Amazon Book Banned And What To Do About It

[Kasumi_Lee]

UPDATE (5/10/25): see latest post regarding a different ebook here.

Original Post (9/1/24):​

I woke up this morning to an email from Amazon's content review algorithm informing me that one of my ebooks had been blocked because it violates their content guidelines. Below is a comprehensive list of all the evidence and examples provided in the email of ways in which the ebook violated Amazon's content guidelines:

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So, I replied to this automated email requesting that a human reviewer manually evaluate the ebook. A few hours later, I was surprised to receive a response from an actual human being, and even more surprised by the news that they had reversed the book ban. Sure enough, the ebook in question has reappeared on Amazon and everything is back to normal.

Here's the key takeaway: if you ever get an email from Amazon telling you that your book was banned, reply with a request for a human reviewer to look into it.

 

[Privates1stClass]

Good for you for following up! I think any AI rejection should be automatically checked upon by a human reviewer. Artificial intelligence has some good points, but it is still seriously flawed in some areas. Perhaps, someday AI can be trusted, but not today. Thanks for filling us in on this one.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Good for you for following up! I think any AI rejection should be automatically checked upon by a human reviewer. Artificial intelligence has some good points, but it is still seriously flawed in some areas. Perhaps, someday AI can be trusted, but not today. Thanks for filling us in on this one.

It wasn't even a rejection. I first submitted the banned story for preorder through Amazon KDP at the end of 2021, and it was released in 2022. Yesterday, all I did was change the price, and it was during the review that the algorithm blocked the book. If the book really had contained problematic content (which the human reviewer decided it didn't), then the content review algorithm isn't fit for purpose.

 

[Codoc24]

About a year ago I had a book banned by Amazon that had been published for about 4 months. I changed the book description, nothing else within the story itself and republished. That's when they banned it. They told me my story violated their guidelines. I sent them numerous emails asking what the violation was. They claimed they human reviewed it and still maintained there was a violation. They would not tell me what or where the violation was. It was pretty tame as far as erotic content goes. There was one consensual sex scene, the guy kissed the girl's feet a couple of times, he performed oral sex on her, and then they had missionary sex. That's it! So freaking stupid, it made me furious. I've seen much, much more graphic sex than in my book. I finally gave up asking because I was afraid they would get pissed at me and kick me out completely. I asked them about why my book violated their rules but another book didn't. I started reading one book but didn't finish it because the woman was treated so horribly that I couldn't read it anymore. She was sold as a sex slave, her owner raped, sodomized, forced her to perform oral sex and beat her with a bat. He then invited some friends over to do the same thing. I was like, how the hell does this book NOT violate your guidelines!!?? But my one consensual sex scene does? They would never give me an answer. I'm still sooooo pissed at them.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

About a year ago I had a book banned by Amazon that had been published for about 4 months. I changed the book description, nothing else within the story itself and republished. That's when they banned it. They told me my story violated their guidelines. I sent them numerous emails asking what the violation was. They claimed they human reviewed it and still maintained there was a violation. They would not tell me what or where the violation was. It was pretty tame as far as erotic content goes. There was one consensual sex scene, the guy kissed the girl's feet a couple of times, he performed oral sex on her, and then they had missionary sex. That's it! So freaking stupid, it made me furious. I've seen much, much more graphic sex than in my book. I finally gave up asking because I was afraid they would get pissed at me and kick me out completely. I asked them about why my book violated their rules but another book didn't. I started reading one book but didn't finish it because the woman was treated so horribly that I couldn't read it anymore. She was sold as a sex slave, her owner raped, sodomized, forced her to perform oral sex and beat her with a bat. He then invited some friends over to do the same thing. I was like, how the hell does this book NOT violate your guidelines!!?? But my one consensual sex scene does? They would never give me an answer. I'm still sooooo pissed at them.

The first time Amazon banned a book of mine about two years ago, the exact same thing you just described happened to me. The only explanation was that they reserve the right to decide what is in violation, then they pointed me to the same bullshit one-sentence content guideline for reference.

I unenrolled my entire catalog from Kindle Unlimited (which is massively overrated) and released them through Smashwords. Now my average royalties have doubled.

 

[Otto26]

Amazon sells John Norman's Gor series which features outright kidnapping and rape. I don't think I need to say anything more than that.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Amazon sells John Norman's Gor series which features outright kidnapping and rape. I don't think I need to say anything more than that.

I guess Amazon's standards don't have to make sense as long as they make dollars and cents.

 

[Ada Stuart]

I guess Amazon's standards don't have to make sense as long as they make dollars and cents.

So true!

I made the mistake of republishing books that the Amazon bots had banned. Eventually they closed my entire account, despite the fact that I had several books on their best seller lists. And they also withheld payments for the last three months.

So yes, I hope them all the worst and more.

