2012: Afterthoughts

First published on 1/14/2013

OK, let's get this out of the way: by FAR the biggest thing to happens in the realm of bondage, ebooks, erotic fiction, romance fiction and arguably publishing itself was "Fifty Shades of Grey." I've already written at length on the topic, so I'll keep it brief. The thing that made "Fifty Shades" special wasn't just that it was a book featuring scene of bondage and dominance, but who read it: it was women, mostly, lots and lots of women, and not just young Goth girls looking for something to read while getting a skull tattooed on their butts, but older women: "soccer moms" which is THE prime demographic for many, many advertisers.

The news that soccer moms like to read about women in maledom/femsub relationships did not surprise me at all: I RP in SL Gor, where women outnumber men almost two to one, and all a guy has to do to find a naked slavegirl chained to him is stand still long enough for them to find him. But I think the news that ordinary women like bondage set the mainstream back on its heels, even though the romance genre of which erotic fiction is a subset has always had more than its share of "bodice ripper" stories.

Nothing else that happened in 2012 that I know of had anything LIKE the impact of 50 Shades of Grey on the bondage community/industry/whatevs (though having said that, I am totally prepared to find history proving me wrong).

Another trend I am liking is honest, straightforward blogging by women who are either real life submissives talking about their lives like the author of Down the Rabbit Hole, or sex industry pros like bondage model Cherry Torn and former prostitute The Honest Courtesan, who are talking honestly about THEIR lives and interests instead of just using their blogs as marketing tools.

I think it's great that these voices have found expression online, and I hope they become more popular, and teach everyone that people who are submissives or who work in the sex industry are not mysterious others who can be marginalized and ignored, they're people, just like anybody else. Soccer moms who took the dare their subconscious minds made with them, perhaps.

People call this the "mainstreaming" of BDSM, as if it were merely the inclusion of BDSM topics in mainstream media, but I see it as something more profound, or at the very least, I HOPE it is something more profound, a sort of cultural maturing about matters sexual, a recognition that sexual power fantasies can be acted out in real life, that does not make them any less fantasies, nor justify treating people as the object of such fantasies without their consent.

Now, would somebody please call the prudes and the prudo-feminists and let them know we have this matter all hashed out?

Fifty Shades of News Bits

First published on 12/21/2012

Fifty Shades of Gray has inspired a workout. Do tell. Bandwagon-jumping continues apace. They've also got a new video out of George Takei reading Fifty Shades of Grey aloud which is SUPPOSED to be hilarious, and to have gone viral, but I watched it, and ... meh. So no link!

Also, a cogent and interesting analysis of the prospects for a Fifty Shades of Grey movie that predicts the movie will be bizarre. If it's bizarre, I think that will be a success, because that means somebody will have TRIED to make it work. I think it will just suck. But do read the analysis, and if you like, my response in the comments section.

Fifty Shades of India

First published on 12/15/2012

A report in The Times of India announces that the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon is sweeping through country, sparking interest in BDSM in this one billion strong nation. The Times is reporting on the formation of The Kinky Collective a Delhi-based 15-person strong group that provides support for lovers of BDSM.

Wait ... 15 people? India? In India, 15 people is an empty room! Good lord, this is a trend sweeping the nation? Really?

One sense that the author fervently hopes so. If it were, they might have something sexy to report on in a nation that the story admits has a reputation for being very conservative sexually. To wit, it's prudish.

In addition to being prudish, Indian society is sexist and violent. So the search for good news about sex in India that's not completely bad probably gets kinda desperate at times. Here's a good article on all the sexism and violence toward women in India. Most of the violence and sexism appears to be in the rural and poor elements of India, which despite the rise of a detectable middle class in India, still constitutes one hell of a lot of people, the majority of that one billion. Jezebel recently got in on the issue, but Times of India does a much better job of covering it, as you might expect.

