In the final analysis, this was perhaps the key mechanism in the Fifty Shades phenomenon. Like a viral video, it was propelled by a combination of traditional broadcasters (the Today show and the New York Times), dark broadcasters (the massive fanfic cluster and Facebook groups), and ordinary sharing (readers talking to readers). Millions of people were exhilarated, maddened, and puzzled by the book, but there are thousands of books that exhilarate, madden, and puzzle. None of them sell one hundred million copies. What separated Fifty Shades is that its notoriety became a distinct product;
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