It finally happened

[holmes_iv]

Well, Kindle Direct Publishing finally got around to reviewing my short story collection, Who's Your Daddy?, and deemed it in violation of the Amazon code. They didn't say why, just provided a link to the Amazon publishing guidelines. Closest I could get was KDP refuses to publish "pornography" and "offensive content."
All my original work is pornography, and I've still got better than 20 titles" live" on KDP. And I ain't the only one!
Actually, I know what the offensive content is, but only because of discussions here on Lit: father-adult daughter incest and incest between bisexual twins (sisters). I have several other collections featuring sister-sister sex, so who knows what the future will hold?
The problem as I see it is that you can't really define pornography and offensive content, so Amazon has a hole big enough to drive a truck through and can arbitrarily boot any work some twerp deems offensive.

Another thing I'd like to know is how Amazon selects a work for review? Random? Complaint-driven?

Guess I'm just venting here.

 

[lovecraft68]

No, amazon is finally making their all out push to rid themselves of all those embarrassing mommy/daddy titles that dominate the top spots in erotica over there.

They did away with real incest a couple three years ago.

All mom etc...titles now are step stories which for the record sex with ones step parent/sibling is in no way shape or form illegal as long as they are 18 and over.

Now amazon wants these gone to (I lost 24 titles last week including one that was averaging 500 sales a month)

As usual they made no announcement about their policy change to authors/readers just doing what they always do; whatever they want.

They claim you can fix your book. If you take any family reference out of the title and tone down the cover they will put it back. But you also cannot allow "step..." anything in the descriptions

so....

why bother? the book will be impossible to find and if you just try anyway you will get people buying it that don't know its Pseudo incest and get upset and return it.

The move is a head scratcher as amazon will literally lose millions over this. PI books sell tens perhaps hundreds of thousands of books a month.

We will never know the answer other than Bezos does what he wants. But seeing, like wal-mart, Amazon would cut their grandmother's throat and sell their kids into sexual slavery to make a dollar I feel something is behind this.

So its game over for even PI over there and what it should mean is that we as authors stop making amazon the first site we push.

Its time to go onto facebook, twitter, blogs wherever you advertise and post of amazon's games-because they are screwing with the buyers as well, not allowing their product, but not telling them and tell people to head on over to smashwords, all romance, fiction4all and any other site you sell on instead of making amazon more money while they are taking money from the little people

 

[TheLordWinter]

Its time to go onto facebook, twitter, blogs wherever you advertise and post of amazon's games-because they are screwing with the buyers as well, not allowing their product, but not telling them and tell people to head on over to smashwords, all romance, fiction4all and any other site you sell on instead of making amazon more money while they are taking money from the little people

A noble sentiment, but completely without teeth. Even if you could organize the writers enough to get them to pull their products publicly, and just as publicly, go somewhere else, customers would still flock to the site in droves to purchase goods at bargain-basement prices. The average consumer today can't be bothered by moral issues like sweat-shops, forced labor, etc... much less concern themselves with a paltry handful of pissed off erotica writers. In the best case scenario, where people DO take their literary business elsewhere, the millions lost will be pennies compared to the billions that Amazon brings in annually.

However, I do agree with you in principle, lovecraft.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

They got two of mine last week. Assholes. Actually, I just have to change the title. They actually weren't doing all the well, the titles were "Excerpts from a Step-Sons Journal." So it's was psuedo incest not the real thing.

Too bad everyone wants the money they make over their at Amazon. Well could all just pull everything we (the collective we of Amazon erotica writers) published there and Jeff can watch his profits slide down the wall.

But I make a nice chunk of change that I wouldn't want to loose right now. Maybe after I win the lotto and I'm independently wealthy, I'll pull my stuff of Amazon. Like that will every happen.

 

[lovecraft68]

@lord winter

I get your point.

Now as a counterpoint I am not talking across the board products, I am simply speaking of e-books.

If you do not already know amazon has unethically locked the market into a minimum of $2.99 to a max of $9.99

They do this on their site by saying you will only get 70% royalties if your books are in that range(any other price only 35%)

What they also do is say your book cannot be found for sale anywhere for less therefore meaning if you are on amazon then you cannot charge less than your amazon price.

So what that means is that my books are $2.99 across the board on all sites B&N sony kobo ARE etc...

That means the consumer is not spending anymore money there than on amazon.

In fact if my "taboo" stories will no longer be on amazon I may just lower my SW prices to $1.99 where I had them before I got on amazon and make it more attractive.

What I see as the problem is the average kindle owner thinks they can only buy books from kindle.

They don't know that Smashwords will sell you a book in any format you need as will All romance.