In an overwhelmingly violent, sexist culture like the ones many Indians live in, all sexual relationships are going to be profoundly affected by the sexism and violence. I guess if you are wealthy enough and sufficiently privileged, or sufficiently alienated from Indian society (the Kinky Collective was started by a couple, one of whom is transgendered -- hmmm) you might be able to figure your only sane path is to just go your own way, but most women are probably too afraid that men will tie then up and rape them for real to enjoy pretending that a man is tying them up and raping them for consensual kinky fuckery.

I don't know, it's a knotty problem, figuratively speaking. It's tempting to feel cheap moral superiority from the outside, but probably a bad idea, which is why I'm not gonna do it. I suspect that the only reasonable path is to take on the sexism and violence and put an end to it, which is what most reasonable people can agree on. How? Gonna be hard, gonna be a rough slog, as many of the originators of the sexism and violence are illiterate, young, poor and male, a hard group to reach. But most of them have mothers and sisters, and with the same kind of full court press that has been applies in other societies, they'll learn. Sadly, they will almost inevitably learn ... eventually, which will do little good for the women being victimized now.

In the meantime, maybe Fifty Shades of Grey will provide a nice fantasy of kinky, romantic love for those Indians that are at liberty to enjoy it, and perhaps it can preach the subversive message that pretendy sexual submission is all fun and can last throughout a lifetime, while the real thing is nasty, short and brutish.

Random House Buys Lena Dunham's Grocery List for $3.7 Million

First published on 12/12/2012

E.L. James and Lena Dunham have one thing in common: they are both women who won the Writing Lottery, gaining incomes in millions of dollars for writing books. (Dunham hasn't written her book yet, she scored a $3.7 million advance on the basis of a 66-page book proposal).

The other thing that they have in common is that their talent does not at all match the rewards they have won (that's why I call it the Writing Lottery -- more on that later). I'm not saying that neither of them is talented, or hard-working, just that the products they produce are, well ... kinda mediocre.

If there were some sort of meritocracy involved in who got money for writing, John Crowley would have scored a 500 million dollar advance for his novel "Little, Big" which is so much better than anything that James and Dunham have ever written or done that it's literally (not figuratively) beyond comparison.

(You may think I am not in a position to judge Dunham's book, as it has not been written yet, but it just so happens I am: Gawker got hold of her entire book proposal and published it online. I didn't read the whole proposal, just glanced at it when the flying monkeys dropped it off. And I CAN'T read it now and you can't either, because Gawker took the proposal down after Dunham's lawyer threatened legal action if they kept it up. However, Gawker DID leave up 12 lines from the proposal which they hilariously appended to demonstrate how self-involved and silly the book proposal is. Read it, it's hilarious.)

Also, I have seen or tried to watch several eps of Lena's HBO series "Girls" which is a lot better than her book proposal but still kinda mediocre. Of course, I am not the demographic for her series (self-involved coastal twenty-somethings who are either wealthy or wannabe wealthy -and who doesn't wannabe wealthy? But still, I know mediocre when I see it, and this is high mediocre ... it doesn't challenge you on any level, unless you are one of those people who is perpetually challenged by the thought that twenty-something women have sex and like it, in which case I'd have to say you're just plain old challenged. Some of the dialogue is kinda witty, the characters are not entirely superficial, impressive for someone Dunham's age, but not brilliant stuff at all.

I think the reason Dunham won the Writing Lottery are almost entirely demographic. She's a rich, pretty (I mean real life pretty, Dunham is Hollywood ugly), smart, Jewish woman living in New York City. Now there are a TON of rich, pretty, smart, Jewish women living in New York City who have not won the Writing Lottery. But Dunham did a few things right. She made a an indie film called "Tiny Furniture" that got some buzz, parlayed that into her HBO series "Girls", and has parlayed the premium cable success of "Girls" into a $3.7 million book deal.

In fact, the art that Dunham has show the most skill at is The Art of the Deal, arguably. I don't see the book deal so much as a reward for great achievement as a case of rich, Jewish, New York publishers anointing One Of Their Own with $3.7 million for being able to do the literary equivalent of toddling about without falling over.

