Roman emperors knew a thing or two about how to keep a population happy: bread and circuses. They built a coliseum to do it, complete with cringing Christians and half-starved, rabid lions.

While most of the media fans itself, disingenuous and titillated, over the delicious #AskELJames Twitter Slaughter, there are PR executives high-fiving each other over a brilliant marketing strategy.

Do you honestly believe that E.L. James’s new offering ‘Grey’ would be garnering the kind of press attention in the Independent, The NY Daily News, The Mirror, Huffington Post, Time, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, yeah, you get the idea.

Ms James is not a PR newbie, and neither is her publisher. Lord knows they can afford the very best when it comes to social media strategists. And any competent social media public relations person worth their fee could have told you exactly…