If that word can be spread it will bring readers from amazon.

Amazon has already had their lock on e-books seriously compromised over the last couple of years and this will further it.

Erotica is the number one seller on kindle(cause people can hide it on an e-reader) and it is what they are specifically targeting. Trust me after ridding their site of all those "step" stories more will follow.

Soon it will be "milf or cougar" stories after all aren't all those older women fantasies just extensions of mother fantasies? (not really, but it will be an excuse) then it will be BDSM

By the way they have also finally-and I admit I am not upset by this-decided to go through and ban all the bestiality books that were never supposed to be allowed there in the first place- they are also targeting monster porn and any cover, no matter what genre they deem too risque.

Now they claim content can be pretty damn raunchy, but it has to appear in tame packaging.

What they want is for their "porn" to look like romance.

What they want is an entire ctalog of bland 50 shades of greay covers, but with the smutty content people want to buy.

Now how they will buy it with limited words allowed in titles.descriptions and no tag words (they even removed the like this on facebook feature months ago) who knows.

The thing that upsets me is as always the working class person is hurt. There are people putting food on the table with this money and Bezos as always says "fuck you, I need to continue to blow the big six, so tough luck."

Now it is a fact indy authors built the damn kindle store back when the big six were too "good" to deal with e-books.

What amazon does not realize is indy authors can seriously damage it as well, the problem is, as you called out, trying to get tens of thousands of people on one page.

 

[lovecraft68]

They got two of mine last week. Assholes. Actually, I just have to change the title. They actually weren't doing all the well, the titles were "Excerpts from a Step-Sons Journal." So it's was psuedo incest not the real thing.

Too bad everyone wants the money they make over their at Amazon. Well could all just pull everything we (the collective we of Amazon erotica writers) published there and Jeff can watch his profits slide down the wall.

But I make a nice chunk of change that I wouldn't want to loose right now. Maybe after I win the lotto and I'm independently wealthy, I'll pull my stuff of Amazon. Like that will every happen.

Its not just want, in many people's cases its need.

There are author's there who are jobless right now and helping to feed their kids with this money.

Amazon, like wal-mart are nothing less than scum who want nothing more than to destroy any other company and individual out there.

Again to repeat its a shame that people cannot get together for even a change.org petition.

One of those with tens of thousands of signatures does get things done.

 

[lovecraft68]

Just so you are aware "family references" can still be used if they are not family.

Example they left my book "Her Best Friend's daughter" up there.

They also left "A Mother's Love from beyond" because during the description it mentions its his mother's spirit inside of a medium so They caught on that he was not having sex with his mother.

 

[StrangeLife]

I have a buddy who ran into something similar with the Apple App Store - it wasn't about erotica but some sort of UI or function that Apple didn't like. He actually sought advice from a lawyer (he had invested quite a few man-hours in development of the app) but the answer was basically that it's Apples play-pen so Apple dictates the rules.

I imagine that Amazon have decided they'll make more money by profiling themselves as "guardian of decency and good taste" (tm) than they'll lose in revenue by curating erotica...

 

[lovecraft68]

I have a buddy who ran into something similar with the Apple App Store - it wasn't about erotica but some sort of UI or function that Apple didn't like. He actually sought advice from a lawyer (he had invested quite a few man-hours in development of the app) but the answer was basically that it's Apples play-pen so Apple dictates the rules.

I imagine that Amazon have decided they'll make more money by profiling themselves as "guardian of decency and good taste" (tm) than they'll lose in revenue by curating erotica...

Good luck with that.

Let me clue you in on a harsh, but true fact.

the average-for lack of a better term-zealot you know the type the ones who go to church, talk about god and act as if they're better than you cauyse they're "saved" and you're not?

Are demographically the cheapest SOB's you will ever find.

Thy spend nothing because they have nothing to spend. Many vey religious people are in lower financial classes.

Apparently God is more of an inspiration when you can't afford anything else.

Bottom line is as everyone has been told in every industry sex sells.

Yes, sex and sin sell.

So where will amazon make up these lost millions? Will they make it off of Wilbur and tess who may need to buy a new Bible this year?

Spare me. And for the record at some point I'm sure the bible will be banned on amazon for offending some other religion.

But seriously if you spent as much time book marking authors and books and looking at and comparing rankings of all types of erotica from BDSM to group to lesbian/gm to "general erotica'

Nothing and I mean nothing compares to the success and sales of PI. That is not to say there are not other erotica books that have done well but I am speaking in general

Just like incest dominates lit here, PI runs the sales of erotica over there.

