25 Jun 2012 03:51:32
James, a London-based former TV executive, is now the first author ever to see three of her books sell more than 100,000 printed copies in just one week. She has also broken the weekly sales record for a paperback novel after the first book in the trilogy sold 205,130 copies in seven days, beating the previous record of 141,000.
And she looks set to continue smashing sales records: after just two months, paperback sales for the first novel now total 765,000, a number Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, the bestselling paperback of all time, took over six months to reach.
"Sales of the Fifty Shades series have been nothing short of phenomenal and records are tumbling," said Philip Stone, charts editor of book trade magazine The Bookseller, predicting that the first novel would have sold a million copies by the end of June. "Of course this is just sales of the physical, print edition. It is no doubt breaking ebook download records too, meaning Fifty Shades of Grey is perhaps the fastest-selling adult novel of all time," added Stone.
The story of the submissive-dominant relationship between a literature student and a business executive, which started life as fan fiction, the Fifty Shades trilogy has sold over 2.75m copies in the UK, on top of sales of 15m copies sold in the US and Canada. The trilogy, the fastest-selling books of the year in the UK, has already been reprinted 16 times in the UK and publisher Arrow has just signed off on an additional reprint of 2.75m copies.
Reader reviews are split between the rapturous and the dismissive: of 1,215 write-ups on Amazon, around 600 readers gave it five stars, while 330 plumped for just one. "We particularly enjoyed the way Christian manages most of his sexual exploits either fully dressed (just a quick unzipping and a coy fiddle with a 'foil packet') or with his shirt (always white linen) still on, while Ana bit her lip, and breathed 'Oh my!' for the umpteenth time. So, really, this is as bad as people say – but for barely more than two quid it managed to provide hours of derisive laughter," wrote one reader.
Another was more positive: "After being ill for some considerable time and all thoughts of passion put on a back burner, I found this book making me look at my husband in a new light. Well, not a new light, but certainly one that had been dimmed by the mundane and everyday. We now enjoy each other's company more and make time for each other."
