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No, really. I saw this today.

Uncle B let out a yelp, and there was this in the window. It’s a little local mom-and-pop hardware store.

In case you’re even more paleolithic than I am (seems unlikely), I gather Fifty Shades of Grey is a romance and medium-core BDSM fantasy novel rolled into one. Not really my thing. Hard to say which of the two is less appealing.

More stuff I learned when I looked it up: it started out as Twilight fan fiction (which is confusing, because there’s nary a vampire in it), posted online by someone calling herself “Snowqueen’s Icedragon”. Then Miz Icedragon changed the characters Edward and Bella to Christian and Ana and self-published it. Then it went e-book and a print-on-demand, publicized entirely by blogpost and word of mouth. And then the whole thing went monkeyshit.

Forty million copies and 37 countries later, it knocked over Harry Potter to be the fastest-selling book in history. Amazon.co.uk announced earlier this month it had sold more copies than all the Harry Potter books put together. Can I get a holy shit, ladies and gentlemen?

I hate to think how many Mary Sue‘s are out there tonight, typing one-handed…


Okay. Tomorrow. Six on the dot, Weasel Blog Time. Round 36 of the Dead Pool!

August 23, 2012 — 10:13 pm
Comments: 20