It began life as Twilight fan fiction given away for free on the internet.
But from such modest beginnings did one giant success story grow, and now EL James’ ‘mummy porn’ trilogy Fifty Shades Of Grey is raking in over $1 million for the British author every week.
Fifty Shades is an erotic story about a recent female college graduate who is seduced and dominated by a billionaire businessman.
The books were initially popular with bored housewives but are now exploding on to the mainstream, shattering sales records in 37 countries and being translated into dozens of languages. There’s even a movie deal in the works.
Having been published just four months ago, the combined total global sales of EL James’ trilogy is already 20 million.
Just one month ago the sales total was at 16 million, meaning the books are now selling at a colossal rate of one million paperbacks and ebooks per week.
Celebritynetworth.com estimates that mother-of-two EL James, whose real name is Erika Leonard, must be making $1.34m every week:
‘It’s safe to assume that EL James has long ago sold enough copies to repay her seven figure book advance, which means at this point she is earning the standard seven per cent royalty on every $14 paperback and 25 per cent royalty on every $10) ebook.
‘In the last month, James has sold four million paperbacks and one million ebooks, which equates to $2.94m in paperback royalties and $2.497m in ebook royalties. In other words $5.4m in four weeks, $1.35m per week!’
James has also just been paid $5m from Universal/Focus Features for the film rights to the trilogy, so it really has been quite some year.
James, originally a self-published Kindle Direct Publishing author, saw popularity of her book soar online after readers embarrassed to be seen with a hard copy of the racy tome preferred to buy online.
The Kindle edition of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is currently outselling the print book at a rate of more than two to one.
Sales of the book, the first in a trilogy, have overtaken the Harry Potter books and the Da Vinci Code, to the delight of not only James, but established romance writer Jilly Cooper.
Cooper yesterday credited James with reviving interest in the flagging ‘bonkbuster’ genre, saying: ‘Porn was terribly out of fashion before that book came out.
‘While I have heard that it is quite poorly written, I am delighted that it’s giving a new lease of life to the genre.’
Fifty Shades writer James has said she thinks her books are successful because they offer women a ‘holiday from their husbands’.
Source: dailymail.co.uk