I mean, when Stephen King was writing bestsellers every time he put pen to paper and each bestseller became a successful movie, people were joking that publishers were bidding on the chance to buy his grocery lists. Well, guess what? According to the Gawker article, "Fully 13% of the proposal's pages are devoted to reproducing a diary Dunham kept of what she ate in 2010." Yes, Random House ACTUALLY IS buying Dunham's shopping list for $3.7 million!

Now I can't blame Dunham for being willing to accept this largesse -- I'd be willing to accept it too, if it were offered to me, even on the basis of me fitting the demographic and my grocery lists being the thing to be published. But it does exemplify everything I HATE about the traditional publishing industry -- centered in New York, insular, greedy, myopic, and prone to exploit anyone it can for money, while wasting money on mediocrities that fit its demographic. (Remember when about half of all mainstream novels were about middle aged men, generally academics or publishing industry folks, who were living in the Northeast (often New York) and cheating on their wives while experiencing Mid-Life-Crisis?).

Contrast this with E.L. James and Fifty Shades. I give James higher points for originality and challenging work -- the reason Fifty Shades succeeded was that it did beautifully integrate its BDSM themes into the traditional romance novel structure. Of course, James had a lot of help, after reading the Obsidian Wings website's account of how the Twilight community helped her with editing and feedback, it might reasonable have been given the byline, "By E.L. James, with considerable help and support from the Twilight fanfic community."

But the fact that James started her book out as straight up fanfic under the name “Icedragon Snowqueen” shows me that she started out just wanting to write a story that she enjoyed and cared about, working with the Twilight community to make her book better in a very humble and creative way. There was no Art of the Deal here, just Art, pure and simple.

In fact, it was the Twilight and online community that made "Fifty Shades" a success. They bought the online version in droves, and when Amazon's numbers showed Fifty Shades beating the crap out of the sales of the traditional publishing industry's bestsellers in the online marketplace without a BIT of help from all the publicists, agents and marketers that were flogging THEIR books, well, it didn't take a LOT of brains to see that the thing to do was to get that book printed up and in stores and get the hype machine going for it.

So, even though E.L. James just an average-looking Brit middle-aged housewife with no connections to the New York Publishing industry (the book had originally been published by Australian outfit that specialized in publishing converted fanfic to non-fanfic after the process called “filing the numbers off” had been completed), the publishing industry started a bidding war over her manuscript, netting her milions when Random House won.

But here's the difference between what Random House bought from James and what Random House bought from Dunham: James' book was a completed manuscript that had already been proven an online bestseller, beating THEIR bestseller. It was NOT a 66-page writeup, 13 percent of which consisted of a listing of what foods James at in 2010.

You see the difference? A purely economic decision, no demographics involved, for the seven-figure advance James got for her book. (I can't find any more definite figure for E.L. James' advance than “seven figures” so it could be as little as $1 million or as much as $9 million … I would not be surprised at all to learn that it was less than what Dunham got for her book proposal.)

Now in my opinion James' book is a pretty good romance novel, but not a great one, and not a great book. It is mostly a triumph of technique, like John Norman's Gor novels, of seamlessly integrating BDSM sexuality into an existing genre (in Norman's case, sword and sandal fantasy adventures).

But the point is, it got bought because it was loved by its readers and fans, not the publishers whose first instinct would be to ignore such a book. “Fifty Shades” got thrust upon the publishing industry, the publishing industry did not thrust it on readers, as is their usual practice. That in my mind has merit. The book may not be great literature, but people love it.

If you want to read a GREAT novel, try John Crowley's fantasy novel “Little, Big.” It has no BDSM sex in it, and although there is sex it is not at all graphic. But what it is, is beautifully written, with an imagination on a scale that takes you completely into another world, in a very sly and intelligent way. THIS is a book that succeeds of merit. All I know of John Crowley is that he lives in the Northeast and does research for film and video documentaries for a living. He may be Jewish, wealthy, a New Yorker, or not, I don't know, and I don't care. HIS book has merit. WHATEVER the means by which it was published (I'm betting an editor read it and fell in love with it as so many have) is all right with me.

