Fifty Shades of Literary Pornography

Let me start out by being completely honest — I simply do not understand why the novel Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels are so incredibly popular and sell so well. To a certain extent this is understandable. As the saying goes, sex sells. Does it really sell so well in, say, Barnes and Noble for example? I am sure that it does, although it apparently is no longer done behind curtains and in shaded bags exclusively. When you go to a bookstore and head over to the magazine section, you will notice that all of the magazines that feature pornographic images are in shaded bags.

What is it about Fifty Shades of Grey that is so different? Somehow, when the author of the book series did a book signing, a huge crowd of people came to see the author, take her photograph, and just to be in her presence? This might also be the case if Larry Flynt were to have a signing of a book he were to write, but I can’t imagine that the hundreds of people would include mothers (stay at home and otherwise) and parents.

I have read many articles describing the books and what they all seem to dance around is the fact that the books are fundamentally not just literary pornography but literary pornography that involves extremely intense BDSM. Fans get together and discuss the BDSM in their own lives and how the books have vastly improved their escapades in the bedroom.

Then you have the mere fact that these books started as fan fiction of Twilight, a book series so poorly written that I thought that I would never have to mention on the Boles Blogs Network. The author had written fan fiction for the Twilight series because she loved the books so much and then when they were turned into the bestselling novels that they are now, names were changed and suddenly it was no longer fan fiction. I find this to be quite a distasteful way to write a book series.

I suppose time will tell if the success of this book series will lead to other books by the author that are not based on other books.