Publishing Scandals

Jude wrote:Sony Offers $5 Million for Fifty Shades.

You should see my face right now. It looks something like this: - ______ -

I'm so sad for all the really awesome fanfic writers I know (from other fandoms, not in Twilight) who actually wrote amazing stories and are having the hardest time trying to land an agent and get published.

The excerpts I've seen of 50 Shades just read like terrible fanfic. Can't figure out how it got published.

Clearly I've wasted my life going to school and getting a proper job when I should've focused more time on writing really bad fanfic/erotica. Seriously I'm not gonna lie when I say I'm little jealous and bitter about this.

The author works in PR, right? I've said all along that is is more of a PR thing than anything else. It was declared a publishing phenomenon before it had ever hit the NY Times best seller list or before any libraries I know of even owned it. I'm shocked it got the favorable review it did in Entertainment Weekly

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY DID WHAT?

I think you just broke Cleo's brain.

This whole debacle is so sleazy, and I don't mean the book's content (though that is too: I took a peek at the Master of the Universe fic, and dear lord is it bad). The way the PR machine the author clearly has at her disposal from her regular job can be manipulated to create a "phenomenon" out of nothing is sad and depressing. I'm a librarian, and I'd never heard of these books or the author or anything about them in any journal, preview catalogue, or anything in the publishing industry at all prior to these books suddenly getting prime advertising on the Today show, the interwebs, and several magazines. Now I've got all kinds of patrons calling the library asking if we have the book (which isn't even sold in print yet!). We just got the e-book in, sigh.

When I think of all the talented authors, of both fan fic and their own original material, who can't get published, or never reach the heights of fame their books deserve, I'd like to slap E. L. James and all her readers right upside the head.

Luthien wrote:The way the PR machine the author clearly has at her disposal from her regular job can be manipulated to create a "phenomenon" out of nothing is sad and depressing.

It really is. One of those "Is nothing genuine anymore in this world?" moments, for me.

Lady V wrote:Clearly I've wasted my life going to school and getting a proper job when I should've focused more time on writing really bad fanfic/erotica. Seriously I'm not gonna lie when I say I'm little jealous and bitter about this.

You and me both.

naughty zoot wrote:The author works in PR, right? I've said all along that is is more of a PR thing than anything else. It was declared a publishing phenomenon before it had ever hit the NY Times best seller list or before any libraries I know of even owned it. I'm shocked it got the favorable review it did in Entertainment Weekly

I think the first story came out via the New York Post of all places which made me think someone UES mama had a friend who worked there and kept going on and on about this stupid book. Reading the first article I never would have thought it would explode into something like this.

Luthien wrote:When I think of all the talented authors, of both fan fic and their own original material, who can't get published, or never reach the heights of fame their books deserve, I'd like to slap E. L. James and all her readers right upside the head.

This. Right there. I've read some amazing fanfic over the years -- better than much of the published fiction out there -- but this was certainly not one of them. I read it because it had gotten so much over-the-top clamoring attention that I thought it had to be something amazing. It was amazing, all right.

It just makes me sad that the PR has worked so well. To me, it's an amateurish story built around a thoroughly unlikeable set of characters. But clearly this thing hit a nerve before it was even published, whether I understand it or not. And, obviously, I SO don't.

Now she wants $5 million and total creative control for a movie.

But the demands of James and her literary agent, Valerie Hoskins, have caused more than one bidder to use the safe word. Sources say the ask is very far-reaching and nearly unprecedented, though one notes that it wouldn’t be completely unheard-of for a book that had actually been published.

OH BURN!

Among the contract requests are approval of director, writer, cast, locations, screenplay, marketing materials, trailers and more.

shpffffff

I'm hoping she demands actual Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, as I've heard she wanted, and refuses to go ahead without them, and we're all saved.

From that article:

being referred to as “mommy porn”

That might just be the grossest marketing catchphrase I've ever heard. And I say that as both a mother and a lover of pornography. But then again, I like to draw a clear, bright line between those two things.

Heh, I've heard that phrase a ton during this whole thing. It's so incredibly condescending, too. I wouldn't be surprised if James came up with it herself somehow, because it's been repeated so aggressively--it had to come from somewhere.

I'm a terrible person, but I just keep hoping this builds and builds and builds and then no one wants to do a movie at all and something else comes along and everyone's forgotten about it by May. Or someone comes along and publishes erotica based on her book and a whole exponentially derivative pseudo-Twilight mommy porn subgenre emerges and the universe implodes. It would be better than having to sit through a soullessly calculated media push for her eventual movie.

Miss Moneypenny wrote:From that article:

being referred to as “mommy porn”

That might just be the grossest marketing catchphrase I've ever heard. And I say that as both a mother and a lover of pornography. But then again, I like to draw a clear, bright line between those two things.

I also find that phrase really condescending and gross for the same reasons.

And if you're a terrible person Cleolinda, I'm right there with you.

There is just so much potential for schadenfreude with all those crazy demands, it's the only possibly good thing I've heard about this stupid book.

Or someone comes along and publishes erotica based on her book and a whole exponentially derivative pseudo-Twilight mommy porn subgenre emerges and the universe implodes.

Man, those Mayans knew what they were doing when they said the world would end in 2012.

I don't understand why she think she's going to get total creative control. I don't think any author has ever been given that much, much less one who is as unproven as EL James. Not even JK Rowling or Smeyer or Nicholas Sparks has gotten that much control.

Especially in a situation where "creative control" is basically going to mean, "Let me make sure you change as little of my badly-plotted, really explicit erotica as possible, thereby ensuring it's completely unmarketable."

(Why do I have a weird suspicion that she's going to want the marketing materials to look as much like the Twilight posters, etc., as possible?)

(Maybe that's not really a question.)

On various forums I'm already seeing un-ironic suggestions for who should play the roles. The snarky, angry little devil on my shoulder me has considered asking who should play the part of the inner goddess.

Please get Alex Pettyfer. I would laugh so hard.

I'm shocked it got the favorable review it did in Entertainment Weekly

People gave it a good nod, too. Which...it's REALLY HARD to get your book in People.

The people who read People are probably the target audience, sadly.

bookworm wrote:The people who read People are probably the target audience, sadly.

People who read People are the unluckiest people in the world.

Among the contract requests are approval of director, writer, cast, locations, screenplay, marketing materials, trailers and more.

shpffffff

I'm hoping she demands actual Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, as I've heard she wanted, and refuses to go ahead without them, and we're all saved.

I'd like to be in the room to see the looks on their faces when their respective agents explain that they've gotten an offer from the lady who wrote an erotic novel based on their version of their characters and really, really wants them to star in the movie version, in which she will have creative control over everything that happens.

Am I a terrible person for really wanting this movie to become a reality because there's no way it could be anything other than hilariously bad? It could be a camp classic on a Showgirls level.

Fuck everyone. Universal and FOCUS FEATURES? The little studio that makes all the indie movie Oscar bait actual GOOD MOVIES?