Fifty Shades of Grey: so what's the story? As the Grey volumes continue to smash all known sales records, becoming the fastest-selling paperback of all time (with 20 million copies worldwide to date), new inquiries flood my mailbox: three publishers wonder if I might like to come in and brainstorm some clit-lit ideas. The dapper MD of a rarefied publishing house has invited me to edit a compendium of sexually charged literature. I hope I don't sound too churlish if I say I have complex feelings about all this. I spent eight years chiselling away at the unyielding rock face of literary licentiousness, sold a mere 30,000 copies at the height of the Erotic Review's infamy, and never made a bean worth mentioning. Then along came the unassuming Erica James and with her first pickaxe blow she struck the richest seam of erotic ore ever uncovered. It's hard not to feel a little envious - and perplexed. Everyone is asking, "How did she achieve this incredible feat?," while everyone in publishing is demanding: "How can we replicate it?" The answers are dependent, as most such phenomena are, on fortuitous timing and the unabashed re-hashing of a tried and tested formula. Don't be distracted by the hoo-ha around the BDSM (bondage, domination and sado-masochism) contained within the novel, for this is S&M lite, presented palatably for the masses. The Marquis de Sade didn't use a silk tie to tether his submissives, as billionaire Christian Grey does on literature graduate Anastasia Steele, nor offer his victims arnica cream and Advil after a spot of chastisement. No, the bondage is as irrelevant to the structural bones of the novels as the vampire theme is to the Twilight series. This is old-fashioned torrid romance concocted, it would appear, in a crucible of simmering housewifely hormones and dressed up for the 21st century. Just like Mills & Boon, these books find their roots in the Gothic fantasies of the Brontë sisters. So many girls read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights at a formative age and founded their erotic imaginations on these classics. The link is not far-fetched. James wrote Fifty Shades of Grey as "fan fiction," in homage to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, and Meyer has cited the Brontës as influences. It seems half the literature-loving women in the world are locked up in some attic of the mind along with Mrs Rochester, a stray vampire and Virginia Andrews's four Dollanganger children (of Flowers in the Attic fame). We keep on returning, for comfort and familiarity, to the same old paradigm. However, in 2012 authors have to strive far harder than the Brontës to achieve a sense of jeopardy and the crucial "will they/won't they" tension. In a world where adultery is common, the pre-existing married status of a principal character (even if he keeps his wife in the attic) will not provide a sufficient romantic obstacle to hold the reader's interest. If, however, the hero is a blood-sucking member of the un-dead whose love may kill his paramour, as is the case with Edward Cullen in the Twilight series then - bingo! - you have a drama. The true genius of E L James is that she has reinvented vampirism as an equally inconvenient penchant for sexual sadism. Meanwhile, the underlying theme of all these books is reassuringly familiar: if the pure, trusting and steadfast heroine can only prevail in a series of increasingly demanding trials, she will master the dark side of her sweetheart's nature and effect the necessary transformation (did I mention Beauty and the Beast?). What is most interesting about the E L James phenomenon is not the soft porn content, which is no more raunchy than Anaïs Nin's writing from the 1930s and considerably less shocking than Pauline Réage's 1950s erotica sensation, The Story of O; what is truly intriguing is the emphasis on the heroine's virginity and self-imposed monogamy. Again this mirrors the Twilight saga. In a sex-saturated world, where every perversion can be accessed in the click of a computer mouse and many people feel jaded, not to mention disappointed by marital lovemaking (or are simply not having sex at all), countless women are taking refuge in a fantasy characterised by romantic purity. What it really seems is happening here is the literary equivalent of Francis Ford Coppola's 1986 movie Peggy Sue Got Married, where a middle-aged woman returns to her teenage high-school days and replays them as a time of erotic triumph and effortless orgasms, rather than the usual tale of gut-wrenching disaster. This is surely why hundreds of thousands of "mummy" readers have warmed to E L James's books: the fantasy they relive has less to do with sadomasochism than the tale of a self-effacing, clever young woman who beats off all competition to win the unobtainable male. For all the talk of Grey's mysterious red room "of pleasure and pain," he's a curiously unthreatening figure. This is a man who wears pyjamas and grey flannel pants with white cable-knit sweaters. His soft furnishings are "pale blue," he folds his clothes before having sex and he smells of "fresh laundered linen and some expensive body wash." This is not the swaggering, dangerous, testosterone-charged animal magnetism of the true sexual conquistador. It is a middle-aged mum's fantasy of what it might be like to kiss "beautiful" Robert Pattinson and tell him, "Have your wicked way with me, do whatever you like!" It is impossible to discuss the Fifty Shades success, however, without mentioning the role of the e-book. This is not just because so many millions of copies are being read on Kindles where prying eyes cannot discern that the vicar's wife is perusing escapist smut. The actual reason is far more fundamental: the core readers discovered the book online and their enthusiastic electronic chatter - and that alone - brought it to the notice of publishers. If E L James had relied on posting hard copy manuscripts to publishers, I believe she would never have been published. This is not because of the strong sexual content - although many would have found that off-putting - but because the plot is non-existent and the prose is dire. No publisher worth their dime would ever have pulled a book from the slush pile that described the hero's member as a popsicle and had all the literary style of Jackie mag's letters" page circa 1977. If it had arrived in the Erotic Review's postbag, it might have been noted only for its toe-cringing qualities. And that is why I remain poor, while Erica James is the undisputed Queen of Erotica.