Every year it seems that a certain book series preoccupies everyone’s conversations, takes up all the commercials on TV, and plasters its image on every piece of paper it finds. Usually, the series comes from the young adult genre. “Harry Potter” had been the king for years, then “Twilight,” and now “The Hunger Games” is taking up the mantle. It seems it’s much harder for an adult novel to grab the spotlight. However, that’s all changed with the introduction of “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

The work, written by EL James, is an unusual love story between a wealthy yet tortured business man, Christian, and an innocent college graduate, Anastasia. The book is classified as adult for its extreme erotic scenes. Interestingly enough, “Fifty Shades” history dates back to 2011 in the form of a fan fiction.

Fanfiction.com is an online website where anyone can write and display their creations to the world, whether it is original works or stories based off of movies, books, or TV shows. There is no profit whatsoever, only the chance for writers to show off their skills and further the world and actions of beloved characters. The site is extremely popular and has countless entries.

James’ work was originally titled “Master of the Universe” and was sprung from the “Twilight” universe with Edward and Bella as its main characters.

“This did start as Twilight fan fiction, inspired by Stephenie Meyer’s wonderful series of books,” said James’ agent in a quote to Deadline Hollywood. “Originally it was written as fan fiction, and then Erika decided to take it down after there were some comments about the racy nature of the material. She took it down and thought, ‘I’d always wanted to write.’ I’ve got a couple unpublished novels here. I will rewrite this thing, and create these iconic characters, Christian and Anna.”

“Fifty Shades” was then turned into an ebook, along with two sequels, whose publicity relied greatly on word of mouth. It was especially popular with older women, gaining the title of “Mommy Porn.”

Features Editor Jessica Donaghy of Goodreads wrote in an email to CBS news, “Initial buzz about ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ started building on Goodreads as early as last summer and its phenomenally high average rating earned it a nomination for the Best Romance award in the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards, the nomination in early November caused a spike in interest from members and the buzz kept growing as more people read the book and shared their reviews with their friends on Goodreads.”

Somehow it managed to become a bestseller on Amazon and gained so much popularity that it was then decided to be distributed as paperback. The book proved to show the increasing strength of viral marketing and the genre of erotica among women.

On Mar. 7, it topped the New York Times Bestseller list, both ebook and print version combined. By March, the whole trilogy occupied the top three spots. The two sequels are set to be released in paperback this April.

Of course, with such fame comes an equal amount of criticism. Many people found the book to be too similar to “Twilight” while others were enraged that James had actually published the book, citing the fact that point of fan fiction is not getting published.

Then a movie deal came into the picture.

After an intense bidding war, Universal Pictures and Focus Features won the film rights to the whole trilogy of “Fifty Shades” for an undisclosed amount of money, as reported by Deadline. The losing contenders included Warner Bros, Paramount, Fox 2000, Sony Pictures, Universal, Paramount, New Regency, Mandate and Lionsgate/Summit Entertainment. No further news has been released on the subject.

It’s obvious “Fifty Shades” has claimed the title of being the “It” book and will soon enough be the “It” movie as well, not even needing a crazed teenage fan base to back it up. With such humble beginnings, this phenomenon is all the more amazing, and doesn’t look like it’s going to stop amazing anytime soon.