[50 Shades Of Grey] Is this the most successful Kindle ebook ever?

The 50 Shades Of Grey phenomenon is more about word of mouth marketing than anything else. Saturday Night Live did a skit on the whole deal. Read that again. Saturday Night Live did a skit on a book, well actually more-so the phenomenon about it.

I dare say its a fad. It captured the imaginations of its readers and quite frankly there are plenty of agents and producers who are just itching to get their piece of the pie.

Bottom line is that promotion for this book spread like wildfire, and simply by word of mouth. From all angles too. Those who despised it took to the web to say why, and vice-versa for those who loved/liked it.

It became a 2012 definition of viral, and one that was a HUGE success.

As for the most successful Kindle book ever? I think that solely depends on genre, as the Game of Thrones series seems to be listed on damn near every fiction best seller list these days...

do you want the honest answer? Erotic novels are to women what porn is for men. This book is very well-written and makes every woman's inner fantasies scream. Get your significant other to read it and you will be happy! I would also recommend reading it yourself.

As BloggingPro noted, it's also word-of-mouth because every woman has told every single one of her friends about the book and has posted something on her Facebook.

I fall into the category of those that hate it. Admittedly, I haven't read the whole book. I started reading it and was appalled by the quality of writing. For example, only a few pages in she writes, "If this guy is over than thirty then I'm a monkey's uncle." It just seems incredibly out of place and cliched. Not to mention that the book is full of grammatical and punctuation errors. The wording is ridiculously repetitive, and the author has no interest in developing the characters. I could go on, but I won't.

The success is all about hype and the target market. The book primarily appeals to women with children who just want to read a bit of trash to pass the time; they aren't looking to read a classic novel. The book is also controversial, which undoubtedly adds to its hype.

It saddens me that there are well-written books out there that will never become successful, while this trash is breaking records.

From my understanding this series also increased sales in the sex toy industry by 72% since it's debut.

The series caters to women fantasies is a different way. And their marketing it as "mommy porn" was a brilliant way to dominate sales.

ETA: It is sad that these books can be milled out by the millions and overshadow other books. I have read all three (which I had received for free and I had to see what the hype was about), they are terribly written and really could have been condensed into one book.

Whatever the writer did to attract attention must have worked for them at least for now. The main trick about making money on books is to not have to spend too much money on a publisher as it eats up the profits. I feel encouraged by this little bit of success.

Funny, this book just came on my radar yesterday. The stuff I put in bold italics above doesn't surprise me. Part of success in anything is to take the pulse of the people and give them what they want.

There are lots of novels these days that would never have made it 20 years ago because they are way underdeveloped. These days it's all about very thin characters, settings and plot development. What do they have? Usually a fast, exciting story line or steamy romance. Keep those pages turning without making the reader think too much. That's how it goes.

I thought Harry Potter was pretty well written but didn't understand why it took off the way it did.

I think there's a big lesson here, one important to all marketing. That is, don't base your approach only on what you like. Look around to see what's selling and then give the herd what they want. Sometimes that's hard to do, though I do believe you can do it without compromising too much. It just takes a bit more work.

My wife loves it and couldn't put it down once she started reading. All of her lady friends feel the same way about it. I haven't asked her much about it, but from my perspective, it sounds like a 2012 version of a romance novel with an erotic twist.

I read the Kindle sample. The writing wasn't great but I can see how readers get pulled into the storyline. Personally, I didn't get pulled in enough to buy the complete book. My niece says it falls under the category of "mommy porn". A category I didn't even know existed..lol.

The biggest marketing lesson seems to be (as always) find out what your target audience wants and give it to them.

Rose

I had heard about the book through Facebook and other various sources, but I am not too sure what the book is about. There is a lot of sex, I guess?

It just seems to be a case of word-of-mouth, or going viral.

Looks like there are also two more books in the trilogy. They occupy spots number 2 and 3 in the top 100 Kindle books.

Amazon Best Sellers: best Kindle Store

The author must be making bank from this

Found this at USAToday.com:

10 reasons 'Fifty Shades of Grey' has shackled readers

Some of the most compelling (I think) reasons include:

-The fact that, despite appearances, it's the classic boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back plot that has fueled an infinity of romance novels.

