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How A Fake Erotic Fiction Ebook Hit iTunes' Top 5

The Diamond Club is an erotic fiction book that reached as high as #4 on the iTunes paid ebooks list, just behind the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. It’s an amazing accomplishment considering it’s only been on sale for three days. Even more amazingly, the book is fake.

How is the book fake? Well, The Diamond Club wasn’t actually written by the authors, Brian Brushwood and Justin Young, hosts of The NSFW Podcast. It was instead written through a crowdsourced effort. The fans of Brushwood and Young submitted contributions that included a main character and a lot of sex. They combined it all together to create the erotic fiction novel that’s a complete hoax.

Why would they do this? Because Brushwood realised that the top 10 books in iTunes were all erotic fiction novels (erotic fiction novels are killing the charts because of the success of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy) and figured they could prove how ridiculous the system is. According to Young:

“It all started with Scam School Book 2 — Brian’s magic book. He found out as he was pushing that book that the top 10 in iTunes was all erotic fiction. Even to the point where established authors, like Janet Evanovich, couldn’t break into the top five of the iBooks store-because of all the erotic fiction that was capitalising on Shades of Grey. And he thought-we could do that!”

Well, it totally looks like they pulled it off. Brushwood and Young both don’t think the book is any good, but it doesn’t seem like it matters, as The Diamond Club has over 1000 user reviews to its name with only one of ’em calling out the book as a hoax. Just make a book that sorta, kinda looks and reads like Fifty Shades of Grey and you’re on your way to success. Let’s all write books about sex now! [Vook via Tech Dirt via Geekosystem]


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