50 Shades of Hoopla

What is so bleeding “hawt” about an S&M chick-lit novel, anyway? Haven’t those been around since Victorian times?

As authors (and aspiring full-time authors) here at VP, we take an interest when success stories are waved in our faces. Whiletemp3 getting work published is easier than it’s ever been; the writing racket is also tougher than ever before. Fewer and fewer people read; yet there’s more and more competition from other authors to capture the (mercurial) attention of that shrinking pool of readers. And those readers, by-and-large, don’t necessarily care that much about the quality of the material.

It’s worse than that when you’re a man, writing books for other men. Why? Because men have never been the avid readers women were (on average). Fewer still read fiction. Here are a few distractions contributing to this imbalance:

  • Work (even in this age of “equality,” men still put in more hours than women).
  • Movies (they’re everywhere, now–you don’t need to visit a theater).
  • Video/computer games (often they’re written better anyway).
  • The Internet.

When the New York Publishing Cartel abandoned male readers in the 1990s, the male population abandoned literature in a mass exodus.

temp1(Anybody remember how J.A. Konrath snuck by the NYPC gatekeepers to get published in the first place? The fact that he used the androgynous “J.A.” in lieu of a first name was no mistake. Neither was the “strong female character” orthodoxy.)

So when 50 Shades or some other literary fad comes along and makes big money, we pay attention, but generally don’t learn anything useful from it.

What this bestseller-turned-blockbuster(?) movie teaches us has more to do with the state of our culture than anything else. And I’m not even referring to the kinky sex fetishes. I’m referring to the fact that 50 Shades of Grey is just a hyped, edited work of fan fiction derived from the Twilight series.