It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that combined sales (print, audio, digital) for the English, German, and Spanish versions of the trilogy is over $70 million — a figure reached in less than a year (March-December 2012).
According to Bertelsmann, the German media company that owns the trilogy’s publisher Random House, Fifty Shades is “the fastest-selling series in the company’s history.”
“It’s a gigantic number,” said Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Trachtenberg. “It’s the kind of series that every publisher dreams of having.” He goes on to wonder why these three books in particular broke out, answering that “People really don’t know.”
We think he’s just asking the wrong people ;) E L James wrote an epic love story that took the Twilight fanfiction world by storm. That loyal fanbase supported her when she self-published and continued to support her when the story went mainstream, a voice that helped introduce the characters to a whole new audience. Critics can say what they will about the books, but millions of fans can’t be are not wrong.
Source: Wall Street Journal Speakeasy
