptions about anything to do with sex. Really. Only reason I know that one bit about FFN, was because I wrote ONE single story that got a bit near the knuckle and one of the three chapters was constantly being taken down. This was maddening, because it was by far my most popular story.
I wondered why, so I nagged FFN and eventually found out. I hadn’t read MOTU, and haven’t read 50 shades. It’s just there’s a real forum discussion going on about muck on FFN now, with them cutting so many stories. It’s causing real aggravation because a lot of the writers used FFN as their archive, which was pretty dumb, but it happens.
Regarding web sites…for many years I have been a professional photographer. I’ve taken a lot of what “I” regard as tasteful nudes. One web site I set up, which was based in TN originally, nearly went bat **** crazy when they saw the contents of my web site gallery.
Being as the USA is the home of porn, it was quite a surprise.
I make no assumptions, in a long life, we all got different tastes. If I was Emperor, the law would be, don’t frighten the horses, be kind unless it’s not possible.
brendan