Case Study: Lessons from the marketing of Fifty Shades of Grey

[Conrad]

Fifty shades of Grey: it began as fan fiction, was picked up by a tiny publisher in rural Australia. It went on to be a 100m copy global smash, translated into 52 languages and the fastest-selling paperback of all time.

This short study analyses the history of the book and how and why it became a marketing success.

http://bookmarq.net/marketing-fifty-s...

[Dorothy]

Fascinating. I haven't read the book, but the sales phenomenon is worth studying. In addition to what you have mentioned, I also think the title is excellent and contributed to its success. Before I knew anything at all about the book, I liked the title. Sometimes I think great titles in themselves can make a book. Like "Jaws" or "The Exorcist" for example. I'm afraid before I ever open the book.

[Conrad]

Almost everything went right in the marketing from the outset although they didn't really know what they were doing. I think she also owed a great deal to Goodreads because she was really the first non-mainstream author to get a lot of "want to read" here.

There is a lot to be said for pre-launch latency from a sales viewpoint. Pre-orders go into your first week's sales figures so even though you might have accumulated them over weeks they show as sales in week one. The importance of this is Amazon (and just about everyone else) allocates more views based on sales so the more you sell you more you show and further up the site. If you have enough sales off the added allocation this can become a bandwagon. It's why publishers put so much effort in in the weeks before the launch.

[Conrad]

I'm really into doing something - possibly an outline with a view to a screenplay - on the early story of the book. There's a court case going on brought by a woman from Arlington, Jennifer Pedroza. I have written to her attorney but he has still to come back. Story of the case here: http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/05...

I think the interesting part is the period from around early 2011 to March 2013 when Random House bought the book. Can you imagine the realisation when the sales started to gush in?

This was done before they litigated:
http://www.fwweekly.com/2014/01/29/so...