There is no escape from the Shades of Grey. The books are all over Amazon, the news, the review sites. A commenter at agent Kristin Nelson’s blog confessed that she and her friends had inhaled them:
I’ll man up. I read the hell out of it. All three installments in two and a half days. 800,000 words. BOOM. Just like that. I think I gave it four stars on Goodreads or something.
And here’s why: I couldn’t put it down.
True, it’s technically a mess. It’s randomly punctuated. The dialogue is all over the place. The characters are bipolar. The sex is vanilla. Typos abound (at one point Christian stared at Ana like “a bacon in the night” which made a weird sort of sense, actually). Ana has this really weird habit of doing figure skating jumps off gymnastics apparatuses. And it started out as fanfic, which I get the impression I’m supposed to be all up in arms about. But holy cow. Do you know the last time I read that many words in such a short period of time? Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Here’s what I think people don’t understand: Good hardly ever factors into popular or entertaining. People aren’t going to youtube, for example, to watch someone do something meaningful or profound. They’re going to watch some guy stick a lit firecracker up his bum. I would rather see Sharktopus than The English Patient. That’s just how I roll.
So there’s something to be said for things that are a little bit campy. I’m a little bit campy. So are my friends. When I got to the point in the book where I realized it was going to be one THOSE stories (I didn’t see a lot of Twilight in 50 Shades, but it totally read like “crack-fic” fan-fiction), the first thing I did was go on Facebook and tell two of my friends, “Hey, you have to read this.” Because it was absolutely the kind of book they would love. And they did love it.
Nine copies sold between the three of us. We all felt like we got our money’s worth. Not because it was good, remember, but because it spoke that little spot in our hearts that loves those kinds of stories. The fact that it was kind of poorly written just made it that much better.
And I can’t explain why that is. I don’t know why this book, with its myriad of flaws, the least of which being its word count, held me captive in a way that other, arguably “better” books didn’t.
Well, who can argue with that?
This is the culture we live in, it’s useless to deny it. People would rather see Sharktopus than The English Patient, they would rather eat a homogenous, heat-lamped McBurger for $.99 than a plate of seasonal roasted asparagus for $5.00. They’re not after nutritional value or beauty or subtlety, they’re after cheap, government-subsidized non-food that tastes the same every time you eat it. Give ‘em your dollar, snarf it down, look for more. This is where we are.
This is the zeitgeist.
Any other epiphanies for a Sunday morning?
“And a bla-di-da
crazy man boobs
lookin for a tune
of casserole
slinking scratching
scrotum popping
a-hum a-hum
stick it where that sun
mi’ not shine, shite and fight
And a bla-di-da.”
(left out the sorcerers, vampires and non-humans. Sorry, next time.)
– me
Think this could sell?
You’ve got boobs and scrotum, and, weirdly, a casserole. Fuck yes, it will sell.
“You’ve got boobs and a scrotum. . .”
Erhm, your poem does, anyway.
No way I’m buying anything with a popped scrotum, but a good casserole gets me in every time.
Please add one billionaire and a pinch of well-rounded arse and publish as KindlePoetryFanFicFuckMeItsCasseroleMan and the ScrotumPoppedKid.
There’s a saying: if you’re selling diamonds, you can’t except everyone to buy. In no way do I resent it when somebody makes the beaucoup bucks for writing trash because that is the way of the world, and getting more so every day. Once in a while we see an exception, but we shouldn’t count on it. But aren’t all writers hoping against hope to be the exception?
I don’t have a problem with an honest person getting paid for honest work, and I can’t see that this author has done anything wrong. She wrote something people are digging the hell out of. She wrote it for love, and I think readers are responding to that.
I’m more interested in the cultural shift. It’s not like this author is the only person self-publishing unedited work. This stuff is flooding the marketplace. What does it mean? What will it mean a couple of decades from now?
It’s a strange time to be starting out as a writer.
