Understanding the Amazon ADULT filter?

I feel like I may - MAY - have come to a sort of understanding with Amazon's ADULT filter, today. I'd always wondered why some titles didn't get filtered since they had pretty risque and filterable keywords like tentacles, breeding, pseudo-incest, but they fly while others got shot down fast for having words in parenthesis like BDSM or... hand-holding. Okay no, but oh hey, now I kind of wonder if it would get filtered.

Seriously though. Why do I think I understand it a bit now? I found this following image on CreateSpace, Amazon's paperback publishing avenue while working on releasing a paperback edition of a recent republish, Hot, Wet and Tied Up. Exciting times, it's been quite fun to work on the paperback book cover. Reminded me of old times working on video covers and performance booklets. The following is the image from CreateSpace.

This is an option you are given to tick, filtering yourself. Why would you do this? Don't ask me. Why isn't it on the KDP page for ebook authors? No idea. Whoever handled the GUI for the ebook version probably forgot it, and they've been too busy rolling around in all the free royalty to notice it wasn't there. Maybe it's too late to fix it for whatever reason, so they just go about doling out some sort of mildly coherent if inconsistent and not at all communicated sense of content judgement?

I don't know. "Transparency" isn't part of Amazon's "customer-driven" ideal in this sense. Yet for whatever reason, the definition they seem to be applying is there. Except you only see it if you had business to be that far through creation of a paperback in the first place. The vast majority of independent ebook  publishers don't, and I don't really blame them. I'm for the moment treating paperback publications as a thing for special releases, too. You might not want to hit up the process every time, and the production cost might not make it a practical endeavour to begin with. 

All the same, I think if people keep both this and all prior considerations in mind, it'll become less of an issue. I'm not going to get into a rant about who or what it's "protecting" again, I'm going to ignore how to understand the "guidelines", we have to discuss them among ourselves through mass trial and error instead of there actually being any information shared openly. 

Yeah, okay, I'm bad at this "not going to" thing, but still. When designing your cover and product detail page in general, keep "not suitable for minors" exaggerated in your mind with a pinch of salt for effect, and put whatever in keywords since they're never publically seen, so not publically offensive. This is as much a rant and sense of comfort for me since I've been getting more nervous and upset over things being filtered than publishing at all. Though considering Hot, Wet & Tied Up republished has sold four copies in one day as opposed to zero in a month, it's for good reason that you'd get upset about it.

Amazon ADULT filter update: Exactly what inconsistencies?

I was recently asked about examples of Amazon's inconsistencies in the ADULT filter matter, so along with the recent email correspondence I've published here in the post below this, I'm making a point on explaining the inconsistencies a little, here. The most prudent advice I have on avoiding the filter in the first place would be to not use (parenthesis tags) in your book title, as that seems to get their attention a lot faster. Keyword searches will still bring up the book perfectly fine, but they aren't targetting things tagged by keyword as far as I can tell. It doesn't really make any consistent sense to anyone.

I've talked a lot about this recently and would like to keep posts that aren't more interesting and positive publication releases on the shorter side for browsing ease, so I'll cut the rest of this article behind a pagebreak to not bombard people with my rambling on not at all arrousing topics.

You can always check out my new Library page for recent erotica publications including lesbian BDSM and incest instead.

More about Amazon's filter follows the pagebreak:

Amazon ADULT filter email correspondence.

Email transcript related to ADULT filter follows the pagebreak:

Amazon and the ADULT filter

Right, I've hinted at this a few times recently but not really had the time, inclination or energy to make a point about it. Now that I've finished writing my latest release, that I'll talk about later, I want to take a moment to talk about this ADULT filter and how it may affect you. Yes, you, reader or writer.

First of all, to find if you or an author you like has filtered releases, put the author name into Sales Rank Express. Any title with ADULT next to the name has been filtered. Make a habit of checking an author's profile page and searching from 'Kindle Store' instead of All Departments. If you only take one thing away with you from this post or stop reading now, keep those things in mind and try them out, please.

The ADULT filter is something Amazon has been in the process of using at their unspoken discretion for over a year, now. The filter sounds like what it should do is filter adult content, and I've certainly seen enough estranged responses to a similar article posted by the Daily Mail that think it's doing a great and positive thing to protect minors and people that may be offended.

It's not. 

Smashwords has an adult content filter. Google has multiple levels of adult content search result filtering. It's not a difficult concept to implement, and you can generally rest assured that every site and company with the potential for showing some sort of adult content has it behind a warning. Considering everything erotic is posted under the erotica category, it's rather self-sufficient on censoring against minors.

Except it isn't hidden at all. What Amazon has is by no means an actual adult content filter, but an inconsistent mess of what essentially comes down to money-grubbing and abuse. It doesn't make the content any more hidden from minors or people that could be offended by it, and infact for those that browse and buy on a Kindle device, the filter won't affect them in the first place since search will default to 'Kindle Store'. So those unsupervised children with a Kindle and wifi connection will still be directed straight to every adult title.

Why? How? Because what the ADULT filter does is removes the offending content from the All Departments search. That might not seem a big deal in and of itself, but that means more than it may seem. Unless you know of this issue, chances are you just use the All Department search and it certainly brings up some results, including terms that are considered "bad words" and for the most part filtered. It's actually been hard for me to replicate that this filter even existed, sometimes. Since there are some results, people don't think anything is wrong.

Update: Was recently asked about examples, so updating this here, too, but I've also made a newer post clarifying the inconsistencies better, along with e-mail correspondence. 

The bad words include alot of general kink things. In no particular order; Breeding, Pseudo-Incest (including family words), Gangbang, Creampie, BDSM, Rough, Monster, Ménage and likely more as they go around randomly filtering about half of the results for words they come across and dislike. Even if those words are part of popular mainstream accepted erotica. You'll still find some results in the "All Department" search, but not all results.

To get around that, search in 'Kindle Store' where all these filtered titles will show up as if there was nothing wrong with them. Regardless of whether you're of legal age to view them or even want to view erotica in your search results. The filter isn't there to protect you or anyone.

It also removes books from the "Also Bought/Browsed" section of unfiltered books. So you won't get recommendations or pairings. For customers and authors alike, that hurts visibility and fractures the community regardless of where you search from. Why? Because Amazon doesn't like your cover, or the extraneous information you put in the title, or perhaps the content. But they won't reject it like they say they will, because that would mean rejecting free money. They will, however, hide it off at the back so they can still rake in the royalties from something they think is offensive trash that they don't want to be associated with selling.

There's nothing adult about it. There's nothing protective about it. This is the most pathetic, childish excuse for double-standards and abuse of monopoly I've ever had the misfortune to be insulted by association to. I'll admit I may be a bit brash and hard with the language here but I really can't get behind and respect their methods in any respect. Amazon aren't going to grow a pair and raise the bar on standard of what they accept or keep open dialogue with authors the way others do. That would cost them money they can still make by giving half-service, accepting everything and then deciding whether or not they like it.

I imagine the process looks something like this.