Something is rotten in the publishing world. I’ll give y’all a second to absorb that…
In recent months, Fifty Shades of Grey has become the benchmark for erotic romance. (I’ll save my rant on “mommy porn” and why I find that label offensive for another day.) There are endless news stories about it. It is displayed prominently at booksellers from the hometown used bookstore to Barnes and Noble. Fifty Shades has acquired an instant pop-culture entree that leads many readers to ask other authors, “Oh, is your work like Fifty Shades?” There was even that Best Buy commercial during the Super Bowl…
Some people may look at this post and think I’m just throwing out sour grapes. Let me defuse that particular rumor bomb right now, by saying that I’m nothing but happy for people who manage to turn their work into money. God knows it’s a hard thing to do. If it just so happens that this person has the right contacts in the media, thereby all but guaranteeing a bestseller, so much the better. My problem is not with E.L. James’ success, per se, but with the manner in which she achieved it.
Let’s start with the premise of Fifty Shades. It started life as a Twilight fan fiction incorporating heavy BDSM into the storyline. Ehhhh….okay. I’ve written a fanfic or two in my time, never intended for publication, and which the general public will never see, but I learned a few things about my craft doing it. So I can’t get too down on it, especially when I know a couple of really excellent authors, foremost among them Margie Church, whose entry into the publishing world started life in exactly the same way.
Here’s the crucial difference: Margie used characters and a spin-off story as her starting point, but made it original enough in the final form to be well distanced from the source material. Originality is the deciding factor here. Well, that and the fact that Margie can write.
I’ve read the Twilight series and, as I’ve confessed before, I enjoyed it for the imagery and the overall storyline, if not necessarily for the character portrayal, which I found somewhat lacking. (There was a YouTube video a while back in which Bella was compared to a Lego brick, which I thought was hilariously apt.) For all that, Stephanie Meyer at least crafted an original story. Is it *snooty accent* “great lit-er-a-toooooooooor?” Certainly not. Is it worth reading on its own merits, yes.
Now compare Fifty Shades. I have only read one of the trilogy, but I feel confident based on the experience that I can pretty well analyze the overall series. I picked up the second book, Fifty Shades Darker, at the local library out of morbid curiosity and read it in two sittings. I knew from the second Anastasia laid eyes on Christian that it was Bella looking at Edward. His hair’s the same, everything’s the same except for the amber color of his eyes. The plot closely mirrors that of Twilight as well, with a number of parallels that lies well outside the statistical dispersion required to be mere coincidence. I harbored a brief spark of hope when the other woman was introduced, but this was dashed in short order when Christian Grey’s castoff and Anastasia’s predecessor in his affections proved to be Anastasia’s drugged out, mentally unstable twin.
This leaves aside utterly the horrific number of sentence-level problems and generally amateurish level of writing craft, which I won’t even get into except to give it a nod here. I could write a book unto itself about all the editorial gaffes and cliched prose used in this particular work.
The only recommendation I can give this book is that the sex was hot, and according to a couple of well-placed and knowledgeable sources close to me, the depictions of the BDSM relationship between Bella and Edward….oh, oops, sorry: Anastasia and Christian–was well-written and fairly realistic.
“But J.S.!” I know someone will protest breathlessly. “Why are you picking on poor E.L. James?”
I’m not. If I’m doing anything at all here, I’m pointing out a very disturbing trend for the future of publishing.
You see, E.L. James is a Cinderella story. She was a television producer who fiddled with writing in her spare time, and became infatuated with Twilight. Okay, so far, so good. However:
It’s hardly a secret in writing circles that if E.L. James had not had the contacts in the publishing world she gained by dint of her career as a TV producer, Fifty Shades would never have seen daylight. Far better written, more original manuscripts have been condemned to the slush pile, while her trilogy has become a worldwide bestseller. The most galling part to me, however, is that this thinly veiled fan fiction, as amateurishly written as it is, has become the gold standard in what erotic romance is, inviting comparisons in the media and among readers to other erotic romance authors.
In my opinion, Fifty Shades should not be considered as a role model for what erotic romance should or can be. Instead, it should send a chill down the spines of readers and authors alike, because its success sends a clear message about what publishing companies are looking for. Forget originality, forget sweating and straining to produce a plot that doesn’t sound like half the other books out there, forget spending the time learning your craft and committing yourself seriously to paying the dues that authordom requires. No, we as publishers are only interested in one thing, and that’s how we can make a buck. Give us something cut whole cloth from someone else’s bestselling template, with just enough variance in the color and seams to prevent us from getting slapped with an egregiously expensive lawsuit, and we’ll make you a gazillionaire.
It’s pretty damned disheartening, when you get right down to it.
Now, I want to note that this does not apply to all publishers. This trend seems to be restricted almost entirely to the Big 6 and their subsidiaries, to the best of my knowledge. If anyone knows of other publishers who do the same, I’d like to know about them. However, there seems to be a preponderance of very similar bordering on plagiarized tales on the bookshelves right now, leaving the vast majority of midlist authors to fight upstream against a flood of “If you like ________, then you’ll love _______!” Of course they will….it’s the same story, remixed and repackaged juuuuuuuuust enough to avoid those pesky lawsuits.
So, for the readers, my personal recommendation is, the next time you’re surfing your favorite online bookseller or cruising your local bookstore looking for something to read, steer well clear of imitative fiction. (Isn’t it all? Yes, Plato. Thank you. Now sit down and shut up. I suffered through The Republic twice, and that was enough, thanks anyway….) Instead, choose an author you don’t know or haven’t read in a while. Pick something outside your comfort zone. Select authors who actually care enough about their readers and their craft to at least make a reasonable pretense of putting together an original plot, characters, and situations.
All of erotic romance is not represented by Fifty Shades any more than it is by my work, or Margie’s, or Bianca Sommerland’s, or R. Renee Vickers… Stop putting all genre authors in one box by picking one (poorly conceived, written, edited, et cetera) book and claiming it stands as an example of the whole. It doesn’t, any more than my comments here represent every author’s views or any other author’s represent mine, on any topic.
Dare to be an original reader!
Until next time,
Best,
J.S. Wayne
