This article presents the results of survey data from readers of theFifty Shadesnovel series. It is almost 30 years since Janice Radway’s (1984)Reading the Romance was published and audience studies have burgeoned. However, public discourse about E L James’s trilogy was couched in assumptions about ‘formulaic’ genre fiction, alongside debates about its ‘mainstreaming’ of BDSM, and little of this discussion drew upon the voices of readers. Our research reveals readers’ complex, often contradictory, responses to the novels. For these readers, the acts of reading and discussing the novels offer a range of (dis)pleasures, from erotic enjoyment to the amusements of critique; from self-gratification to participation in cultural dialogue.
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Our results are not intended to speak for the ‘natural’ readership of either romances or erotica – indeed, as will become clear, the readers who responded to our survey mostly comprised women who readFifty Shadesto ‘see what the fuss was about’. (934)
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Among the readers, 24% identified as being regular romance readers and 14% as regular erotica readers; 59% had read romance before and 39% erotica – although, as we have mentioned, our focus in this article is on those who would not describe themselves as regular readers of either genre. (942)
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