Bad News For Kindle Publishers

The following is part of an e-mail from one of my publishers:

As of a few minutes ago Kindle decided to temporarily block my account because of a number of stories we`ve been selling there for years that fall foul of their guidelines.

As a result ALL our BDSM and erotica titles are being removed from Kindle.

Any comments from Literotica people?

I was on Amazon a few minutes ago looking at some bdsm titles I had seen in a book review email notice. The kindle versions were listed on Amazon. Could it be a matter of the cover?

So much for progress.

It's due to the extreme content.

That e-mail came from a site called fiction4all that I also publish on. But I just put stuff there and am not exclusive. But many are and they're now screwed along with F4a.

But....here's the thing. F4A with the exception of 18+ has no rules and contains asstr style content. Not all books and authors of course, but many.

Much of their "BDSM" is rape porn. Just go to their site and affiliates and check it out. This is the first line is a description from a book there "After being raped by eight men, her master still did not feel she had endured enough"

That is not BDSM that is rape porn. I'm not going to debate that, that's not the point of my post. Point is their content is very extreme and they used no common sense in riding the tiger that is amazon.

There are tens of thousands of BDSM titles on Amazon and there are no issues. F4A is a no limits publisher without enough common sense to tread lightly and responsibly. This was a self fulfilling prophecy in a sense for me because I had this conversation a few weeks ago with the owner when they had a similar scare where some books(not the account, just some titles) were blocked. But they chose to just keep pushing.

Now...on the other hand this is Amazon's hypocrisy at its finest. Yes they have a rule in their guidelines about no pornography adult content etc....

But come on, people have been posting erotica there since the kindle opened up to indy authors. There are people on this site that have been posting erotica with "pornographic" content for 8+ years.

So amazon lets it post, makes money off it, then decides when they want to enforce it, which is wrong you allow it or you do not.

Now people will say "their site, their rules blah, blah, blah" and they are right, it is what it is, but what it is is totally unfair. The word paranoia is the word of the day for indy erotica authors. Any day could be the day and amazon will smile away and say "jeez we have a rule how did these 100k plus porno titles get here? damn indy authors.

Anyway as I said it is what it is and its not fair, but....the publisher in question had a chance to smarten up and did not. Amazon still wants to sell erotica and will let you publish you nasty content, but you have to know how to dress it up and "After being raped by eight men....." is not the way to do it.

They played with fire, they got burned and as always many responsible authors with them are now shit out of luck. A always the few ruin it for the many.

Rape porn ruins everything!

So... is anything fun allowed on Amazon? Is incest allowed on Amazon? I haven't been able to find any. I can't even find vanilla erotica on Amazon.

In fact, Amazon is usually the last place I look for erotica.

allamagione said:

Rape porn ruins everything!

So... is anything fun allowed on Amazon? Is incest allowed on Amazon? I haven't been able to find any. I can't even find vanilla erotica on Amazon.

In fact, Amazon is usually the last place I look for erotica.

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Its not that "rape porn" itself ruins it, its authors not smart enough to at least try to dress it up somewhat and a publisher who refused to make them.

Real incest? No, not anymore. They used to and it sold like wildfire. Then some creep posted a book on pedophelia which somehow led to witch hunt on 18+ consensual fantasy incest.

They do allow "step incest" but the words mom, step mom, step dad etc....cannot be used in titles and descriptions so it is hard to find. Go there and search "taboo" they allow that word and many authors have started putting that in their titles.

There is plenty of pretty much everything there, but they make it hard to find. Erotica is now amazon;s dirty little secret which is ridiculous because of how well it sells, but they care more about what some parent group or bible thumping asshat thinks. Wouldn't want to lose all the money Aunt Ellie would spend there if she boycotted them, now would they

But if you want erotica and want to support indy authors? Smashwords has plenty of erotica including incest and anything else as long as its 18 and over. They will allow rape porn as well, but many books will not make it to their affiliates, but all can be found on their main site.

I just found out about Smashwords a few weeks ago and excitedly snatched up a few titles.