They are now going to make it impossible to find. So not just millions in sales but I am hoping thousands of customers

I will say for the hundredth time and be the millionth person to say amazon can fix everything by having an adult kindle store that requies a special log in to get into it.

E-bay is the perfect model. Many people don't even know e-bay sells adult items, know why?

because you have to log in and sign in to view adult items EVERY TIME you go onto e-bay then you see the thousands of adult auctions that are there, but are hidden from those who have no desire to see them.

Amazon can do that by adding a "does your book contain adult content" block to their template. Then people can pick the "fetish" and now no one sees anything they don't want to.

But then I guess all the prophets of America;s trailer parks would know amazon sells adult merchandise and threaten to not spend there $5 a year there.

Whew, man I hate when people get me started on moral bible thumping dicks.

 

[i_would]

Not surprised to hear the problem of publications being pulled.

Indeed I recently read Amazon is tightening their controls, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24491723 They are reviewing lots of titles to make sure they don't violate guidelines, like incest, bestiality and rape.

As I understand the reason behind the crackdown is that erotic titles ended up in quite "innocent" searches. Which of course in turn meant that children got to see them. And that's causing quite some complaints - and rightfully so.

For whatever reason it seems Amazon is not properly "shielding" sections, types of content. Age controls, content controls: this is what should be improved first. Some sections of more controversial stuff (erotica, violent stuff, etc) that have to be explicitly opted in to for searches.

Whether your stories are indeed violating their guidelines I don't know - if they did, well can't blame Amazon for pulling them, but otoh they shouldn't have allowed it on in the first place.

Good luck with it. From the BBC story it appears it's more than just the title they look at, indeed from the title you can't always tell whether it violates guidelines or not.

 

[lovecraft68]

Not surprised to hear the problem of publications being pulled.

Indeed I recently read Amazon is tightening their controls, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24491723 They are reviewing lots of titles to make sure they don't violate guidelines, like incest, bestiality and rape.

As I understand the reason behind the crackdown is that erotic titles ended up in quite "innocent" searches. Which of course in turn meant that children got to see them. And that's causing quite some complaints - and rightfully so.

For whatever reason it seems Amazon is not properly "shielding" sections, types of content. Age controls, content controls: this is what should be improved first. Some sections of more controversial stuff (erotica, violent stuff, etc) that have to be explicitly opted in to for searches.

Whether your stories are indeed violating their guidelines I don't know - if they did, well can't blame Amazon for pulling them, but otoh they shouldn't have allowed it on in the first place.

Good luck with it. From the BBC story it appears it's more than just the title they look at, indeed from the title you can't always tell whether it violates guidelines or not.

Your post makes my point for the "adult store"

You also make the point that now amazon is going to punish everyone for their lack of screening in the first place.

But one point against the authors. The people who posted blatant nudity on covers and came out with titles like "step mother fucker and grabbing mommy's ass" are the cause of this. As always the stupidity of a few bring down everyone.

But again heaven forbid amazon say "Okay, we need to fix this so it doesn't happen" nope answer is let's get rid of everything.

 

[sr71plt]

Amazon isn't a public utility. It can choose not to market whatever it wishes. And determining what is profitable for Amazon against what is possible is also its privilege. Demonstrations of why it should change its policies are fine, and are under way--and seemed to have held sway at least once in the past. If you choose to run the edge of its stated policies and it chooses to enforce its stated policies, this isn't Amazon's problem, it's yours.

Although I let my publishers worry about such issues and I've had books on Amazon banned (and then reinstated) in the past, I don't try to scapegoat Amazon for my decisions of what to try to sell through Amazon. I'm just happy I got into the market early enough to have cleaned up already, and the continued spinning out of sales on what I write I just look at as gravy time.

What one of my publishers tries to avoid at Amazon is being locked into exclusitivity there. Our points of sales are spread along quite a few platforms and distributors. When one is being testy, the others tend to take up the slack. Buyers will find you if they want to buy your books.

If you choose to concentrate on writing genres that challenge the edges, that's your call and your reality to live with.

 

[lovecraft68]

Amazon isn't a public utility. It can choose not to market whatever it wishes. And determining what is profitable for Amazon against what is possible is also its privilege. Demonstrations of why it should change its policies are fine, and are under way--and seemed to have held sway at least once in the past. If you choose to run the edge of its stated policies and it chooses to enforce its stated policies, this isn't Amazon's problem, it's yours.

Although I let my publishers worry about such issues and I've had books on Amazon banned (and then reinstated) in the past, I don't try to scapegoat Amazon for my decisions of what to try to sell through Amazon. I'm just happy I got into the market early enough to have cleaned up already, and the continued spinning out of sales on what I write I just look at as gravy time.

