The Australian woman who was first in the world to publish the world’s best-selling romance novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, has been ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages after a Texas court found that she had defrauded her business partners.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Amanda Haywood, a Sydney mother-of-two who was first to cotton onto the power of the spank-happy books, was accused by her business partner, Jennifer Pedroza of Arlington, Texas, of tricking her out of royalties from the book.
A jury in Texas sided with Jennifer, and while the judge, Susan McCoy, hasn’t decided on a firm amount of damages, Amanda may have to hand over as much as $10 million, which may in turn force her to sell the $5 million estate she has purchased in Dural.
Jennifer said in her claim that she was part of the online publishing house, The Writers Coffee Shop, which originally published Fifty Shades online.
Hundreds of thousands of people were enjoying the steamy tale of bondage in the ebook format when Random House came knocking.
That led to a deal to publish Fifty Shades as a book under the Random House imprint. It would go on to sell more than 100 million copies worldwide, and a film based on the first book, Fifty Shades of Grey, took more $800 million at the box office.
The jury in the Texas trial decided that Jennifer was defrauded out of her share of royalties by Amanda, who was accused of cutting Jennifer out of the deal she signed with Random House.
The author, E. L. James, made an estimated $95 million from the book, pushing her past Dan Brown and Stephen King on the Forbes list of rich writers.