I just looked through my old agent rejections from 2004 (for the first novel, which is now languishing in basement storage. FOREVER). I remember feeling so frustrated back then because I was just entering the game when the industry seemed so dire. One agent actually told me that if it had been 10 years earlier, she believed she could have sold my novel to a great literary imprint at a big house. But not today, she told me.
Back in 2004 I felt like I’d come along too late in the game. Imagine how I feel now! I had so many long, detailed rejection letters from agents back then. We’re talking 1-2 full typed pages, single spaced. I’m not saying I expect agents to use their valuable time responding to people they ultimately don’t take on, just that the game seems to have changed even more. Back then these agents saw the promise in my work, even if the novel wasn’t ready, and gave me attention. (I can’t imagine what would have happened then if I had my current novel to show them…) But now there’s no time/money/point in doing that and it just gets bleaker and bleaker.
Ugh. i can’t even stand to listen to myself. I should just make myself a t-shirt that says Debbie Downer and be done with it.
Make another tee-shirt for me.
Literary writers have it the hardest at the moment. Your work is introspective and it relies on beautiful language, and those things require a patient reader who is invested in hearing the conversation. It’s hard for a quiet voice to be heard when everyone else is shrieking.
I want a tee shirt, too.
This agent story is eerily similar to mine. I’ve only had my agent for about 5 years, but have seen a huge change in attitude in just the past 2 years. I guess we just have to hang in there and try to navigate the shifting waters.
It’s naive not to recognize the evolving market, though some of the people in my life are sooooo sick of my moaning. You’re a storyteller, they say. Just write and speak about that. Right. Okay. Go away. You wouldn’t say that to a money manager, but The Writer is supposed to be above the market’s influence. Unfortunately, we’re not…
A writer is supposed to be an artist who doesn’t care about things like the electric bill and her child’s college fund, but here in the real world, such things exist and must be paid for. The maddening part about writing is that it’s almost impossible to write well–or write at all, in my case–about a subject that doesn’t interest you. It’s such a long, tedious process that the only way to get through it is to be passionately invested in the story.
*expect. I don’t know why I bother making a correction, since they don’t seem to be necessary to get published, even for big money.
Even a parody of Shades got a publisher.
Of course, it’s a hilarious, well-written parody, by Andrew Shaffer: http://www.evilreads.com/fifty-one-shades/
Started reading this, and you are so right.
“He extends his right hand. “The pleasure was all on this end,” he says, smiling. I shake his hand, and feel the jolt of electricity again from him. He laughs and raises his hand to show me the joy-buzzer in his palm. What a prankster! “Good day, Anna.” ”
I’m dying. The inner goddess, zapped!
I’m only at the receptionist part and am already in love.
“I assume she’s the receptionist, because I can’t think of any other reason she would be sitting behind the receptionist’s desk. Unless maybe she’s filling in for the real receptionist, who is on her lunch break. But then I remember: It’s almost two, and I doubt anyone takes their lunch breaks that late. So this must be the receptionist.”
If you consider a book mere product, then it’s simply a matter of taste, and she deserves every cent. And in one sense, it is just a product, unless you write something that isn’t. But from what I understand, it’s not just a lack of editing, it’s bad writing. Or does editing turn bad writing into good? I have no clue about these things.
I don’t know the whole story behind this, but my understanding is that the books were written as fan-fiction, so she probably never intended them to be a product at all. Someone saw money in them, and off she goes.
The thing is, fanfic and self-published books are not necessarily books as we’ve always understood them. They don’t go through the processes of editing and beta readers and selection and more editing and publishing and cover design and all the rest of it. It’s straight from the writer’s head to the page to the reader. (Sometimes.) A lack of concern with craftsmanship is becoming more and more widespread and acceptable.
I sound like an old fogey.
And I fear I sounded like a bitch with that last comment. I was both trying to understand (which I now do) and disagree politely (which I need some tutoring in). I know nothing about fanfic, although I can understand the impulse. I finished scanning Gone with the Wind and daydreamed about writing the sequel, especially after reading negative reviews of Scarlett.
