Reception
The book fulfilled McGrady's cynical expectations, selling approximately 90,000 copies by 13 October 1969. As sales continued to increase, many of the co-authors felt guilty about the large amounts of money they were earning, and went public. The male authors gave their "confession" on The David Frost Show, after being introduced as "Penelope Ashe" and walking out on stage, single file, as the orchestra played the song "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody". By the end of the year, the book had spent 13 weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller List, although by that time its authorship was common knowledge. It is unclear how much of the book's success was due to its content and how much to publicity about its unusual origin. As of May 2012, the book's publisher reported the book had sold 400,000 copies.
Subsequently, McGrady and his collaborators were approached about writing a sequel; they refused. In 1970 McGrady published Stranger Than Naked, or How to Write Dirty Books for Fun and Profit which told the story of the hoax. Naked Came the Stranger later became the basis for an X-rated film in 1975 directed by Radley Metzger and starring Darby Lloyd Rains.
Read more about this topic: Naked Came The Stranger
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