Very disappointing. I've seen better quality stuff on Lit. There were typos, spelling and grammatical errors, inconsistencies. Hard to stomach when you've paid for it.

lovecraft68 said:

Its not that "rape porn" itself ruins it, its authors not smart enough to at least try to dress it up somewhat and a publisher who refused to make them.

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Some of us don't want it dressed up.

To some of us, that's like pretend mommy/son incest.

Horrifying, eh?

We need an expert opinion here. I wonder where we can find one.

allamagione said:

Some of us don't want it dressed up.

To some of us, that's like pretend mommy/son incest.

Horrifying, eh?

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You may not, but amazon does and its their site hence the results

And oh, aren't we funny? I write incest stories so I should say nothing about rape porn.

And if you were paying attention to what was being said rather than being snarky you would have seen it is not about "watering" it down. Its about not using the word in the description or the title, its about keeping it "inside" the book rather than waving it around where people will see it and complain about it.

Amazon will allow just about anything-except incest so your funny little argument holds no water here- and that includes rape porn, but they want the dirty wrapped up in a reasonable cover and with a vague description. That's all and these people refused to play ball with that

But you are such the clever girl aren't you? As Brad Pitt says to Ed Norton in Fight Club, "How's that working out for you, being clever?"

There are plenty of BDSM titles on amazon, because they're along the lines of true bdsm, not rape masked as it and even then, that is not their issue. They want it to be more discreet. The publisher in question was warned about it once-one more chance than many get with amazon-and continued to submit the material they were told about. That was the issue

You like rape porn, good for you. I don't, good for me. NO harm, no foul, but....I would be more than happy to explain the difference between what is published as rape porn and published as incest here I could also give a nice example of rape versus rapist fantasy and porn because there is a vast difference.

But you wouldn't understand it because you simply don't want too.

I'll let you go back to being clever now, I just had to interrupt in case you thought I was to dense to understand your staggering intellect.

As far as I can see, it's not bad news for all publishing erotica on Kindle--just some of the fringe topics. All of my books appear still to be there--including a couple on the extreme fetish of sounding--and I haven't received notification (yet) from any of my publishers that any have been taken down. I've had a few taken down at Amazon in past years--and then reinstated when my publisher complained.

It's all part of the risk in the topics you choose to write about--I see no evidence it involves all--or even much--erotica.

(P.S., if you can't find even vanilla porn on Amazon, you're in the need of taking a course in Internet searching.)

sr71plt said:

As far as I can see, it's not bad news for all publishing erotica on Kindle--just some of the fringe topics. All of my books appear still to be there--including a couple on the extreme fetish of sounding--and I haven't received notification (yet) from any of my publishers that any have been taken down. I've had a few taken down at Amazon in past years--and then reinstated when my publisher complained.

It's all part of the risk in the topics you choose to write about--I see no evidence it involves all--or even much--erotica.

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Gm and Lesbian have separate categories within erotica and their seems to be no issues other than covers. They have tightened up on nudity and blatantly sexual covers.

But the more extreme kinks, rape, psuedo incest and beastie are under close watch and as I was trying to say the content can be as hardcore as you want it to be, it just has to be dressed up better. Less explicit titles and there is a list of words to avoid in descriptions.

BDSM in and of itself is not a "fringe" other than because it involves rough aspects it has become infested with people writing non consent, but not wanting to call it that. And even with that, its not that its not allowed, but....be careful.

the average true BDSM book has no issues than any other category does. The publisher in question happened to have a slew of authors writing extreme rape under the guise of BDSM and doing nothing at all to hide it and that was their downfall, not content, but presentation.

And once the account is blocked all titles associated with that publisher are wiped so a lot of people just took a big blow due to irresponsible people.

I agree with you that this is not across the board bad news, but should be looked at as a warning. The days of naked covers and "fucking her raw, or fucking my mommy" titles are over.

The essential point is that, as far as I can see at the moment, RR's was a Chicken Little OP.

sr71plt said:

The essential point is that, as far as I can see at the moment, RR's was a Chicken Little OP.

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I agree, but wanted to take a minute to explain that this was not a "poor them" situation.

They pushed their luck and ran out of it. The shame is that they had a lot of authors obeying the rules who are now out of luck.

This is why I will not go all in with any site. You're at their mercy.