“Does editing turn bad writing into good?”
I don’t think it can do that. But it can make something better out of something that has something already but isn’t quite working. And it can provide the final fixes to a good thing that needs a fresh set of eyes.
And sometimes it can just blow the fucking mind. One of my stories had an encounter with an editor over the past couple of weeks. She took a 610-word story and edited it down to 150 words. It’s as though she took a dump truck and rebuilt it as a dune buggy. Her approach turned my head right around and I’m still dizzy.
Wow, I’d love to see the before and after.
I had a good morning smoking weed and editing, then I went for a hike. Priorities, people.
Today is my mom’s birthday. We’re all going to her house to cook up a vegan extravaganza: tomato soup, caramelized onions on fake-cheese toast, roasted veggies, pie for dessert. I plan to get hammered on pinot grigio and make an ass of myself with the people who have grown to expect it of me.
Good times.
Seriously Tetman, how do you do that ?
Back in the days I was a professional weedsmoker, I couldn’t even read. My eyes would follow the words of page one, I’d go to turn the page, reealise I had no memory of what I just read, and start at the start again. After about 10 minutes or so of page one, I’d give up trying and go back to work… It’s hard work, 100 bongs a day, but somebody had to do it.
At 38 years of age I suddenly stopped. I think I was full.
And Averil, if you would go to my family occasions you could just pretend to be me in a dress. We seem to have the same expectations put on us.
I don’t know why it works the way it does, but it does. I’ve been working on this project for five months and a certain momentum had been achieved. Everything was falling together over the past few days and this evening I finished the fucker almost without realizing it.
Hot damn, Tetman, you’re on a roll! Congratulations!
Vegan? Your mama’s vegan?
No, but I am and my son is and I think my sister’s on board now too, and my daughter is vegetarian, so in the end it’s just easier to make something everyone will enjoy by going with a vat of tomato soup and some roasted veggies. My mom’s a good sport, and who doesn’t love a tangle of golden-brown onions on toast?
We’re newbies with the vegan thing, and it’s actually much easier than I thought to pull it off. Eating out is a pain in the ass, but other than that it’s just a couple of easy substitutions and business as usual.
true. sad. continue…
Sunday epiphany? I’d rather be writing. And I was (for once).
People like to read “the hot thing everyone else is reading.” Once a hit piece of pop culture gets to a certain point, it’s self-inflating.
When that woman first wrote the fan-fic, she had the singular goal of entertaining. She wasn’t even *trying* to get it published. It was fan fic! Makes you wonder if we should all try a little less hard to be amazing.
She accidentally wrote a bestseller.
Her fan fic was *just a weensy bit* better than all the other fan fics, because none of them became bestsellers.
I’ve been thinking about the “dirty” books a lot lately. Like, the sick, twisted V.C. Andrews stuff I read as an impressionable teenager. That weird psychological stuff was so much more interesting than “romance” novels with Fabio on the cover.
Basically, if you write something you’d be embarrassed to ever have your name linked to … well, you might have a winner there.
I could probably still tell you plotlines from VC Andrews books I read over 20 years ago.
I remember Flowers in the Attic. I kept thinking, Run, children! Hit mama on the head and make a break for it!
I am notorious for being oppositional about these things…which is not something I am particularly proud of, but that said, it is what it is. Having never picked up one of the Twilights, can I assume I wouldn’t know what was going on? (That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.)
Happy weekend to you and yours, m’ lady!
I’m the same way. Any hint of, ‘You HAVE to read this’ makes me not want to read it at all.
I left all my kids with my beloved and spent the weekend in Boston, visiting extended family. First time in 7 years I’ve been away solo. When I came through the front door I was met with so much love you’d have thought I had just gotten back from a year’s trip around the world. Sunday’s epiphany? The best part of going away is clearly coming home.
