$150,000,000
Erika Mitchell
Net Worth
Born in (City)
London
Born in (Country)
England
Date of Birth
07th December, 1963
Date of Death
-
Mother
Alexandra Mitchell
Father
Alastair
About
Erika Leonard, known by her pen name E. L. James, is a British author. She wrote the best-selling erotic romance trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed, along with the companion novels Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian and Darker: Fifty Shades Darker as Told by Christian. The Fifty Shades novels have sold over 125 million copies worldwide, over 35 million copies in the United States and set the record in the United Kingdom as the fastest selling paperback of all time. In 2012, Time magazine named her one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People." The novels were subsequently adapted into the films Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed
Early Life
Erika Mitchell was born on 7 March 1963 in Willesden, Middlesex to a Chilean mother and a Scottish father who was a BBC cameraman. She was brought up in Buckinghamshire. James was educated at the independent Pipers Corner School and at Wycombe High School, a state grammar school for girls in the town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, followed by the University of Kent in South East England where she studied History. James, whose father worked as a cameraman for BBC, progressed her career as production executive at BBC and other companies with her first job at the National Film and Television School where she met her husband Niall Leonard, a screenwriter and novelist. She has two sons and two dogs and resides in West London. James was always intrigued by the romance genre. She indulged in all categories of romance from mild to extreme involving bondage. James had been a huge fan of the Twilight saga by Stephanie Meyer. She started writing fan-fiction based on the novel and titled it Master of the Universe and published it in fan-fiction websites under the pen name ’Snowqueen’s Icedragon’. In fan-fiction Bella Swan of Twilight became a college graduate and Edward Cullen, the vampire became a business conglomerate.
Road to Success
When her work of fan-fiction went viral, she transferred it to her own website, Fiftyshades.com and changed the name of the characters to avoid copyright issues. She earned fame through her international bestselling series ’Fifty Shades Of Grey’, an erotic tale that follows the relationship of a college graduate Anastasia Steele and a billionaire businessman Christian Grey. She took two years to complete the series with her husband acting as her editor. She had initially self published eBooks for her story and when demand increased, ’The Writer’s Coffee Shop’ an Australian publishing house agreed to publish it in May 2011. The story was divided into three books and published under the title ’Fifty Shades of Grey’. The series became so famous that the license to the trilogy was bought by Vintage Books for re-release and revised edition April 2012.The company paid a seven-figure sum to buy the rights from James and the publication and ordered a 750,000 copy to be printed. Universal Pictures bought the film rights for a rumored number of $5 million. The movie was made in 2015 starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. Although it received negative critical feedback, it was a highly commercial venture. Two other parts of the movie were released in 2017 and 2018 respectively. James has described the book as her midlife crisis, that includes all her sexual fantasies. Her series has topped best seller lists all over the world with 125 billion copies sold by 2015 and 15.2 million in the US alone thus making it the best-selling series of the decade. It has been translated to 52 languages and in the United Kingdom set the record of fastest-selling paperback of all time.
Challenges
E L James does not like speaking to journalists, who often want to know deeply personal things, like how much money she makes and whether she has a sex dungeon in her basement. Her aversion to publicity can be inconvenient, and somewhat impractical. As one of the world’s most famous and in-demand authors, she must occasionally submit to public interrogations, particularly when she has a new book to promote. But she’s not happy about it. Various steps to remove her first book from public libraries were made, but these had to be taken back as the demand for these books were very high. The organization ’Stop Porn Culture’ called for a boycott of the movie because of the portrayal of BDSM. The Home Ministry of Malaysia has banned the books as well as the movie after having permitted the books for three years. After the fifty shades trilogy, she has moved into a vanilla romance novel titled ’The Mister’. This book features the love story of a wealthy British aristocrat and an immigrant who fled Albania. With this book, she wanted to throw light on a more serious note like inequality in economic and gender terms. The book received blistering reviews with The Guardian saying it lacked emotional maturity.
Failures
With all the unexpected commercial success the book garnered, it also brought along quite a number of negative reviews. Most literary critics pointed out the lack of literary quality in the book. Salman Rushdie described the book to be ’badly written’. Those occupying the high and mighty seats of the literary world did not accept the book as it was based on fan-fiction. Her original writing was quite controversial in the fan fiction community, with other authors complaining about the amount of sex featured in her stories. Fifty shades of Grey received criticism on the basis that it promotes abuse and sexual violence. There seemed to be a spike of 50% in Emergency room visits due to injuries after the book was published. This was attributed to unsafe practice of BDSM. Many incidents in the book, according to a study by social scientist Professor Amy E. Bonomi are indicative of emotional abuse like ’stalking, intimidation and isolation’.
Achievements
2012 Time 100 by Time magazine, "The 100 Most Influential People in the World"|2012 Publishers Weekly "Publishing Person of the Year".|2012 National Book Award (UK), "Popular Fiction Book of the Year", Fifty Shades of Grey|2012 National Book Award (UK), "Book of the Year", Fifty Shades of Grey.
Quotes
- I do not look at the world in terms of black and white - and I find people who do rather scary. I think it's all shades of grey.
- The best person to write for is yourself—and what better place to start than in a journal.
- Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.