What one of my publishers tries to avoid at Amazon is being locked into exclusitivity there. Our points of sales are spread along quite a few platforms and distributors. When one is being testy, the others tend to take up the slack. Buyers will find you if they want to buy your books.

If you choose to concentrate on writing genres that challenge the edges, that's your call and your reality to live with.

You make sense and would make more if amazon's policy was more specific than "What you think we find objectionable probably is"

You know technically by their "no adult material" content rule every single work of erotica could be erased, right?

What this boils down to is amazon milking something for as long as they can then when someone gets upset, getting on their horse like they didn;t know it was there.

You can't fault someone for looking at the kindle store and seeing tens of thousands of PI titles and saying "Oh, okay that means I can put these here."

If amazon really cared what was on their site they would have rules that were not open to guessing and interpretation People think the rules are gray here? try there.

But here's where they put themselves in the wrong. They are not banning the content. They say you can write it, but can;t have mom in the title, the description and no more tags so, as my daughter would say, "really" in other words they want us to write it, hide it so they can still make some money all the while taking their high horse.

As for your publishers, no one is in a bigger snit write now than Selena who once gave me the advice of "Put daddy/mommy in the title and you have a hit"

Personally I am smart enough to roll with the times. Common sense dictates that if step mom is no longer allowed (or at least no longer able to be found) the next thing those readers will move onto is "milf cougar" stories.

I have two up and four more in the works.

But I also can live without this money. I have a job a wife who earns a good living and e-bay.

I feel for the people who were paying their rent/mortgage with this income, the people who need it to feed their kids.

Amazon has the right to do as they choose, but they do it in an unethical manner and should be called out on it.

But I am speaking to the dead here and realize that. No drastic change at amazon or anywhere else is met with anything, but "Oh, shucks, guess that's it" from the people here who should have a vested interest.

 

[sr71plt]

It's not unethical to decide not to market certain lines of erotica. As incest is illegal, one could argue, with more logic, that it's unethical to market titillating stories about it at all.

It's your decision to write on that edge and to ride the waves of the varying application of the policy. You benefit when the policy is loosely applied; you don't when it isn't. That's what you signed yourself up for. If you can't ride the waves, write some other, safer genre--or, as you indicated you have done, find less capricious distributors.

 

[lovecraft68]

It's not unethical to decide not to market certain lines of erotica. As incest is illegal, one could argue, with more logic, that it's unethical to market titillating stories about it at all.

It's your decision to write on that edge and to ride the waves of the varying application of the policy. You benefit when the policy is loosely applied; you don't when it isn't. That's what you signed yourself up for. If you can't ride the waves, write some other, safer genre--or, as you indicated you have done, find less capricious distributors.

Keep in mind one point

if there is incest on amazon it is left over from that purge a couple of years ago

what is in question now is step incest which is not a crime in anyway shape or form(providing the people are of age)

If they want to say you cannot have "mom" in the title you should be allowed "step mom"

As for people writing on the edge. Many chose to because it is where the money is.

I had a step mom story that I honestly thought was kind of silly, yet made over 3k in slightly less than 3 months before it was pulled.

That number was more than my 15 or so non PI titles combined for that period of time.

Selena Kitt is certainly a better writer than her step stories, but she knew that was where the money was.

One dances with whatever devil pays.

I just take exception to amazon turning their heads and making tens of millions over the last few years on this and now saying "How did that get here" and acting like they have a moral compass.

again an adult store fixes all of it, but then they would have to admit they don;t mind selling erotica.

But what they count on-and correctly-is the blah attitude of people who say, well I don;t write that so I don;t care or, oh well, whatever will we do.

To the former one day it will be what you write censorship does not stop at one thing. to the latter the average person is a lemming who would rather let others fight their fight but yet they are the first to mope when they get screwed.

Ten thousand signatures on a change.org petition would get this national attention and force amazon to actually make a come clean statement and get them negative press. There are tens of thousands of indy authors. But the majority would rather hide in their holes.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't have to keep anything about incest in mind. I don't write much of it--certainly don't try to sell it.

And I have publishers to do any of that sort of worrying for me. I'm just happy that I can sell what I'd enjoy writing anyway. When/if it gets stopped, I will regret it, but not spill blood and worry over it. The ride will have been nice while it lasted.

I certainly won't blame the distributors for the choices they are privileged to make for themselves.

 

[i_would]

You know technically by their "no adult material" content rule every single work of erotica could be erased, right?

