“For us, good is often linked to literary style, what we consider the quality of writing and so on. If we didn’t think something was good, it didn’t get agented, it didn’t get published, bookshops didn’t stock it and it didn’t sell,” he said. The runaway success of Fifty Shades had forced the entire publishing industry to re-evaluate assumptions of what makes books sell.“For years, centuries even, the publishing industry and literary world’s definition of good was the only one that mattered. “The Fifty Shades phenomenon has shown the entire industry that huge amounts of readers just want a really good story and they are not that fussed about how it is presented to them,” said Scott Pack, a former head buyer for Waterstones and publisher for Harper Collins, who now runs the Aardvark Bureau imprint. Audiences, however, attended in their droves the movie took $500m at the box office. Notoriously, James retained tight control over the dialogue and storyline, causing a rift with director Sam Taylor-Wood, and critics were united in their response to the adaptation, deemed by one “about as stimulating as a cold shower”. The response to the 2015 film was little better.

Writing in the New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd called James “Brontë devoid of talent”. It made Twilight look like War and Peace”.

Critics have called her writing boring and clunky Salman Rushdie said he had “never read anything so badly written that got published.

Books like 50 shades of grey trilogy