Introduction

After the Fifty Shades of Grey book series had sold more than 125 million copies worldwide, fans eagerly awaited the release of the movie adaptation in February of 2015. Building on the books’ success, the opening weekend of the movie alone grossed $248 million. The production and pre-production of the film was accompanied by media reports and PR announcements of the ways the narrative and specifically the BDSM scenes in the book were adapted to the screen, as well as which actors were cast as the central characters Christian and Ana. Throughout this renewed interest in Fifty Shades of Grey, the history of layered adaptation that the text had transitioned through before it was turned into a movie receded into the background.

An earlier version of Fifty Shades of Grey, the Twilight fanfiction Master of the Universe, had been widely read by fans online before the text was stripped of its direct references to Twilight and became a commercial success in its own right. Master of the Universe is not the only prominent text that evolved from the realms of fanfiction writing; with Sylvain Reynard’s Gabriel's Inferno and the writing duo Christina Lauren's Beautiful Bastard at least three other authors of erotic Twilight fanfiction made the New York Times bestseller list. Beyond easily adaptable “all human” fanfiction from the Twilight fandom, fanfictions from other fandoms, including texts that revel in fantastic supernatural worlds, have successfully transitioned from the communal online and free writing context to the book market.