But I'm pretty sure that Little Big did not get any seven figure book advance. I REALLY doubt it got six figures. Five figures … maybe, I think Crowley had several books published by the time “Little, Big” came out. But it could easily have been just four figures, it's fantasy. But, damn … what a MASTERPIECE. Read it, I dare you. Used copies are for sale real cheap over at Amazon if your finances are straightened.

Now the marketing machinery is going to grind out its releases for Dunham's book, and for all I know, it may be good, but I doubt it. It is clearly, “Item designed to appeal to readers for a variety of demographic reasons.” So do yourself a favor. Buy Little, Big, instead, or search out some good fanfic that might appeal to you. Don't let Random House recoup its stupidly given advance to Dunham with your dollars.

5000 Shades of Grey

First published on 12/11/2012

I read with pleasure that Random House is giving $5000 to each and every employee of the company who has been with them for more than a year, right down to the lowliest janitor and administrative assistant, in celebration of the tremendous success of "Fifty Shades of Grey" which has sold almost 50 million copies worldwide, at one point constituting one out of every five books being purchased by adults.

I applaud Random House for their brave generosity at a time when corporations in general are behaving with incredible stupid dickishness toward their employees and customers in reaction to the Democratic election victory. For example, Applebee's Restaurants, Papa John's restaurants, and Darden, the Corporate Monster that owns Red Lobster, Longhorn Steaks and Olive Garden have all announced moves that will decrease employees' wages, hours or status (moving from full time to part time) explaining that the now-likely continuation of Obamacare into law "necessitated" it.

In contrast with this sort of corporate dickishness, Random House looks really great!

However, I am not entirely delighted by the bonus, because I think part of it comes as a result of a capitalist organization looting a gift economy. I am referring of course to the Twilight fanfic community from which Fifty Shades of Grey. Remember, it started out as a straight up fanfic called "Master of the Universe" by Icedragon Snowqueen (James' pen name for fanfic) with characters lifted straight from the book.

And a key part of what made "Master of the Universe" and by extension, "Fifty Shades of Grey," so successful, was the work that some Twilight fans put into Master of the Universe for free, editing it skillfully to take it up another notch. Obsidian Wings wrote about their work, with examples. Clearly they had a LOT to do with the story's success, much more than most Random House employees.

Of course, the Twilight fanfic editors got nothing for their work. They did not sign a contract or anything like that, they just edited a story they liked, because they liked it, expecting nothing more in return than the thanks of the community and the chance to read the story.

Still, it does.not.seem.right!

Now I know legally the Twilight fanfic editors are entitled to nothing. But so often, what's legal has little to do with what is ethical. And I don't think this is a problem that could be solved by giving some Twilight fanfic editors a few thousand dollars (though it WOULD be the right thing to do!). But I do believe we are going to have to eventually deal with the moral issues of capitalist organizations essentially looting gift economies, and giving nothing in return. Perhaps quite soon, if publishers continue trolling the Twilight fanfic community for new works to publish.

Coming up soon: E.L. James vs. Lena Dunham vs. John Crowley. Really!

Fifty Shades of Lame Party Game

First Published on 12/72012

As Fifty Shades of Grey the book has spread out into mass culture, one of the things I've envisioned happening to it has happened: in at least one instance, it has had the kink bowlerized right out of it. I mean, completely: let me introduce you to the Fifty Shades of Grey party game, a game that has no kink in it whatsoever.

Basically, it's a card game in which people are asked a series of vanilla questions and then they try to guess most accurately who would be a good match for the answer, or something along those lines. It's generic embarrassing sexy-ish party drivel. As one commenter on the Cafe Mom post but it, "It's one of those games designed to be a gift you give someone to embarrass them at a party, but which will never be played."

I've tried to figure out why anyone would sell a "Fifty Shades" branded item that is sure to disappoint all of the 50 million people who have bought the book, and all I can figure is a combination of greed, short-sightedness and cynicism. The game-makers objective is to sell as many units as possible, that's all. And they figure that having branded the game "Fifty Shades" they've done all they need to in order to attract people who read the book, so now they are after the dollars of people who have not read the book and probably don't even like it's subject matter. So they squeeze the bondage content right out of the game, so Aunt Sarah in Dubuque who doesn't like sex at all won't find it too offensive.

