When we received the news that the Fifty Shades of Grey 10th Anniversary Edition was coming out and we saw the cover, we immediately had questions:
Sarah: That is a tampon.
Kiki: …that tampon must have come out with some force.
Also, someone has to have tied decorative ribbons to tampons before, right?
Tara: I see a dildo octopus.
Or is it a handle for a little girl’s bike with streamers?
Amanda: A ribbon dancer?
Sneezy: OOOOOOH It’s supposed to be a cat o’ nine tails!! …maybe?!
What impact play can you do with that?
AJ: You know those smell lines that come off of pies in old cartoons?
What do you think it looks like? Are you on team tampon or something else?
I read somewhere that charity (or goodwill) shops get so many copies of fifty shades donated they’ve actually put up “no fifty shades copies please!” on the windows.
I don’t know what that says about the book today.
I think it looks like a whip, which is what is rather have instead of trudging through that poorly written, badly researched (BDSM) novel again.
I’d rather have! I meant.
Hundreds of millions of dollars, yet not a penny to spare for cover design.
I think Sneezy’s probably right about the intent, but I had to think too long to get there. My first impression was an odoriferous dildo.
My first thought upon seeing the cover was: “Is this a joke?”. I can’t believe someone was hired to design an anniversary cover and this is the best they could come up with. With the silver and the blue it looks like one of those cloth bound University thesises. To me the thing looks like a whip as well but if I ignore the wavey lines and just look at the handle(?) it looks like an Ikea screw from the side. Also I think this is a me problem but I absolutely hate it when a title uses multiple/different fonts.
I want to know who on earth would be invested enough in this book to buy an anniversary edition. Never going to forgive EL James for ensuring that this is the book people think of when they hear “romance novel”
I’m with @Lynn and @Lena Brassard. It looks cheap, half-arsed, and less attractive than the original. I used to make props, and this looks like the sort of thing I would have frantically bunged together when the deadline and budget meant I only had about forty-five minutes to complete it.
I think it’s intended to be a whip but with a definite nod to the tampon scene. But also, it’s just such a boring and blah cover.
For a Kindle Unlimited/Self-Published author on a very limited budget? Not too bad. For the anniversary edition of a (whatever its merits, which I think are pretty limited) watershed book? Dreadful. James had to have input or veto power over this design, which only reinforces the notion that she doesn’t have much grasp of nuance, subtlety, format, layout, statement, or purpose–in either the written or the visual realm.
Yes, I assume it’s *meant* to be a whip, but what I’m seeing is Tara’s ‘bike handle with streamers’. Though maybe that’s because I always have bikes on the brain.
Further to Kit’s comment, does anybody else remember seeing a photo of a rather impressive wall that one charity shop had built from donated copies of Fifty Shades?
On a related note: Fifty Shade’s popularity has made Christian’s attitude about his BDSM interest come off as a bit silly.
What I mean is, he tells Ana that he has “VERY singular” tastes, sexually. Except BDSM is the most common kink in the world as far as I know. Especially post-release of Fifty Shades. You don’t get less singular than that without being totally kinkless. No offense to people who like the book, but to me Christian always seemed like he was making a deliberate effort to seem edgy.
I think it’s a whip, but my memory of that book is that the main never uses a whip. It oversells what’s in the book. // I pretty much wiped that book and the stalker scenarios in it and it’s follow-ons pretty quickly. Also, thank god for library ebooks.
A terrible cover for a terrible book. Perfect.
Brb – I am registering the domain name for my new cover band “odoriferous dildo.”
I wondered if this was a tail plug for pony play. It would make a very pretty tail all wispy and curly…
And I definitely see the bike handle with streamers.
Dammit my link won’t open so I can’t see the cover and now I’m seething with curiosity.
I’m going with “penis test tube emitting noxious odor”. No, wait, stanky used condom. One of those “ribbed for her dubious pleasure” ones. Truly, though, that cover is low rent. Second basement level low rent. Try harder next time.
Cover snark on a Friday morning! Blessings and thank you so much SBTB team, you’ve made my day!
Fwiw, I saw a sword hilt but with a cartoon rubber blade made by Acme… like the Roger Rabbit version? No idea how that relates though.
I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be the flog that’s used in one of the earlier scenes. Unfortunately I think the design could use some…feedback. Right now it looks like doll hair that’s been over-brushed until it starts breaking off. You could definitely find a way to make it an elegant sex toy-invoking image reinforcing the whole ‘mysterious sexy luxurious’ quality that 50SoG was going for but…uncomfortable and amateurish but arrogantly self-assured is a much more accurate advertisement for 50S on both a Watsonian and Doylist level.
