It’s taken a few years, but finally, publishers are finally releasing the braille version of the Fifty Shades of Grey, and needless to say, readers everywhere are “feeling it.”
Why did it take so long? Well, Bloom Books knew it would have a hit on its hands, but wasn’t sure how the story would translate to braille which uses six dots arranged in the formation of a rectangle.
Take some of the more steamy and smutty scenes between Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey: at one point a game of pool turns into a bawdy sex act with much of the action left to Ana’s convulsions and moans, and unfortunately, there is just no real way to convert any of that to braille.
Or the part where Christian dumps ice cream on Anastasia as part of their foreplay, sucking and licking it off of her nipples? Or the part where Ana jams a finger in his “no go” zone…how best to convey any of that in braille and adhere to the rules of traditional paper-space requirements?
Or the most difficult scene of all, the Ben Wa Balls moment, where Christian takes the instrument traditionally used to strengthen vaginal and pelvic floor muscles and turns Ana into a babbling sex puppet? This would be an extremely difficult braille cell indeed.
Publishers decided it would make the most sense to forgo traditional braille format and just “illustrate” the scene by either raising the illustration (according to ADA standards, of course) or etching out the action in dots.
Therefore, readers using the braille version will get a more comprehensible yet explicit scene that readers without disabilities would receive. Each curve, crook, and crevice of Anastasia and Christian’s hard and luscious bodies now friendly and accessible to all.
Therefore, readers using the braille version will get a more comprehensible yet explicit scene that readers without disabilities would receive. Each curve, crook, and crevice of Anastasia and Christian’s hard and luscious bodies now friendly and accessible to all.
So now the part where Ana is bound and gagged and whipped with a brown leather riding crop? It is finely laid out in 1/32” raised type so readers won’t miss a moment of all of E. L. James’ poetry and eloquence found in the scene.
In fact, the response has been so well-received by members of the visually impaired community, that people without even without visual impairments are even purchasing and rereading the book, getting a whole new “hands on” experience they might not have had originally.
But because braille books are so large and therefore expensive to make, there are only a limited number of Braille ‘Fifty Shades’ books available, making it the most requested and most anticipated book at Blind in Mind in British Columbia, one of the most popular braille bookstores in the world.
We’ve never had this much traffic at our bookstore, and there is a line around the store every time we have new copies, ” said owner Cindy Markowitz. “Everyone looking to get their hands on Fifty Shades,” she smirked.
“In the age of technology and electronic media, who knew that Fifty Shades was going to save the print braille industry,” she said shaking her head, in disbelief at the world we live in.
And at Connecticut Library for Accessible Books, Fifty Shades of Grey is one of their most borrowed books, so much so that they have limited the loan period to only 3 days. And if you’re thinking it, yes, each time the book is returned it goes through a rigorous sanitation process before being given out to the next patron.
“Sometimes people didn’t even need the three days,” says one librarian. “They just took it into the bathroom and were back in just a few minutes, so circulation has been very high.”
Who knew the smut braille industry was going to be the next big thing in the publishing world?
So what is the future for the rest of the Fifty Shades trilogy? Can we expect graphic braille versions of Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed? We reached out to James for a comment about the overwhelming response to this version of her book.
She was unavailable to comment but emailed us back saying she was “touched.”