How Fifty Shades of Grey made it into our library.

It's been a while so I'll probably need to confirm some history with the internets, but the first I'd heard of Shades I'll call it, was when a library patron called to request that we get a copy for her/him (don't remember whether it was a him or her).

I did a quick compooter search and did not see any reference to the book. At all. I saw some fanfic references and comments, but I did not find any published novel with that title. (As you read this post, you'll learn that there existed a 50Shades.com website and a print-on-demand book; not sure if I found the site and ignored it or just never saw it. I wasn't keeping notes, not even mental ones.)

Then about a week later, maybe more or less, a request came for an inter-library loan for Shades and I answered how we were unable to get it because it wasn't currently available to us.


I think I remember a coworker asking if I'd heard of Shades because she'd just received a request for it and I commented that there is no book we can buy: "this is some online porn that everyone suddenly thinks is a book." (Again, a book had existed for several months as print-on-demand. So there was a book. Being print-on-demand just means there aren't copies in stores for anyone to pick up and pay for, even libraries.)

How were so many people learning about this book in December 2011? I want whoever was in charge of that marketing campaign to work for the library.

The library often gets requests for self-published books. These are books we won't (except in rare instances) buy for the collection. The reasoning for this is often the high cost and low demand. There are also purchasing issues because those books aren't available from our usual vendor. So getting those books means arranging a one-time payment with a small press or even an individual person then paying for shipping and separate processing, all things that our usual vendors provide because of the high volume of our orders. FYI, many libraries have procedures for accepting self-published books if there is some perceived demand. Before Shades was published, public demand for self-published books at our library was uncommon and so we had no real plan to purchase them. It was very very rare that we did.

When the third or fourth request came in and I checked online for it, suddenly there was a book for sale on Amazon. I think it was $40. And it looked like it was from a vanity press and I think the publisher was in Australia (this was the same print-on-demand title mentioned before). But it was Amazon and that made it available. So at this point there was a book. But it wasn't from a vendor where we had any relationship with and it was $40. The odds the library would be able to get it was still at a realistic 1,000 to 1.

But the book beat those odds. Because we learned we had thousands of patrons who wanted to read it.

We were able to order a few copies even though we have no formal purchasing agreement with Amazon. Mainly because of the outrageous demand for it. People requested it at every branch. I have an email that shows how many requests we had before the book was ever published in the USA as a paperback. As soon as we were able to order from Amazon and added the information in our catalog that the book was on order, we had over 1,000 library card holders request a hold for it.

I wish I could go back to the end of 2011 to see the progress of the online demand for it: I mean, was it popular on Facebook or just through people emailing each other about it? I don't know. But it seemed like it was only a few months between that first request and the arrival of the juggernaut.

According to "The Lost History of Fifty Shades of Grey"

"This erotica bestseller began as a work of Twilight fan fiction called Master of the Universe, earning a massive fan fiction following years before the book deal. Most traces of this fan fiction history have been removed from the Internet."

Now if you remember that Shades was originally posted as Twilight fan fiction, and that the Twilight series had just been a super-massive publishing monster, then the number of people reading the original posting of Shades on the internet could have been in the tens or hundreds of thousands or readers. Given the explosive demand for Shades while it was originally only available as that $40 paper edition on Amazon, the readership of Twilight fanfic must have been tremendous.

I remember having those thoughts when I was researching the book online. How the hell do people find out about this stuff?

But another issue goes back to the people who requested the book before it was even a mass published book for sale. Who are these people? The knee-jerk people who call the library and request something that doesn't exist (as I said before, it existed. I'm making this statement as if I'm remembering from February 2012). Because they were calling in 2011. If you know about the history of Shades, then you know it lived online in 2010, so that whole year could have produced that fan base. So what may have seemed as sudden and knee-jerk behavior to me could just have been a year's worth of sexual frustration.

I see from the Adweek article (previous link) Shades was available from The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House back in June 2011, and this would have been at least 5 months before I'd gotten my first request for it. So call me a bad librarian for now knowing about this book in December 2011. But as it wasn't showing in the holdings of any library that I could see and that it wasn't even on Amazon at that time, it was invisible to me. Maybe if I'd been a fan of Twilight, I'd have known.

By March 2012, the monster was here. And we had lots of copies. If you have any memory of Shades from 2010 or 2011 or even pre-March 2012, maybe you can share what your library did in those early months before the storm. Or even how you decided to buy or not buy it for your library. Any story is worth preserving.

So remember that when you're getting turned on by the BDSM shenanigans between Christian and Anastasia, you're really looking at the relationship between a 200-year-old vampire and the 16-year-old girl he wants to sleep with.

Reading Fifty Shades of Grey in 2013.

Or, "I just bought a hand-crafted Italian leather ball gag for $19.99."

I wonder what ebooks, or as some of you call the, books, will be like next year.  Many books are being published as apps, with added content such as music, video, annotations, games, etc.

But many apps also include "in app purchasing" where the app delivers more and more content if you pay more money.

Like games for your phone or tablet:  If you want the basic game, you download it for free or for a buck.  Then if you want to actually enjoy the game because the free version sucks, you'll have to pay more money to buy the items you'll need to complete the harder parts.

So if you combine the power to purchase added items with the "book as app" model, you'll get books where you can purchase the items the characters are using right there while you're reading the book.  So you can get that ball gag the stud is strapping to the heroine's face.  Or the dildo she's jamming into him.  Or the champagne or the car or the dress or the music or the .... the list is endless.  In app purchasing for ebooks could become bigger than 2 am infomercials for shitty overpriced exercise equipment.

You could pay to read the even dirtier scenes the author left out of the regular edition.  You could add sound effects each time the whip cracks in the air then licks across the heroine's taught eager ass.

