Sitting pretty ... <i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i> has made Amanda Hayward a wealthy woman. Sitting pretty ... Fifty Shades of Grey has made Amanda Hayward a wealthy woman. Photo: James Brickwood

With sales of the erotic trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey topping 100 million worldwide, the deal that made its English author E.L. James and Australian publisher Amanda Hayward wealthy women has erupted into a bitter legal dispute.
Two Texas women who claim to have helped make the books global bestsellers have filed a lawsuit in a US county court seeking a share of advances and royalties they claimed they were tricked out of by Hayward, their Sydney business partner.
In dispute is tens of millions of dollars likely paid by Random House for the publishing rights to Fifty Shades of Grey, and its sequels Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. The stories of a virginal college student and her sexually corrupted boyfriend are currently being made into a film starring Dakota Johnson.
Bestseller ... <i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i> by EL James. Bestseller ... Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James. Photo: Louise Kennerley

Jennifer Lynn Pedroza  of Arlington, Texas, says she was a partner with Hayward in The Writers Coffee Shop (TWCS), which started as a library of free online fan fiction stories in 2009, and was the first to put Fifty Shades into e-book format.
But the ''self-dealing'' Hayward, ''fraudulently'' restructured TWCS under the guise of tax minimisation, without the knowledge of the partners, so payments from the Random House deal, signed in March 2012, flowed exclusively to herself.