What made 50 Shades of Gray so successful?

What made every shitty book successfull

>>8715397
>>8715399
Marketing

>>8715414
and luck. and the fact that they're shitty so they don't challenge anyone even a little bit.

>>8715414
>>8715459
I think there was also a lot of mainstream interest in BDSM that just hadn't been tapped. Millions of women were probably reading the Wikipedia page for years and thought they were weird for it and then suddenly they discovered the fantasy was much more widespread and jumped at the chance to be part of the phenomena.

Almost every woman I know who read the book was perfectly aware of how terribly written it was. That wasn't really the point.

>>8715397
>extremely easy to read
>triggers addictive and emotional responses in the heterosexual female reader's reward system (hyperventilation, arousal, etc)
>deals with female fantasies that somehow the average man cannot fulfill, thus the feminists get mad ("men shouldn’t be dominant anymore", “this book is a menace to feminism and to every thinking woman”, “women that enjoy this are probably alienated idiots”, etc)
>plot is highly similar to classical works such as Beauty and the Beast. Genre fiction works with the same plot over and over again. Never underestimate the fact that erotica and genre readers want to read the same history only with slight differences, to see if certain book keeps, changes or negates the commonplaces of that genre.
>is a watered down version of Victorian fiction: woman trapped in a house by a dominant male. Think of 'Rebecca' + Heathcliff + Thomas Hardy. All this written by someone with no talent whatsoever.
>marketing + delusional sense of belonging and superiority ("I'm an empowered woman, I read for pleasure, I choose what to read, I don’t care if they say this is a bad book, I’ll read it anyway").

>>8715516
Exactly this.
Also word of mouth as this book being so "erotic".

>>8715397
This
>>8715516

But seriously it is just porn for women. Same with Twilight.

>>8715397

Why OP, wanna write one of your own?

I would add to >>8715516 's list just a general degradation of morality for the last few dozen years. Hollywood is horrifying and it needs to be stopped... now you got John Green masquerading as a white knight, encouraging his female readers to be skanks.

>>8715397

- The inherent power of the sex drive
- Marketing
- Mass retardation

>>8715397

Pandering to primitive, psychological needs or wishes of women? It's the equivalent to a playboy magazine for men.

>>8715516
>>8715615
virgins.

>>8715397
It was the ressentiment of unattractive beta males that made it successful desu

>>8715397
What makes any shitty book successful?
It jumps into untapped, unfulfilled wishes and desires of their audience (in this case soccer moms and their boring sex life) and allows them some sort of basic psychological release and escape. Also sex sells.