Of course, word of mouth will kill this game dead, and I'm happy to report that all three reports I've read about the game in various media point out that it's very vanilla, in varying degrees of subtlety. (CafeMom is the most blunt of the group, but then, they've got an active group of readers and responders who won't let them get away with crap.)

There IS a Red Room Expansion pack, totally undescribed in any report I've read, which MAY have kinky content, but really, if there is a more classic case of throwing good money after bad than buying the Red Room Expansion Pack, I don't know what it might be.

Celebrity Bondage Safety Tips

First published on 12/2/2012

The Celebrity Cafe, a big fan of Fifty Shades of Grey, or at least publishing posts about it, is doing what is very much the right thing by publishing a set of celebrity bondage safety tips by practicing submissive and erotica author Joey Hill. We're passing the tips along to you. A lot of the imagery of bondage you'll find online is very complex tie ups by the folks like those at Kink.com. They know what they are doing, both tier-uppers and tie-ees, so don't try this stuff at home unless you've had some training. Emergency room visits will suck the fun right out of any bondage session.

The other reason we're posting about it is, more evidence of a sea-change brought about by Fifty Shades, when a blog entitled "The Celebrity Cafe" is publishing BDSM safety tips. How long before we have celebrities giving bondage safety tips? Oh, about as long as it takes for the Fifty Shades of Grey movie to hit the theaters, and the cast to be doing publicity tours. Will they be as good as Hill's? Doubtful in the extreme.

By the way, the post's opening line is worth quoting:

There is a growing interest in bondage in the bedroom, and many of my readers are giving it a try in an effort to spice up their sex lives. It’s fun and feels a little bit dangerous, like a roller coaster, right? But you know why a roller coaster is so thrilling? Because deep down you – the rider – know you’re safe, and the designer and operator intend to keep you that way from beginning to end.

Good BDSM practices are the same.

Ahead of My Time ... Six Years Ago

First published on 11/27/2012

Found this old thread I started on Literotica six years ago ... wow. I had noticed a lot of mildly kinky stories in various "hot" imprints of various romance publishers and correctly deduced that there was a lot interest in BDSM style romances among those readers. I wondered if the form would evolve further.

What I did not anticipate, of course, is that romance readers would abandon traditional romance publishes for ebook publishers en masse, or that fanfic would be the source of a whole new generation of romance writers with much more direct and powerful ways of writing about sex.

Resulting in Fifty Shades of Grey, of course. But still ... I knew SOMETHING was up ...

Why There Will Never Be Another Fifty Shades of Grey

First published on 11/23/2012

I didn't like Fifty Shades of Grey as a read. Not because it was badly written, it struck me as well written in many respects. I didn't like it because it was a romance, and I generally don't like romances. Too much characterization and plot development, not enough sex. I'm a guy, what can I say?

I was pleased, however, that the kinky sex was quite kinky, I had feared that the kink would be watered-down stuff ... you know, blindfolds and eating strawberries off the tummy, etc., ... the old 9 1/2 Weeks treatment. But it was not. Cuffs, chains, gags and ben wa balls, oh my! Also, the characters really loved and enjoyed their kinky sex, and James did a great job of portraying that, something she did not get much credit for, among other things.

Also, I don't read a lot of kinky fiction, since I write kinky fiction, thus, reading other people's kinky fiction is a busman's holiday kind of thing.

That's why I read the book, not recreationally, but because I realized it was an IMPORTANT book, part of several important breaking cultural phenomena, the most important of which was the more widespread acceptance of BDSM sexual fantasies among women (“mommies") but also the rise of fanfic as an acceptable form of writing, and hopefully, the demise of traditional big publishers in favor of self-publishers and small publishers that actually serve their authors and readers' interests. (it's hilarious the way the big publishers are now trolling the Twilight fanfic community for "the next 50 Shades of Grey").

