Fifty Shades Boosts UK Book Sales

According to The Guardian newspaper the figures from Nielsen BookScan show that EL James’s Fifty Shades title trilogy topped the books chart last year and was a superb addition to an overall rise in the use of digital print sales for the year 2012.

It is observed that about 4.46m copies of the first novel of Fifty Shades of Grey were sold in the last year. 3.16m copies were sold of the second novel while the third novel had 2.9m sold copies. Amazingly Fifty Shades of Grey topped on the Bookseller magazine’s analysis of the best selling ebook of 2012. About 1, 609, 626 copies of Fifty Shades of Grey were sold according to the magazine.

In the beginning Fifty Shades of Grey was an online fan fiction before being released in a tiny Australian press as an ebook. Afterwards it was signed by publishing powerhouse Random House. Most of the people appreciated the impact of Fifty Shades of increasing the publishing 2012 figures.

Book:                     

 Fifty Shades of Grey is an erotic romance novel by a British author E. L. James. Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has inspired women to read. It is an opened dialogue on sex and has boosted the falling book industry. It has contributed a lot in increasing the book sales for UK thus print and ebook sales rose to 4% last year with the help of E.L. James masterpiece and other creations by different authors. The of Fifty shades was published on June 20, 2011 by Vintage books with pages 514 . The average customer rating of Fifty Shades of Grey is 3.3 on amazon.com while 3.6 on goodreads.com.

Fifty Shades of Grey is criticized because of its origin as fan fiction and that it is based on Twilight novels. Amanda Hayward of The Writer’s Coffee Shop responds to such criticism by saying that Fifty Shades of Grey bore very little resemblance to Twilight and that both are worlds apart. The books are notable not for transgressive sex but for how women are using technology to subvert gendered shame by exploring explicit sexual content privately using e-readers. About 70 million copies of the trilogy have been sold, setting many new records worldwide. It is a fastest-selling paperback of all and has even surpassed the Harry Potter series.

The Guardian reports that in within the three months the book was so popular that it has maximize the records of being sold in the shape of hard copy and ebook. Furthermore The Guardian says that when the novel was published, it was selling too quickly that the publishers of the book had to run extra publishing of books in order to meet demand of 2.75 million books. It is known as one of the most fastest novel that has been sold, the million copies were sold out within no time. Entertainment Weekly reviews it as

"It is a classic piece of writing." Fifty Shades of Grey  took the place of finalist in the GoodReads Choice Awards for the Best Romance category by getting A.

Film Adaptation:

Different professionals have shown interest in adapting Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy in film. Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Paramount, Universal Pictures, Mark Wahlberg’s are the production companies which have shown their interest and put in bids for the film rights, eventually Universal Pictures and Focus Features have secured the rights to the trilogy in March 2012. The Author has control over the movie’s creative process. Bret Easton Ellis, an American Psycho writer has publicly expressed his intention to write a screenplay for the film. Later on Angelina Jolie has been reported for her interest in directing the film.  She is in contact to direct the adaptation. Latest news about the adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey is till April 2013 is that director Gus Van Sant had shot a scene with Alex Pettyfer as Christian Gray serving as a screen test for the studios.

Classical musical album:

EMI Classics have released an album comprising of James selected songs on September 11, 2012. It is released under the title Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classic Album. This Classic album was on number four on Billboard’s charts for classical music albums in October 2012 and reviewer write that album would appeal not only fans of Fifty Shades of Grey but those also who have no intention of reading Fifty Shades of Grey.

What People are saying :

Howells acknowledges its impact and says “You can put a lot of it down to E.L. James – Out of the blue she has come and with a bang”. Richard Mollet, Chief executive of the Publisher Association has the view that “British publishing is a healthy industry which has the power to succeed as a big giant”. He explains that the interest among the people about the online book reading has increased a lot and boosted the digital sales and added that publishers had reacted quickly to the changes in the industry and the move towards e-readers.

BBC broadcasts that E.L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy were the best-selling titles in 2012; its combined sale was 10.5 million. At first it was thought that the popularity of ebooks will be harmful for the sales of physical books. But now it is realized that it has been just an exaggerated thing. People still love physical books and sales of physical books are equal to digital sales. So rise of e-readers as Amazon’s Kindle in recent years is healthy for book reading and consequently for publishing due to books like Fifty Shades of Grey.

Editor of industry magazine The Bookseller Philip Jones says that shops such as Waterstones were seeing a “rebound” in sales of physical books. He thanks to children’s and non-fiction areas and the “growing” market of books such as Fifty Shades of Grey. He adds that physical book sales have made up around 80% of the overall market. He said to the BBC that “Digital media is getting popular but the physical media will move with us for a long time.