-It has successfully tapped into the Twilight fanbase, through its beginnings as fan-fiction.

-Women are head-over-heels for the imaginary 'Christian Grey' character.

-The book's core message is about the redemptive power of love.

-Kindle e-readers are today's equivalent of the 'brown paper bag'. It's worth mentioning that, in the USA, approximately 50% of sales for this book are via Kindle, and in Australia it's 25% (Not exactly sure what that says about Aussies vs Americans though. )

Also, for anyone looking for a laugh, check out the parody '50 Sheds of Grey' on Twitter. ROLF!

(btw, It's gained 46,000 Twitter followers in just 3 weeks! )

It's a soap opera. These kind of stories do wonders no matter the medium. If you could come up with a way to teach internet marketing through a soap opera, I'm sure users here would eat that **** up too.

As human's we like drama. We enjoy knowing that the things we like, others don't. It's kind of similar to the concept of liking something before it's "cool." A lot of indie/underground music goes through that same process.

In terms of this property, it went viral baby. The author, publishers, producers, etc are making, or about to make, a ****-ton of money. That is the magic, the carrot many of us are after. Developing something that takes us to that next level. The person who wrote this did just that.

I've heard that some women are embarrassed to purchase it in stores, which is leading to the high amount of digital sales. Pretty interesting phenomenon if you ask me.

Haahaha, I think its funny that everyone is bashing it. Times are changing, people dont care about grammar or mispled wrods.

All people care about, is right to the point and keeping them excited for more. I even asked my mom if she has heard of '50 Shade of Grey', she said oh yeah I read all of them. She pretty much summed it up to me, what the books are about. Well if you dont know this by now.... SEX sells!!

I myself will probably never read the book. I admire the guy making tons of cash from it!

If Fifty Shades of Grey was made into a film:

It would star James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal - they'd call it Secretary and it'd be released 10 years ago

i've seen people walking around with hard copies in south africa. Woman sitting in coffee shops etc and no doubt many more that are probably reading it on Kindle. Its mass acceptance. Once an object, book, film, idea reaches critical mass then people will follow it purely for acceptance sake. I've seen the same thing with many movies.

That book has stirred a bit of chaos as well. LOL

Fifty Shades of chaos | Matilda Battersby | Independent Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - Blogs

There is no secret. She produced something that people loved and the rest took care of itself.

Perhaps there is something to be learned by that concept for the people here who produce crap and then wonder why they have to spend all day doing comment spam, forum posting, keyword research and paying some idiot SEO $97 to supposedly increase their rank in Google.

Focus your energy entirely on your end product. Good things simply have a way of spreading online. If your creation is stagnant, then maybe it isn't as good as you think it is. Improve it or move on to the next thing.

This statement reminds me of the saying that if the Beatles' music sucks because it's so easy to play, then let's see you write songs as big as they did.

The fact is it was a success. You write a book to have it read by as many people as possible and they have succeeded at that.

Those people who are saying there are other books that deserve more recognition, it's the same in all aspects of life.

Do you really think the World #1 ranked tennis player is THE best tennis player in the world at that time? No. There are probably guys who could smash him in a game that will never even pick up a racket in their life. He just happens to be the best tennis player out of the very small selection of tennis players that compete in the World ranked championships at that time.

Do you think Jimi Hendrix was the best guitar player of all time? Most people think so but I would have it a guess you could find a bunch of guys today who could shred Jimmy right under the table... we have just never heard of them.

As for the grammatical errors and such, you are forgetting the average person. Most newspapers now write to suit 4th grade English or something ridiculous. In this social media driven world we now live in people's basic skills such as grammar and punctuation are going down hill, fast.

I used to always get comments on how great my handwriting was. Many said it looked like girls handwriting. lol. Anyway, the other day I went to write a simple thank you card to someone and I struggled. My handwriting looked absolutely terrible. The reason? I have had no need to pick up a pen and write anything down for years.

