Just in case horny women of a certain age didn’t get their fill of hardcore beach-reading erotica with the three “Fifty Shades of Grey” novels, Penguin plans to cash in on the porny book thing by rereleasing Anne Rice’s dirty “Sleeping Beauty” trilogy this week, the New York Times reports.
The adult-themed re-imagining of the classic fairy tale begins with a prince approaching a sleeping woman with some X-rated action, a surefire way to get someone out of bed. The 1980s trilogy was so hush-hush back then that Rice, the famed “Interview With A Vampire” author, wrote them under the penname A. N. Roquelaure.
After Rice achieved fame with “Interview,” she revealed herself to be the author of “The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty,” “Beauty’s Release” and “Beauty’s Punishment.”
A spokeswoman for Plume, a division of Penguin, told the Times that sales for Rice’s erotica spiked in the first six months of the year, selling twice as many copies as they did in 2011. She said that 350,000 copies of the trilogy will be re-released this Thursday, complete with new cover art.
The publishing house surely hopes to get in on the action that “Fifty Shades of Grey” has received. The three novels landed the top three slots on the New York Times best-sellers list, and shattered sales records.
For her part, Rice is thrilled with females’ newfound interest in saucy novels.
“Women have just as much right to pornography as men do, and I’m talking about literary porn, erotica,” she said in an interview with the Times. “If a woman wants to read about being overwhelmed by a pirate, that’s her right.”