What I wanted to know before diving in was, does 50 Shades still read as a provocative, taboo-busting page-turner? Or has it become a relic of a very different time?įirst, a quick recap for anyone who hasn’t read the book. Forget putting out a fragrance: Stars including Gwyneth Paltrow, Lily Allen, Cara Delevingne and Dakota Johnson (who incidentally starred in the 50 Shades movies) have released their own sex toys. You can now buy a vibrator when you stock up on sunscreen at Priceline. Today, ‘Popular with Women’ is one of the most viewed categories on Pornhub. Because the world has irrefutably moved on since 50 Shades was released. Mind-numbing boredom sets in.Īlso, curiosity. To be fair, criticism was widespread, with journalist Maureen Dowd opining that “James writes like a Brontë devoid of talent.”īut things change. (It was released in paperback in 2012.)Īt the time the book came out – and as the hysteria and hype around the book ballooned – I sniffily refused to read it, clinging to some sort of illogical literary pretension. This year marks 10 years since EL James’ (real name Erika Mitchell) book made the jump from the murky corners of Internet fandom and was first released in e-book form by Australian publisher Amanda Hayward. $1.8 billion: The combined gross of the movie adaptations.Įven now, none of these numbers truly convey the wonder and the mystery of how a work that started life in the literary gutter, as Twilight fan fiction, became a cultural phenomenon, a zeitgeist-shifting chart-topper that was the fastest selling book in history. Fifty: How many languages it has been translated into (including Mongolian). That’s the number of books sold in the trilogy. If you want to talk about Fifty Shades of Grey we’ve got to start with the numbers: 150 million.

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