I also think much of the criticism is incredibly superficial, concentrating on minor stylistic errors ("Oh my!" and dancing inner goddesses) which bothered me not at all when I read Fifty Shades. Or they criticized Fifty Shades for having a male protagonist and a relationship which were not poster children for good BDSM practices. (HELLOOOOOOO! It's a work of FICTION! It's supposed to be DRAMATIC! If Ana and Christian's characters and relationships had been role models for BDSM, NO ONE would have read the books because they would have been TOO FRICKING DULL!!!!)

Also, the critics have left out some VERY GOOD ASPECTS of Fifty Shades of Grey in terms of social responsibility that are not present in most romances. The topic of contraception comes up early in Christian and Ana's relationship, plans are made and carried out, it's not ignored or neglected as in so many romances. There is also much emphasis on communication and trust in the relationship. Christian almost always is very careful to get Ana's explicit, enthusiastic permission for whatever high-jinks he is up to. It's something that NEVER happens in your average bodice ripper (which is OK, they're FICTION, they aren't sex eduation manuals, just as Fifty Shades of Grey is fiction) but it's nice to see it happen in Fifty Shades. The WHOLE STORY is about the way Christian and Ana build a real, trusting relationship instead of the superficial paid sub/dom contractual relationship that Christian initially offers Ana.

(Ana NEVER signs the contract in the book, you have NO IDEA how many times I've read posts by writers who inadvertently revealed themselves to be lazy, lying idiots because they say at some point that Ana signed the contract. It's a KEY point and they missed it … probably because they never read the book. Of course some admit straight up that they never read the book when they write articles dissing it, and that's all kinds of sad. Do your homework, people.)

Reading all the stupid, stupid criticisms of the book has been tough. I set up news agents to bring me articles about Fifty Shades of Grey and related topics early in 2012 (like, February or so) and I would estimate I have read well over 300 articles a month (a conservative estimate, probably more like 1000 a month in late spring and summer when the media finally caught on to the phenomenon) on the topic of Fifty Shades of Grey, and the vast majority are incredibly stupid and superficial. I realize that that's largely because big aggregator sites like the Huffington Post, Gather and the Examiner hire whatever stupid-ass word monkeys they can get to write for them for the glorious sum of … NOTHING … and the ones who DO pay, pay so little it wouldn't keep a budgie in sunflower seeds so they get intellectual mouth-breathers writing for them, too … but still, it's MADDENING to see so many thousands of displays of stupidity and butt ignorance displayed as if it were intelligent, insightful commentary, completely missing the key points about Fifty Shades time after time after time.

It's exactly like being a progressive and watching Fox News, only Fox News is everywhere and nobody knows it's Fox News. Whenever I find intelligent, insightful analysis of Fifty Shades I post it to my blog immediately because, at last, a pony under all that horse manure!

Still, I am glad I did set up those news agents and read all those articles (OK, the obviously stupid one like “who will they cast to be Christian Grey in the movie?” got no more than a glance, and they constitute the majority of the posts I've seen) because it's put me in a catbird seat to see the way the media responds to a big cultural phenomenon.

I first became aware of it via publishing sites which started taking note of this former fanfic ebook that was THE best selling ebook, selling hundreds of thousands of copies despite the fact that it had virtually no marketing muscle. Fifty Shades was beating the books that the big publishers were hawking with ALL their marketing muscle, primarily because the Twilight fandom from which it arose were completely behind it. The Obsidian Wings website still has the best coverage of this part of the phenomenon.

The early articles tended to be more intelligent and accurate and on point than what came later, mainly because they were looking at Fifty Shades as a phenomenon. One thing the early articles didn't do that later articles DID do, massively, is miss one of the KEY issues of Fifty Shades, which is that it was ALREADY an ebook bestseller when Vintage Books bought the rights to it in a fierce bidding war. THAT'S why James got a six-figure advance for the rights to the book -- they were buying a book that was already a bestseller, all they did was buy the right to print it in paperback and hardback and put their marketing muscle behind it. Publishers don't have bidding wars over books that are not sure things.