If that's how they write it, they should start going after horror books (people running after other people with a bloody axe in their hand is not for children), other violent books, and lots more. To me, "adult material" is much more than erotica. Yet they seem to only target erotica, and even that selectively: Lolita seems to be for sale, no problem to find the book by just typing "Lolita" in the search box on amazon.com. I have to admit never having read the book, but it's known for its pedophilic content. It probably simply belongs in the "18+" category.

Even worse is when third parties start to put their foot down:
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/02/25/smashwords-succumbs-to-censorship/
That, to me, is even more perverse than what many people on this site can come up with in their stories!

I really hate the typical American hypocrisy of allowing guns everywhere and being used by people without age limit, all the while thinking it's quite normal that people shoot one another including children; allowing people to drive their cars at 16; but no sex before 18 or alcohol before 18/21. And the sex part is preferrably kept completely out of the whole picture, as if it doesn't exist.

 

[sr71plt]

One of these days some bright entrepreneur--possibly Amazon itself, with a separate Web site store--will get the idea of opening up an on-line store just for these types of books. A group of posters here probably could manage it.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

One of these days some bright entrepreneur--possibly Amazon itself, with a separate Web site store--will get the idea of opening up an on-line store just for these types of books. A group of posters here probably could manage it.

Except for the name recognition that Amazon has garnered, they would be out of business in a week. Unless they called it Amazonia.com...naw, Jeff would never go for that, still outa business in a week.

Besides, hasn't someone else done that...Smashwords come to mind, along with a bunch of others? So the idea isn't new and the minute Amazonia starts to feel the heat, they will be bought out and shutdown.

 

[i_would]

One of these days some bright entrepreneur--possibly Amazon itself, with a separate Web site store--will get the idea of opening up an on-line store just for these types of books. A group of posters here probably could manage it.

I have been toying with just that idea for a few times. Books, music - stuff that can be delivered over the Internet. This is not easy.

First of all: the shop has to be known, both with authors and customers. Authors must be willing to put their books in that shop, customers must be willing to part with their money. Both are not easy. The author wants to be sure that if the shop sells a copy, they get their share. For paper books that's simple: physical stock is easy to count. For e-books it all comes down to trust, and why would an author trust a random no-name startup business?

Customers also have to visit the store. That is also easier said than done: opening a random web site is guaranteed to draw no visitors at all. It has to be promoted, visitors don't come as easy as to a real shop opened on a real shopping street or in a real shopping mall. Ebay and taobao are currently the only sites that I can think of that comes close to the Internet version of a shopping mall.

Then handling actual payments. Paypal has already shown to be very strict in what they accept for customers, even if you take out the obvious ones like incest, under-age (where limits vary) and bestiality (which for example in The Netherlands is legal as long as no animals get hurt in the process), you may run into serious problems there. And accepting credit cards directly is easier said than done.

Setting up and managing such a web site is the easy part. Getting content I think should also not be too hard (especially if sites like Smashwords want to do business with you), and to get customers there is always Google AdWords - just needs quite an investment there.

It's the payments and legality of the whole content. What is accepted in one part of the world may be punishable by death in another part (e.g. homosexuality). And that's exactly where Amazon is tripping up over as well.

 

[sr71plt]

True. I was mainly suggesting that Amazon itself could do it. Setting up a separate site that everyone knew was still Amazon would permit it to just tell the vigilantes that they and their precious ones should just stick to the homogenous version. ARE has done it with it's Omlit (spelling?) section.

Beyond that, though, I'm suggesting that those here who want to complain about distribution of their incest writings could coalesce to provide a place where it can be ordered. Those who want that will find them if they do a little publicity that they exist.

Selena Kitt did it with eXcessica--from Literotica--and now has a pretty big publishing house going that includes publishing (and distributing from the eXcessica Web site) incest--because she writes it.

The kick isn't that writers of incest can't get distribution sites--it's that they can't stand having major distribution sites that won't handle their material (which is the distribution site's privilege not to do).

Stop complaining and work on connecting the readers of incest to the distribution sites where it's available. The readers aren't gong to stop wanting to get to it--they just need to know where to go to get it--from some place as trustworthy and priceworthy as Amazon.

 

[LadyVer]

This was interesting: http://indiereader.com/2013/10/banning-books/?utm_source=IndieReader+List&utm_campaign=44bd9b6f17-Newsletter_1_copy_02_4_18_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5004ec7a02-44bd9b6f17-39244313

 

[sr71plt]

Yes, but it's important to note that this hit the UK market. Thus far the effect on the U.S. market--including Amazon U.S. hasn't experienced this severity.

 

[GradeACdnBeef]

Offensive? Damn. Is anything written that isn't offensive to someone?

 

[lovecraft68]

http://www.change.org/petitions/ama...our-self-published-and-or-indie-authors-alone