You could pay for images, photos created for the book featuring beautiful models caught at the precise moment of exquisite pain.  Or pay to insert your own photos into the story.  Or change the character's names to match yours.  Or use the names of the 2013 President and First Lady: oooh, naughty.

I don't know what books will be like in a year.  But I can damn well guarantee that if in-app purchases in ebooks become common, more than a few of you will say, "Shit, this book just sold me another dildo. Someone's getting it for Christmas. Maybe grandma?"

Fifty Shades of Fuck You.

So, have you heard this thing where people become sexually aroused and then manually stimulate their own naughty parts so that it feels better and better and better until, BLAM, it feels fantastic and images of Vic Tayback flash into their minds and then they eat a pint of chocolate ice cream?

Yeah.  It's called masturbation.  And apparently most of you love to do it.  And your primary impetus for doing it this summer has been from reading Fifty Shades of Grey.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Oh, Vic!  Oh, Ben & Jerry.  I can hear all of you saying on some random Tuesday afternoon.

But because all of you are reading that piece of shit excuse for whacking material, your library has had to buy lots and lots of copies of that piece of shit piece-of-shit.

And the more copies of that piece of shit libraries buy, the less money we have to buy actual good stuff that might enrich your lives instead of giving you that primary inspiration to go and rub one out. When you should be taking your kid to soccer practice.

You might not know this, but books cost money.  And when all you assholes put reserves on for this piece of shit Fifty Shades of Grey, then libraries need to buy more copies for satisfy the holds. And your perverted needs.

So if your library is like mine, you probably spent about $3,000 on this bullshit.  So that's $3,000 less you have to buy glue sticks for your Children's programs.  So now that bunny craft you prepared for the kids has become a take-home craft where you just paper-clipped two ears to a paper plate and shoved it into the hands of a confused and disappointed 2-year-old.

WHAT THE FUCK? That kid just suddenly learned to say, out of thin air.

You just taught that kid to curse!  Are you proud of yourselves?

So do us all a favor, do all libraries a favor, and just masturbate to internet porn.  Or Kelly Ripa. Because that's what I do.  The porn, I mean.  I have a job, so I'm not home to watch Kelly, as hot as she is.

DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN.

ebooks as a commodity. yes, like pork bellies.

For those of you who walk everywhere and get their nutrition from sunlight and are naked, you may not be aware of what Commodities are and how they affect EVERY FUCKING INFINITESIMAL ASPECT OF YOUR LIVES, here is a brief explanation: Rich People Suck.

If you're unfamiliar with the Commodities market, it covers all the items one needs to live. What occurs in the market is that if you want to live a long, healthy, productive life, then prices for these commodities will go up. If you want to suffer and die in pain and horror, then prices also go up.

Commodities cover your basic resources such as iron ore, crude oil, coal, salt, sugar, coffee beans, soybeans, aluminum, copper, rice, wheat, gold, silver, palladium, platinum, cotton, orange juice, cocoa, sugar, wheat, corn, barley, pork bellies, milk, feedstuffs, fruits, vegetables, other grains, other beans, hay, other livestock, meats, poultry, and eggs.

Commodities are basically a way for the rich to profit from consumer demand. Unlike getting a Nickelback tee-shirt on clearance because nobody wanted to buy it at regular price, the price of cotton goes up simply because the shirt was produced. Damn you, Nickelback! (I don't know anything about Nickelback; I've just heard that you, the internet, don't like them. -- Okay, I just did a search and I have heard of them.. I've heard the song Never Again.)

So long as the population on the planet grows, demand will increase, and prices will rise. You don't really need to understand more than that.

So is it any surprise that Random House is attempting to also make ebooks into a commodity?

Read this:
"We believe that pricing to libraries must account for the higher value... Therefore, Random House believes it has greater value, and should be priced accordingly."

And this, "We are requesting data that libraries can share about their patrons’ borrowing patterns that over time will better enable us to establish mutually workable pricing levels that will best serve the overall e-book ecosystem.”
(click for source)

That sounds to me like Random House wants to price ebooks according to demand and not based on the average price of an ebook or what it costs to produce it. In fact, in every other instance of retail sales, increased demand sparks greater discounts. The latest bestsellers get up to 40% off, DVDs are on sale the week they come out, etc.

Ebooks are not Gold, but Random House seems to think they should be.

And they expect libraries to tell them which books we want them to charge us the most for... They're pretty much saying that they know that $100 for an ebook is too much, and they want libraries to turn over all the lending data so they can reduce the price to $79.99. And thus, make libraries a partner in our anal savaging when we should just tell them to go fuck themselves with their own unabridged dictionary. Sideways.

You can argue about library relevance and how ebooks are the New Messiah, and how we'll all be saved if we just accept ebooks into our hearts, but you're a crazy person, anyway, and nobody likes you. We still live in a world where most of the people are illiterate, or functionally literate. And if you thought about it for more than five seconds, you'd understand what the real purpose of the library should be. And it ain't about getting a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey for those thirty horny women who just asked for it because think they might like some S&M, but would scream out loud if you were making out and accidentally leaned on their hair.

Oh, God, have you read any of this book? Fifty Shades of Grey? Read this and tell me it wasn't written by a sixteen-year-old girl:

“Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian?”
“No, Anastasia it doesn’t. Firstly, I don’t make love. I fuck… hard."

Well, duh. Does anyone fuck soft? We all fuck hard. But seriously, even librarians fuck hard. Just look on the internets for fuck videos. Everyone is banging away like they're trying to frighten the dog. If I were Anastasia, I wouldn't be so impressed by how hard Christian fucks, but for how long. "Anastasia, I fuck hard... for eight seconds. Then I grunt, fart and fall asleep."

Shit. Where was I? Oh, right. Fuck you, Random House.