Fifty Shades: e-Readers, pornography and a literary boom

About a month ago, I had the pleasure of finally meeting Pino, editor of Bibliomula, in person. During a tour of my favourite London bookshops, I pointed out the piles and piles of Fifty Shades and was surprised to learn that the series hadn't reached Venezuela yet. Intrigued, Pino asked me to write about the novels, their background and their impact. My article is now available here, but if you don't speak Spanish, here it is in English.

The Fifty Shades phenomenon may not have reached Venezuela yet, but it has swept the English speaking world, getting millions of women talking, and more importantly, reading. As an ardent bibliophile, I should be very happy about this legion of new readers; I only wish they were reading something better!

Fifty Shades of Grey, and its two sequels, tell the story of shy virgin Anastasia Steele and her sexual awakening at the hands (and other parts) of her domineering boss, business magnate Christian Grey. Its author, E. L. James (real name Erika Leonard), started writing fan-fiction in 2009 under the pseudonym ‘Snowqueens Icedragon’. Three years later, she is in Time magazine’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in the World. Fifty Shades of Grey has surpassed sales of the entire Harry Potter series put together on Amazon, making James the best-selling Brisith author ever, reportedly earning over £6000 an hour from sales of her series. So how did a novel that started life as an online adult retelling of Twilight end up causing such a stir?

Fifty Shades is a key example of the way that the Internet and e-Readers are changing the book market. James first shared her story with her online community of Twilight fan-fiction readers and writers. Because it contains multiple graphic sex scenes – terribly written, repetitive and riddled with euphamisms like ‘inner goddess’ but graphic nonetheless – people began to talk about it. James then made her novel available for free in e-Reader format. It is no secret that the advent of e-Readers, which make it impossible for anyone else to see what you are reading in public, has given rise to a boom in erotic literature aimed at women. Amazon has thousands of novels – dubbed ‘mummy porn’ – available for free or next-to-nothing. The experts say that women have always feared shame or public disapproval too much to indulge their sexual urges reading pornographic novels in public, but will happily do so in secret. Fifty Shades therefore found a significant audience, and in January 2012 news networks began to use the series as an example of the rise in popularity of female erotica. The news stories created such a buzz around the series that even more people wanted to read it, to be part of the discussions sparked by the controversial novel. Never one to miss an opportunity to make money, the publishing industry quickly got on board, and Vintage Books published paperback editions of the series in April. By that time, everyone knew what Fifty Shades was and it had become so fashionable to read it that it was no longer necessary to hide behind an e-Reader: the front cover boldly proclaims the title and the explicit content. Piles and piles of the series now adorn the tables of every bookshop in England and other authors and publishers keen to take advantage of the boom are rapidly putting out their own copy-cat books. A mini sexual revolution has occured in publishing, thanks to the combination of e-Readers and gossip.

On the surface, all of this makes me very happy. While e-publishing is often cited as the death of books, it makes me very happy to witness an example of self-publishing leading to astounding success in traditional publishing. That people are flocking to bookshops and spending money on novels in the age of TV, computer games and social media can only be good news. That the book has sparked a new climate of openness towards female sexuality is surely a positive thing. Yet I still hate Fifty Shades and wish that people would read anything else.

The main plot of the novel is that Christian introduces Anastasia to BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism, and Masochism). I’m an ‘each to their own’ kind of girl, and have no problem with people doing whatever they want with each other in the comfort of their bedrooms as long as it is consensual and safe. The problem with Fifty Shades is that Christian intimidates Ana into doing things she is clearly not comfortable with, and physically harms her. When he leaves her terribly beaten, she says it is her own fault because she forgot to use the safe-word. This is dangerously close to the rationalisations of so many women who suffer domestic abuse and not something we should be encouraging. Moreover, Christian’s domination of Ana extends beyond the bedroom, as he controls every aspect of her life. He treats her awfully and yet Anastasia adores him and insists that if she pleases him now, she can ‘fix’ him later. Anastasia is clearly an idiot. Not only because her logic is entirely flawed – she will never change him if she keeps pandering to his every desire – but also because every sentence out of her mouth is utterly vacuous, matching the dire literary quality of the rest of the book. Much like Twilight itself, it is obviously the fantasy of a bored middle-aged woman in desperate need of a thesaurus. Yet its fame guarantees that a whole generation of women will grow up thinking it is not only acceptable but actually desirable to have a man control you, treat you terribly and even physically harm you against your will. So, as much as I appreciate this new literary boom, I worry where it might lead.