It's kind of suspicious that so many reviewers, posters and commentators missed the importance of the fanfic community in promoting Fifty Shades and making it what it was: it gives the impression that it was just another instance of the traditional publishing meme of a Wonderful Big Time Publisher giving an Unknown But Deserving Writer a shit-ton of money for being so good at what she does, when it was actually Big Time Publishing using money to muscle in on a sure thing created by Internet fandom.

Once Fifty Shades started selling in the millions, the coverage immediately got dumber. It started off with a lot of posts showing genuine bewilderment: what were all these “mommies” doing liking hardcore BDSM porn (which was how Fifty Shades was portrayed, and to be fair, it did have strong BDSM scenes and content)? There was a combination of prurient interest (“Soccer moms wearing ballgags, oh my!”) bewilderment (“Women are reading … BDSM porn? Bwuh?”) and some but not much viewing with alarm (“Women are reading porn! The sky is falling!”)

Once the book was selling in the tens of millions and showed no sign of slowing down, the viewing with alarm increased, and people started coming up with reasons why Fifty Shades is a phenomenon, most of them shallow and bogus. And people started bandwagonning furiously. Every erotic romance that any publisher bought the rights to was “The next 50 Shades” (and still is). Every poster on every blog had to call at least ONE post “Fifty Shades of (fill in the blank)” no matter how unrelated it was to the book. I mean, I think there was some kind of Internet law, or maybe a contest.

Criticism of the book cranked up, as the author's copious use of “Oh my” “inner goddess” and lip biting apparently rendered Fifty Shades unreadable for many delicate souls – but it was NEVER (well, rarely ever) the BDSM content or the romance novel elements that bothered any of them, they had NO ISSUE with those, oh, no! These delicate souls could HANDLE BDSM.

This is when viewing with alarm started happening, as many did not welcome the trend toward mommies reading BDSM porn. Religious types didn't like it because of the sex. Prudo-feminists didn't like it because maledom/femsub was not one of their approved sexual modes. And there were also the people who think that bestsellerdom is a meritocracy, so they viewed it with alarm too, because it had all those stylistic errors and it was a romance, let's face it. It's been going on since, but has never really drowned out the overwhelming message of surprise that greeted Fifty Shades and continues to be its main message: “Mommies like kinky porn!”

Plus, as the sales figures indicate, those who dislike Fifty Shades have not made any noticeable dent in its success.

Another thing that happened when the book really cranked on the mainstream media is you started to see how the media machine was working on the Web. With traditional print media the machine's work is seamless: stories get placed, planted, picked up, often in conjunction with advertising. There's never a quid pro quo, of course, but everybody who plays the game knows how the game is played. Favors get done, deals get made, the wheels of commerce spin and the big publishers, distributors, etc., get their products publicized as they like and are willing to pay … how else do you think Snooki's book got on the New York Times Top Ten bestseller list?

But the Web is different, not everybody is part of the traditional media machine, and even those that are sometimes don't behave like they are. But it was interesting to see the big aggregator sites like Huffington Post, Gather, Patch, etc., and the online versions of traditional media, picking up the stories about Fifty Shades like they were on a schedule. Or more likely, passive receivers of whatever came in on the transom, and the agents and publicists were making sure that what came in on the transom was Fifty Shades stuff.

Whereas the way independent, weird sites like Politically Sexy covered Fifty Shades was much more random, because nobody was trying to place stories (or, sigh … ads) with us.

Over time the surge of stories directly about the book Fifty Shades of Grey have lagged. They have been replaced by endless speculation about the movie, mostly who will be cast in the lead male role. (There has been speculation about who will play the lead female role as well, but I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of people who read the gossip blogs that are totally covering this story are primarily interested in the male lead.) There has also been plenty of bandwagon-jumping, and an increase in prudo-feminist and social conservative viewing with alarm.

Oh, and a huge proportion of the bondage-related scandal and crime stories that deal with female submission/enslavement have had Fifty Shades tied in with them. The most egregious: a recent story about a wealthy female banker in Britain who sued to divorce her husband because he would not give her any Fifty Shades type fun, and a women's shelter, also in Britain, which plans to recycle copies of Fifty Shades as toilet paper. (Well if you can't distinguish between consensual BDSM and domestic abuse. I can see how Fifty Shades might alarm you if you ran a women's shelter.) Basically, any story about human trafficking has a potential Fifty Slaves hook, however inappropriate, and it gets used very often.