On a side note, I saw a woman reading Shades of Grey in the airport. So many women I know are dreadfully embarrassed about reading it, secretly downloading it onto their kindles and ipads. It was lovely to see someone flipping the pages, unashamed. In my estimation, that alone justifies its popularity.
I miss that about having little kids . . . I miss the pouncing. Though it’s probably good that they leave it behind at some point, because I am chin-height to my son these days and the pounce would be more like a bone-cracking tackle.
As somebody who you wanted to punch in the nose for making you read the words ” blood-soaked date roll “, nothing I say on this subject deserves to be taken seriously.
Surprisingly, if you do a google search for those words in quotation marks, only my stupid story and your quote on it come up.
You’d think that expression would be more popular.
I have googled this and found it to be 100% true, though now it is also in my subconscious. Anything could happen.
I’m sending you to the corner, Mr iPants, for making me read those words a second time.
It’s not just sweeping the online blogosphere. I opened the Sunday paper and there it was… a printed book review of ebook fan ficion. Is it Opposite Day? Am I dreaming?
There is something I love about a carefully constructed sentence- a quote that I can underline and memorize. So, yeah, I’ll be skipping Fifty Shades of Gray.
*fiction
Oh, how carefully constructed sentences elude me at 2 in the morning.
Yes! That’s what I mean. The fucker is everywhere.
In America, I think the reaction has to do with our prudishness, and the general air of surprise that always occurs when women are proven to have a sex drive. That’s why the e-reader has made such a difference to the sale of erotica: no one has to know what you’re reading.
I completely agree. Which makes the success of this “erotic ” book even more depressing, because from the more critical reviews I ‘ve read, the narrative is so prude it is cringeworthy. The heroine refers to her vagina as “down there ” and gives greater description of blushing than thrusting. The sexual repression lives on…
Ha! It IS more depressing. At least if we’re going to have a new smut ambassador, she could throw a little c-bomb into the mix.
I just looked for an excerpt of this book. I guess I got to the beginning of the first one (I forgot to check) but I couldn’t read more than three paragraphs. I didn’t get it at all and I was confused and uninterested. Is it because I’m not familiar with whatever story it’s based on?
Anyway, I’m desperate for money, so I’m glad to hear I can stop trying to be a ‘good writer’ because that won’t help. I could use a pseudonym to keep from being too embarrassed. Do you know if there are any rules for fan-fic, you know, to avoid getting sued? (That would be my luck.) I guess I have some research to do. Sigh.
Sorry. I’ll try not to be so cranky in the morning. Oh wait, it’s time for my Monday Rant. I’ll try to be less cranky after Tuesday.
You know, August says, You couldn’t write this stuff if you tried. I used to think he was joking about that–until I tried, on a lark, to write some. Two paragraphs in and I was defeated.
Our minds and voices are like fingerprints. We leave them all over the page.
Oh crap. That sounds about right. Now I’m feeling Napoleon Dynamite-y.
Rates right up there with the judgment to let kids read comic and manga books for school assignments in the fourth grade. Afterall, at least they’re reading…. Ugh.
Yeah, and don’t get me started about the selection in the school library.
(Oof. I am cranky today!)
Right there with you! Grrr!
(ps – I met the deadline. Just have to push send. Feels like I wrote a new book during these last weeks.)
Yay!!! Congratulations, Deb, I’m so proud of you. I recommend a large margarita before pressing ‘send’.
It’s true. Story has an easy time beating words. Words have a very difficult time beating story.
As for other epiphanies: sex sells, and it feels pretty fucking good when you let yourself buy it.
I still hide my smut, which Bobbi would probably have a field day with in therapy, given what I write. I’m a mess.
No epiphanies on this Monday afternoon. But just once I’d like to be standing where the good lightening strikes. I suppose that involves taking a risk I haven’t taken.
Yeah, you have to stand exposed in an open field and wait, waving your arms.