It sounds suspiciously like a story from The Onion: 'Fifty Shades' author to publish writing guide. But nope—it's actually a real-life AP wire story that appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer's website this morning. Scheduled to be published on May 1 by Random House's Vintage imprint, Fifty Shades of Grey: Inner Goddess (A Journal) will be a combination of author E.L. James' professional writing advice and—get this—blank journal pages for readers to fill with their own words. Wow. You definitely don't need an English lit degree to see this book for what it is: A fairly easy way to make a pile of money by cashing in...

Allen Schatz published his first book two years ago. After things didn’t work out with an agent, he went the self-publishing route and knew he had to market on his own, which meant contacting reviewers. Some said yes, many said no. But Schatz noticed a change in the business around this time and self-publishing didn’t seem like a death sentence for his writing career. “By the time my former agent released me, things had changed enough for me to go the self-publishing route,” said Schatz, whose first book was Game 7: Dead Ball. “It really wasn’t hard finding reviewers. There are a number of...

Watch out EL James, there's a new writer out to steal your crown as a bestselling romance novelist—and she's only 17-years-old. Like the [Fifty Shades] author, Beth Reeks was snapped up by a publisher after her book was initially a hit online. Now her novel, The Kissing Booth, is set to be published in paperback, which could see the teenager propelled even higher up the bestsellers lists. Like James, Reeks' genre is romance but, befitting for her age and that of her target teen audience, she doesn't realm into the erotic. Her novel is described as a 'cool, sexy young adult romance', and is about the...

Reporting from this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, AFP's Frederic Happe filed an amusing feature over the weekend about the somewhat recent—and astonishingly quick—rise of e-books with fictional erotic themes. It doesn't exactly take a publishing futurist, of course, to understand why erotic e-books have attained such popularity, and as far as I can tell, there are really only two main factors in play here: 1. The breakaway success of EL James' Fifty Shades trilogy has resulted in untold numbers of copycat attempts. To get a sense of just have prevalent erotica has lately become in the publishing industry, check out this AP...

There's a halfway decent chance this story isn't even true, but the infamous Daily Mirror (a UK tabloid) and its sister publication, the Coventry Telegraph, are both reporting that Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James has threatened a sex-themed party planner with legal action. According to the two papers, a 45-year-old woman by the name of Tina Winters (that's her in the photo above) wanted to launch a small home-party business that would host Fifty Shades of Grey-themed buying parties. Winters would presumably host the events at the homes of various women; she would then sell lingerie and discuss sex...