One year later, I'm making the same amount of money without Amazon. And the top selling sites are Google, Smashwords, Eden and my own personal stores over at Payhip. It feels really good not to share any of that money with Amazon

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Reviving this thread rather than starting a new one after Amazon arbitrarily banned one of my ebooks, which had been available on Amazon for three years until now.

I recently updated all the keywords for all of my published stories on Amazon, all but one went through smoothly. The story "Hello, Master" was blocked for allegedly violating the content guidelines. When I contacted Amazon asking a Human reviewer to look at it, they decided it was still in violation. Furthermore:

We reserve the right to determine what content we consider appropriate for each marketplace.

What's really outrageous, and this is something other people posting here have encountered, is that the content review team refused to explain how the ebook violated the content guidelines. The pre-formatted email literally says:

We're unable to elaborate further on specific details beyond what is available as part of KDP's Content Guidelines.

Imagine the cops arrest you, and when you demand to know on what charge, they reply: "we reserve the right to decide whether citizens are breaking the law; here's a free copy of the US Penal Code so you can figure out what you did wrong for yourself!"

So, what could possibly have offended the content review algorithm and the bots that manage it? The story is a two-chapter stroker in which a young Asian woman with a crush on her older White boss sneaks into his bedroom to offer herself to him. It's totally consensual, and apart from a small age gap and the fact that she works for him, there's nothing taboo about the story.

As for the cover, I don't know if I can post the image or another retailer link here, but it features a woman kneeling on a bed with her hands covering her bare breasts (no nipples or areolae visible) while wearing only black panties. Back when I submitted it to Smashwords, now acquired by Draft2Digital, they asked me to add some airbrushing to her panties to cover up a tiny bit of pubic hair that was visible (I've had negative experiences with D2D's customer service in the past, but at least Smashwords/D2D give clear explanations of why they reject something and what you can do to fix it). I didn't do that for Amazon, but I have no idea if that was the issue, especially given the amount of exposed breasts and full-frontal nudity in the cover images of countless other ebooks all over Amazon.

Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do except curse Amazon KDP and the automatons that manage its kafkaesque content review process.

 

[CuriousRick]

That sucks . Sorry they banned your book

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

That sucks . Sorry they banned your book

I'm a big girl, I'll get over it, but thanks. Their refusal to tell me why it got banned is what's so infuriating.

 

[StillStunned]

I wouldn't be surprised it the "human reviewer" was by now an AI called Bob.

 

[CuriousRick]

I'm a big girl, I'll get over it, but thanks. Their refusal to tell me why it got banned is what's so infuriating.

Yeah, you should be able to get an explanation! Did you say it had been online for a while?

Sounds like an interesting story. Wish I had read it before it disappeared

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I figured years ago, that when ever I do publish anything, anything that goes on amazon, wouldn't be anything deeper than romance, as far as anything erotic goes, if that.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I wouldn't be surprised it the "human reviewer" was by now an AI called Bob.

The reviewer signed off as "Hilda", but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case either.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Yeah, you should be able to get an explanation! Did you say it had been online for a while?

It was published in mid-2022, so three whole years of no issues until now.

Sounds like an interesting story. Wish I had read it before it disappeared

It's still available at reputable retailers (Amazon is more notorious than reputable), the list is here.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I figured years ago, that when ever I do publish anything, anything that goes on amazon, wouldn't be anything deeper than romance, as far as anything erotic goes, if that.

There's an awful lot of smut on Amazon, which ought to mean that it's fine by them (except when it's not), so that's probably a safe bet.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I wouldn't automatically lean towards the book's content as the issue.

Amazon's lack of details on rejections leaves open several other possibilities, including their acceptance of you as the legitimate copyright holder.

In the past, I have had success if achieving resolutions with KDP by writing to:

Candi Castleberry-Singleton
Vice President of Inclusive eXperiences Technology (IXT)
410 Terry Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98109
candigbl@amazon.com

She has never responded to me directly, but she has assigned others to look into the issues that I wrote to her about.

Good luck.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I wouldn't automatically lean towards the book's content as the issue.

Amazon's lack of details on rejections leaves open several other possibilities, including their acceptance of you as the legitimate copyright holder.

In the past, I have had success if achieving resolutions with KDP by writing to:

Candi Castleberry-Singleton
Vice President of Inclusive eXperiences Technology (IXT)
410 Terry Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98109
candigbl@amazon.com

She has never responded to me directly, but she has assigned others to look into the issues that I wrote to her about.

Good luck.

Thanks a lot for this! I'll try to contact her and see what can be done.

However, I'm pretty sure it's not copyright related. Amazon's algorithm has in the past temporarily pulled some of my stories due to doubts about the cover images' copyright licenses and asked me to provide proof that I hold the copyright. They were never permanent blocks, and each time I've sent them screen-grabbed proof of the shutterstock licenses, they've restored the ebooks. This is almost certainly a content/cover issue.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Bad news. See the update here.