It's obvious to me that the media buzz for Fifty Shades is being expertly milked by the publicists for whatever movie studio has the contract to make Fifty Shades, they've stretched out the casting of the leads forever. And of course there is also news of a new book being written, almost certainly new books, because as the James Bond movies show, if there's one thing those Brits know how to do, it's milk a franchise.

So I don't expect news of Fifty Shades to ever become RARE, certainly not in the next few years. Even if the movie flops, and just on general principles it probably will (see: Nine and a Half Weeks, the Gor movies and, well, everything based on a kinky book except Story of O, which was a French film) there will always be new books.

What there WON'T be, I feel confident in predicting (which generally means I am wrong) is that there will not be ANOTHER Fifty Shades of Grey. There will be other kinky erotic romances that do well in terms of sales, though probably not as well as Fifty Shades did. But there will never be another book that makes the same kind of splash that Fifty Shades did, because its success was the product of time and tides.

My theory, which is worth exactly as much as you are paying for it, is that Fifty Shades succeeded because it was a romance which featured the hot, kinky sex that most readers of the bodice-ripper species of romances have always enjoyed. However, traditional publishers like Harlequin have long acted as a brake on romances. Oh, sure, they've published “spicy” romances but there were no butt plugs, ben wa balls, ball gags or other fun stuff in them because, “Oh no, too kinky for our readers.”

Well, the readers did a student body left on the publishers and started reading ebooks which, being self-published or published by small publishers like the one who initially published Fifty Shades, were just as raunchy as they wanted to be, and what was more important, just as raunchy as their readers wanted them to be. That phenomenon cannot be repeated, though it may continue to create surprises for traditional publishers. It may be that the new model for writers will be to grow from fanfic communities and succeed on ebooks and then get bought up by traditional publishers as James did. We shall see.

But Fifty Shades will always be the book that broke the traditional publishers' stranglehold on bestsellerdom and brought BDSM relationships (as opposed to BDSM scenarios disguised as damsel in distress stories) into mainstream romances. There will never be another Fifty Shades of Grey.

Fifty Shades of Good Communication

First published on 10/31/2012

Scanning through the stuff my flying monkeys bring in from the Interwebs, particularly about "50 Shades of Grey," is a task not for the weak of heart. Most of the stories are complete fluff, or are completely stupid, thus suitable only for mocking (see previous post).

So when I come across a SMART story about 50 Shades of Gray, I gotta share. This one's from the Psychology Today website, and it is head and tails above the rest because it appears to have been written by someone who has actually read the books with an open mind, instead of having them described to them by a junior high school boy forced to read Fifty Shades of Grey against his will.

The key point of the article is that Fifty Shades is a book where the characters go to a great deal of trouble to communicate their sexual feelings. It's a key point of the book, and the focus on feelings is a hallmark of romance novels. The author notes that people may be attracted to each other purely physically, which are triggered by reading stuff like the sex scenes in Fifty Shades of Grey, but it's the play/joy circuit involved in communicating your feelings (as often occurs in sexual roleplay) which combined with trust, can lead to deeper feelings, like love. As the story says:

In 50 Shades, Ana (the main character) constantly battles with the competing urges of approach-and-avoidance, emotions that are controlled by the most ancient parts of the mammalian brain. But Christian Grey (the wealthy male character who fears close intimacy and attachment) tries his best to be gentle and kind. These genuine displays of affection stimulate the caring circuits of the brain which allow the couple to slowly build a mutually loving relationship.

Hell, yes! It's interesting that professionals like the sex educator cited in a previous article and the psychologist cited here tend to like Fifty Shades of Gray, whereas most critics are generally run of the mill bloggers, such as this bit of drivel on something called Cognescenti.com ... though it's nice to see readers giving the author a few well-deserved non-consensual kicks in the ass for confusing BDSM power play with abusive relationships.