Amidst cries heralding the end of civilisation and "what were they thinking?" America's book trade bible Publishers Weekly has named British erotic author EL James its "publishing person of the year".
PW's annual accolade, for "shaping and, sometimes, transforming, the publishing industry", has never gone to an author before: winners in the past include Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos, and, last year, Penguin US's chief executive David Shanks. But citing the huge sales of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy – they have sold more than 35m copies in the US alone and brought in over $200m (£125m) in revenue to publisher Random House – Publishers Weekly said that James had exerted a comparable influence. "Because the success of the series continues to reverberate throughout the industry in a number of ways – among other things, the money it's brought in helped boost print sales in bookstores and turned erotic fiction into a hot category – we have selected James as the most notable player on the publishing stage this year."
The news was greeted with horror in America. "Civilisation ends," blared the New York Daily News, describing James's books as "terrible, titillating tome[s]" and bemoaning "the rash of literary awfulness" the British author has inspired. "What was Publishers Weekly thinking?" added the Los Angeles Times. "James wrote fan fiction, she got it independently published by a micro e-press, it went viral, she got a book deal, she started collecting serious paychecks. All that is great news for an individual author, but it hardly justifies making that individual the Publishing Person of the Year … It's really impossible to say that James has done much more than get very, very lucky, although PW tries to make that case. Someone who stumbles across a jackpot is certainly fortunate, but should they be anointed with an industry's laurels? Maybe someday, PW will find a person in publishing who is doing something, rather than having something done to them, and name the individual Publishing Person of the Year."
Even commenters on Publishers Weekly's own site were unimpressed. "I want to die. Or kill. Or just eat some cake until this literary pain goes away," wrote one. "Seriously? Is this the best you guys can do? Hilary Mantel becomes the first woman to win the Booker Prize twice and you pick EL James? Lay off the eggnog and rethink your decision," said another.
The award comes as analysis of James's readers shows that – despite the "mummy porn" moniker that has been applied to her erotic novels – 30% of her buyers are actually men. Just 35% of her readers are women with kids at home, according to Bowker Market Research's analysis of UK readers, with 13% bought for those over 55. Bizarrely, 1% of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy was bought as a present for a parent, while 2% of buyers categorised their purchases as for "reference", "study" or "self-help".