Albany not immune to 'Greymania'

Albany is not immune to what has been touted as “Greymania” over adult erotica novel Fifty Shades of Grey, with several local retailers riding high on the back of the buying craze.

Local bookseller Lockie Cameron from Paperbark Merchants said copies of the book had been flying off the shelves, with demand only set to increase as readers delved further into the three-book series.

“We are completely sold out at the moment,” he said. “We are getting phone calls about it every half an hour… we have excessive amounts on order and our suppliers have actually run out of stock.

“It’s great because it’s encouraging a different sort of demographic into books and book stores, so from that aspect we are seeing people we haven’t really seen before.”

But it’s not just booksellers benefiting, with sales of adult entertainment products going through the roof at local retailer Adultshop.com.

Albany Adultshop.com sales assistant Amanda Chandler said local response to the book had been “amazing”, prompting the store to set up a display featuring products used in the book.

“They started off calling it a mummy book but that’s gone out the window,” she said. “We’ve had every kind of demographic coming in, from younger people to older people and older couples coming in together.

“We’ve had customers walking here, put the book down on the counter and say ‘give me everything in this book’.”

Adultshop.com web and publicity editor Leigh Messer directly attributed the increased demand towards the widespread popularity of E L James’ novel.

“We are calling it ‘Greymania’,” Ms Messer said. “Across the board sales are up 40 per cent.

“We have our fingers crossed that the trilogy will do for sex toys what Masterchef has done for cooking utensils.”