I, too, want to know who’s looking for an anniversary edition. Even those who loved it originally recognize that its 15 minutes in the pop culture spotlight has ended, right? Then again, Twilight had a renaissance…
Whenever I see news about this book I always remember the news article from 2013 that showed that a library copy of this book tested positive for an STI…
https://newsfeed.time.com/2013/11/14/professors-test-fifty-shades-of-grey-library-book-find-it-has-traces-of-herpes/?xid=rss-topstories
This very much looks like the sort of cheap hardback version of public domain classic books that people use to fill up their bookcases. Maybe the sort of thing you would find on a display bookcase at Ikea or another furniture store.
I do think it’s intended to be a flogger of some sort, but it’s way too abstracted, like they tried to make it “classy” and lost the thread.
Ten years … wow, a lot has happened since the book came out.
The cover reminds me most of bike streamers, but I can see the other possibilities.
a definite nod to the tampon scene
Wait, what? There’s a tampon scene in 50 Shades? I guess I’m really never going to read this book. (I’m still scarred by tampongate.)
Tangentially related: Goodreads reviewers have pointed out that Christian’s character arc was explored earlier by Australian HP author Miranda Lee in her Hearts of Fire series (published in 1994). Does anyone know if E.L. James has ever acknowledged the influence?
To me it looks like a smokin’ hot dildo. Or maybe a very elegant water hose. Depends on whether you think it’s aimed up or down.
@Deborah–I was just about to ask the same thing about there being a tampon scene!
I feel good about never having read these or seen the movies; ten years ago I was reading pretty good BDSM fanfic on AO3, so everything I had read about this book sounded like it definitely wasn’t good. 🙂
Anyway I loved everyone’s thoughts about the cover tampon/flogger/dildo curlicues. It seems like they wanted to make it so that someone could add it to their shelf of hardbound Austens and Brontes; mind-boggling.
I think there’s an argument to be made about these books creating an unprecedented cultural conversation about women’s desires, but that argument has been quashed forever by the existence of this book cover.
That looks like an artsy drawing of seaweed with a bike handle/ribbed condom/tampon/who-the-hell-knows inexplicably attached. I’m imagining someone trying to use that as a flogger, while the strands just waft about languidly.
@Deborah and @spinsterrevival—so, it’s been a number of years since I read it, but my recollection is there a scene where he removes her tampon so they can have sex immediately because he just can’t wait. It’s…about as weird as it sounds.
It looks like my Christmas ribbon spool on December 24th.
Jen, you beat me to it! I was just going to say it looks like someone curled a bunch of ribbons but forgot to make the bow first.
It looks like a cover made by committee. Can you imagine the discussion – it needs to be an upright font – no we want a cursive one. And a flogger, but not a literal flogger, don’t want to scare anyone. And we’ll put a tampon-condom-vase at the bottom for balance…
Does anyone else see a heart in the middle of the ribbon curls?
The good news is that if this is the latest and greatest in published covers, self-pubbed books will stand a chance.
I agree, that cover is terrible. I can also say that this is the book that I spot the most often at street libraries/open bookcases. No other book turns up at almost any of these (after that? Angelique and anything by Konsalik in we‘re talking Switzerland amd Austria). Go figure…
It’s a flogger having a bad hair day.
The Acme company has expanded into exploding menstrual care and/or dildos, apparently…eesh.
It makes sense that a ridiculously researched flogger would be on the cover of this book.
My first thought was butt plug for Barbie horse play. But I totally get the tampon.
On team tampon, and team something else, poll needs3rd choice of both! 🙂
It was acknowledged it was a cat o’ nine tails.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/04/05/fifty-shades-grey-author-e-l-james-looks-back-book-turns-10/7191023001/
Gone is the ubiquitous book cover of old, replaced by a silver flourish on a dark blue background. The design, a wink and a nod to Ana and Christian’s relationship, came from James herself: Look closely and you’ll see the flourish is really a whip. “I just thought, why don’t we do this and (the publisher) said yes!” A silver ribbon in the book is a nod to the original cover’s iconic tie.
Way to milk a cow. A sad decrepit dried out cow.
I’m screaming at them trying to cartoon coverify 50 Shades of all things.
Clearly it is a cat o’ 20 tails (there are a lot more than 9 in that picture). But the curlicues and swirls are highly characteristic of what feminine protection product packaging used to look like.