It's sad but it's the way the world is going.

Lot's of interesting ideas in this thread about 50 Shades surprising success. I'll add something CNN added here:

Explaining 'Fifty Shades' wild success - CNN.com

The gist ...

1. Sex sells

2. Women love a good series

3. Many formats offered

4. Subtle cover

The cover to me is the obvious departure from the status quo. If you think about it, most erotica books have very sensual book covers. 50 Shades doesn't. I'd be willing to bet the understated book cover was originally responsible for women who do not normally purchase erotica buying.

Just speculation of course. But worth testing different covers that can cross genres and attract larger audiences.

~Jeff

I have heard more bad reviews about it than good reviews... However its selling, so it must have some value in it.

Am I right in saying it was inspired by Twilight? Another 'cultural phenomena' *groan* I guess the plus side is it has people reading again.

I picked it up for research purposes and thought it pretty dull. I have not been able to get thru it and never made it to the "red room", I am not a fiction reader so that could be part of the problem. Also it's hard to get interested in silly female characters who allow men to boss them around

I think it's success is an amazing story. And it should be inspiring to those that want to write for a living. And on some of my game forums the guys are saying the book has made their significant others want sex more often, so who can complain about that? My problem is I read it and found the writing wasn't that great. But that just means you can be successful too!

My wife loves it, and so do her friends. I haven't read it myself.

Every girl I know has read this. Including my girlfriend who has never read a book in her life lol

The author got lucky I suppose. Don't think there's many secrets to it.

Every women on my FB page is reading it,apparently the story further unfolds in book 2 and 3 which covers the psychological reasons for the character being as they are and some just say its utter filfth but I know theres a good deal of red paint and rope in it.
Regards
vivi62

My neighbour can't shut up about it. Insists that my wife HAS to read it once she is done with it. And apparently, my life is going to change for the better because of it. If that's the case, I am all for 50 Shades of Grey. 50 Sheds of Grey looks pretty good too...lol

I recommend the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer if you haven't already read them, The Dark Hunter series by Sherrilyn Kenyon, and His Every Desire series by Emma Rose. All of so good in their own way.

Here is the big line : erotic novel, woman, social media = porn, man, porn site.
Combine that three, you will get an explosion, maybe small explosion or maybe BOOM!

I have read the first two books and my first thought was that they are written to the old 'Mills and Boon' format with a bit (...sorry, a lot) of S&M and kinky stuff thrown in.

After the first sex scene, I skimmed the subsequent ones - same old, same old and not completely necessary for the story.

My thoughts on the success of these books - absolutely first class MARKETING.

The newest book to hit the shelves is knocking fifty shades of grey right out of the water.

It is called No Easy Day it sold 253000 copies in its first week on sale.

Navy seals perspective from seal team six on the bin laden raid.

I stopped reading after the second chapter and deleted it from my kindle PC... The story is nothing outside graphical sex.. No interesting plot at all....

Having read the trilogy, I have to say that it is more like one big book than three separate books. It is one story line about the strange and kinky courting of a young couple.

I would have to say the least interesting part about it is how young they are. Who wants to imagine 20 year olds having sex? For this reason, I mainly skimmed through the sex scenes to the other parts which, for me, were more interesting. The growing intimacy between them expressed primarily in text messages and emails reminded me of the love letters of older less kinky works I also imagined them older than they were which made me feel a little better about the situation.

That being said, I have to agree that, for what the trilogy is, it filled an obvious hole in the marketplace for women that want to experience another world without the dangers of entering it themselves. 50 shades does that part very well, which is what entertainment is all about.

While the strange trilogy might get a C+ for execution, it gets a gold star for first rate marketing.

EDIT: Whomever they choose to play Christian in the movie is irrelevant. It is impossible for this movie to be anything other than an NC-17 disaster, trimmed down into an R rating. There just isn't enough meat to the story to support a film and there literally isn't a full story in just one of the books. I tip my hat that they want to try, and I'll see it for giggles, myself, but I'm certain it will be positively awful. Especially since the book is always better than the movie and these books just... well, weren't that great.