- by: Fran Metcalf
- From: The Courier-Mail
- August 22, 2012
IT'S
official. The saucy bonkbuster Fifty Shades of Grey has become the bestselling
book in Australia.
It has dominated the number one bestseller spot for 16 weeks and has now overtaken J K Rowling's The Dealthy Hallows in overall sales.
Publisher Random House today announced this set a new benchmark since Nielsen BookScan Australia began recording sales figures in 2003.
Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed - the second and third books in the trilogy - have sold 779, 000 and 705, 000 copies respectively, propelling combined Australian sales for the trilogy to more than 2.7 million copies.
"My main ambition when I signed the deal with Random House was to see my books in the shops," said James.
"I simply had no idea they would be so successful and this is totally unexpected. The whole process has been amazing and I couldn't be more pleased that so many people are reading the books and would like to thank everyone involved."
Wives and mothers across Queensland have been wiping out stocks of the books from bookstores and Queensland libraries have reported waits of up to six months for the opportunity to read Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels.
Random House Australia marketing director Brett Osmond said the trend was being fuelled by social media.
"The insatiable demand for the print and ebook editions is being fuelled in no small part through reader recommendations via social media and it is truly electric to witness," he said.
"We got a glimpse recently of the lightning speed of consumer's book demand with the release of The Hunger Games film but this is happening at an even greater level and appears to be still gaining momentum."
Foreign rights for the trilogy have been sold in 44 territories and translated into more than 40 languages.
In the US and Canada, sales of the trilogy have exceeded 20 million copies and film rights have been sold to Universal Features and Focus Features.
E. L. James, a 40-something mother of two teenagers and London-based television executive, began posting chapters of her book on a website for amateur romance writers.
The next thing she knew, independent Australian publisher The Writer's Coffee Shop offered to publish it as an ebook and sold 250,000 copies. It hits The New York Times e-book bestseller list and is then discovered by Random House, reportedly for about $750,000.
The publishing phenomenon has set in motion a new trend in erotica with major publishing houses scrambling to sign up their own versions of "mummy porn" writers.
Harlequin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon and Schuster and others have recently released their own erotica titles.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/news/mummy-porn-fifty-shades-of-grey-by-el-james-becomes-australias-bestselling-book/story-fnejlrpu-1226455801169#ixzz24MEUn7YF
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