<em>Illustration: Simon Letch</em>

Illustration: Simon Letch

If you enjoy tales of sex mixed with bondage, you'll love what's happening to the world's female writers, nearly all of whom have been placed in legal handcuffs and forced to come up with some sort of sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey.

Fifty Shades of Grey is the S&M romance that has left the publishing world scrambling. Ten million copies have been sold in the US in just six weeks. Bondage emporiums report a boom in the sale of fluffy handcuffs and other accoutrements. A film version is in the offing. No wonder every publisher wants a flick of the whip.

''Please, don't make me write another whole chapter,'' the author begs, as her publisher looms behind, the contract rolled into a makeshift baton. ''We want adjectives - and good ones,'' says the publisher, rhythmically striking the author's back with 270 pages of legalese.

''Writhes,'' the author writhes as she types ''writhes'' into her manuscript. ''Look I've given you what you wanted, two writhes and a flinch. Now go easy. It's not easy to type wearing fluffy handcuffs.''

Everyone's been signed up. Literary novelists are asked to slum it; cookbook authors have been pressed into service; even the authors of technical manuals have been asked to give it a go. They're told: ''If you can describe the putting together of flat-pack furniture, surely a sex scene isn't a stretch.''

In countless darkened garrets, the shadowy scene is played out. The publisher, dressed in a dark power suit, runs a figure over the rough edges of the contract as the poor writer bends over her keyboard. Growls the publisher: ''Next I'm going to bring out the non-completion clause …''

''Not the non-completion clause,'' whimpers the poor author, fingers pounding once more in response.

The completed novels will all be published under pseudonyms, but there's great sport in trying to work out the identity of the authors. A chapter that begins with a list of required ingredients - ''one gimp mask, one pair of handcuffs, one riding crop'' - is surely the work of a moonlighting cookbook writer, especially when each sex scene begins with a notation of ''time required'' and ''level of difficulty''. The title page might list the author as ''Fluffy Bottomly'' but really it's Margaret Fulton earning pin-money towards a new rangehood.

Too many botanical references and it's a clue that Shirley Stackhouse has been forced to take a break from the gardening books. And if the phrase ''let's get dirty'' leads to a scene of unrestrained composting, it may be Peter Cundall breaking into a new line of work.

The writers of technical manuals are guns for hire, so it's hardly surprising that many have been signed up. After years of composing for clients such as Ikea, it can be hard to change styles. There are many giveaways, among them the sentence ''Grey approached her tenderly and suggested that before attempting to connect Part A and Part B it was important both were upright and facing the correct way''.

Some publishers have decided to simply re-write the classics with added sex. You'll think I've made this up, but next month, Pan Macmillan is publishing a racy rewrite of Charlotte Bronte's most famous book under the title Jane Eyre Laid Bare. Its author, one Eve Sinclair, describes it as ''an erotic version of my favourite classic''.

We can only wait for other publishers to follow suit, presumably with titles such as A Tale of two Titties, Crotch 22 and King Leer.

With Moby Dick and Horatio Hornblower, they'll keep the titles and rework the settings.

The main problem will be with the literary types. These days they're into exploding narratives in which the story is told in any old order. That's confusing enough with a family saga, but positively mystifying when it comes to pornography. In the hands of a Siri Hustvedt or a Jennifer Egan, you start out tied to a wheel in the Hellfire Club before ending up teaching Sunday school in a small town in Minnesota. Come to think of it, maybe in their hands the genre might finally prove uplifting.

For those really literary types, the idea of writers being flogged by mean-spirited publishers, having to produce erotica on demand, might itself become a sought-after literary genre. How wonderfully postmodern to contemplate some of the world's top-drawer writers - Margaret Atwood or Anne Tyler - forced to produce smut by the chapter load. I see it as a sort of 2012 version of Scheherazade.

Just as Scheherazade had to tell a really good story each night to ensure her own survival at the hands of the homicidal prince, so literary novelists would fight to maintain publishing contracts by coming up with a really filthy story every day.

''You can publish something decent,'' the publisher would growl, ''and win a prize, but only if you give us something indecent first.''

Tyler's stories, as usual, would be set in Baltimore; Atwood's in a future dystopia. Add in their usual literary firepower and they'd reveal Fifty Shades of Grey as what it is: whipped-up Mills & Boon.

I'm willing to start writing now. Contract anyone?