Tuesday, March 13, 2012

How Vintage Landed Erotic Romance Trilogy '50 Shades of Grey'


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As the NYT reported over the weekend Vintage bought world English print, digital, and audio rights to republish EL James' erotic romance trilogy 50 SHADES OF GREY, which has sold more than 250,000 units (predominantly in ebook format) and has become an increasingly prominent topic of conversation over the past few weeks. The republished ebook edition is available now, priced at $9.99, with trade paperbacks to follow in early April, priced at $15.95. Foreign rights auctions have concluded or are underway in a number of territories as well.
In a telephone interview, Vintage evp and publisher Anne Messitte told us the deal with James,(pic left reading from her book), her agent Valerie Hoskins, and her previous publisher Writers Coffee Shop "may be the most complex deal I've ever worked on" -- a fitting process for what was a complicated path to publication.
Messitte was first alerted in January to 50 SHADES OF GREY by a publishing colleague, but she observed that "within a day, I was socializing with some moms at my kids' schools who were chatting about the book rather enthusiastically." Messitte also followed web discussions at DivaMoms.com, a community for mothers living on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and she got a physical copy of the first volume. "As soon as I finished it I immediately downloaded the second book. Both of them were completely immersive, something that was really connecting with a lot of women. The buzz building around them was notable."
Messitte contacted James and her agent Hoskins through the DivaMoms group, and arranged for a meeting at Vintage's offices on January 24. "I said I really wanted to make an offer, as I had a very strong idea of how to republish the books and make them more widely available, especially in physical editions. This is about taking books that are seen as strictly genre and saying yes, it's for those audiences, very much so but also clearly for many other readers. I really felt there was a way to help EL James find the audience that the momentum was really building towards."
James and Hoskins met with other publishers as well, and at least four were involved in the auction process. Messitte stressed, however, that it was "not a conventional auction." By the time James and her books were garnering national attention, deal negotiations were already well in hand. Messitte couldn't comment on specifics but with several parties needing to be satisfied from a financial standpoint, "We had to come up with a plan that was collaborative and supportive with everyone's interest and we happily found a way forward."
Messitte said the trade paperback editions (previously reported to have a 750,000 first printing for all three volumes) will feature more editorial oversight, as James has spent the past few days reviewing copyedits to the books "at lightning speed to bring a new standard to both the editorial presentation and packaging." The cover art will retain the same look as the original print-on-demand versions issued by Writers Coffee Shop but with added effects so that it will "look as great as other books on the front table in bookstores." Once the trade paperback edition is released the ebook edition will be updated to reflect the new copyedits and other changes, which is "not too dissimilar from what we generally do with reprint editions."
As numerous reports have outlined, 50 SHADES OF GREY grew out of a multi-part series of fan fiction called MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, based on Stephenie Meyer's TWILIGHT novels, that James (a pseudonym for London-based television executive Erika Leonard) published online between 2009 and 2011 in various venues, including fanfiction.net and her own website. When she contracted with Writers Coffee Shop in early 2011 to publish the works, lightly rewritten to take out any references to Twilight characters and situations, James took the fan fiction versions offline.
Vintage issued a statement to the AP Saturday defending 50 SHADES as an original work, and said to us that James had warranted the books were, indeed original. Messitte added she was "aware of the narrative that [50 SHADES] started as differently titled piece of fiction, but that they were and are two distinctly separate pieces of work." A request for comment from Meyer's agent, Jodi Reamer at Writers House, was not responded to at press time.


More at BBC Report

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