50 Shades of Grey Is Making E.L. James Even More Money Than You Thought
50 Shades of Grey author E.L. James—Snowqueens Icedragon to her fans—is purportedly making an estimated $1.34 million a week off her quaint little country romance novel. Having sold 20 million copies and counting, the trilogy is calmly and methodically shattering every previous sales record in the world.
That seems like a lot of money for terribly written fan-fic whose demographic is predominately mothers living in suburbia. Let's look at some math; numbers never lie:
- E.L. James earns 7% royalty on every $14 paperback and 25% royalty on every $10 ebook sold.
- Last month 4 million paperbacks and 1 million ebooks were sold.
- E.L James earns $191K a day, give or take.
- In March Universal/Focus features paid $5 million for the rights to the 50 Shades movies.
- Fictional sadist and Seattle's most growly businessman Christian Grey earns $100,000 an hour.
- Christian Grey earns $2.4 million a day, no give or take.
- I listened to roughly 4.6 hours of 50 Shades of Grey on tape while on a long drive, by choice.
Nothing but the cold hard facts. Chaos reigns.