Does It?

Sex sells.  Is that the lesson of 50 Shades of Grey?  There is a tremendous amount of erotica and this style of writing.  None of it became 50 Shades.

At a certain point, things like this take a life of their own and people read it because other people have.  There is no rhyme or reason to what takes off in this capacity.  It cannot be engineered, in my opinion.