Fifty Shades Trilogy (Fifty Shades of Grey ;Darker; Freed)

The author has spoken of her shock at the success of the book: "The explosion of interest has taken me completely by surprise."[3] James has described the Fifty Shades trilogy as "my midlife crisis, writ large. All my fantasies in there, and that's it."[4] She did not start to write until January 2009, as she revealed while still active on FanFiction.Net: "I started writing in January 2009 after I finished reading the Twilight saga, and I haven't stopped since. I discovered Fan Fiction in August 2009. Since then I have written two fics and plan on doing at least one more. After that... who knows?"[5] In August 2013, sales of the trilogy saw James top the Forbes' list of the highest-earning authors[6] with earnings of $95 million which included $5 million for the film rights to Fifty Shades of Grey.[7] in spite of the success, the books have also been largely panned by critics,[8] with the first entry in particular "being ridiculed by virtually every critic who has read it."[9] Since 2015 the series has been expanded with a parallel set of novels "as told by Christian": Grey follows the events of Fifty Shades of Grey but from the perspective of Christian Grey, and Darker (2017) does the same for the plot of Fifty Shades Darker