A Year in the Rear with the Gear - One Year of Publishing Erotic Fiction

First image in my gallery.

A year ago to the day, Leona D. Reish appeared with Daemonique I: The Darkest Desire. Back then it was ‘vol.1’, a mess of formatting and with a different cover piece. Not to imply I know what I'm doing now, but my blog posts back then sure a mess, too.

A day later, Smashwords’ read an ebook week kicked off, so I pushed to release a second book that got in on the 7^th. Seeing that come around again now brings back a lot of memories. I was really very easily disheartened back then when nothing really happened through that first week with its sale event going.

In some senses, I’m just as easily disheartened now, and certainly still learning. I'm aiming to tie up current projects before I really start on anything new, since now I've a better understanding of things, I don't have to be so scattered about it. So we'll see how things go. As much as they change, I think they're going to stay the same.

Sat in a different corner of the room, at a different desk, though, things have really come a long way. It's really been a year, huh...

For sake of index-browsing scroll fingers, the rest of this post is pretty long and getting put behind a pagebreak. First year anniversary though, should probably celebrate or something. 

Christmas at a military base with a disembodied brain.
My kind of fun.

I have no title for all this madness.

You know, I never thought I'd have a use for the "Suddenly: Madness" tag again, nevermind so soon, but I guess I should have seen it coming.

In some ways I suppose I did see it coming, if only vicariously. Independent publishing has proven to be a real Pandora's Box, made no better by how much storefronts have just jumped on something that looked sparkly and popular without putting half a day of effort into their interface.

WH Smiths is offline and Kobo sabotaged itself to appear like it, by proxy, was being a social justice warrior of the modern age and correcting heinous crimes, too.

It's okay though, Kobo. Don't worry, WH Smiths, it was impossible to find shit on your storefront anyway. Zero options for keyword searches, genres not even listed on the book's page? Though I guess if you're going to half-ass providing a service you should also half-ass fixing your mess and just take the whole storefront offline.

So basically, they're suffering the repercussions of their own greed, now. You don't just open gates on a global scale and expect no one you disagree with to come in. You don't accept running a platform of this scale and be surprised when you're incapable of controlling it. I've said it for however many years running, probably at least ten after watching Serial Experiments Lain, but a lot of the people responsible for these things don't seem to be ready to handle a digital age.

It's frustrating, but at the same time I can't help but default to laughing at it. You have to, really. You can't let everything weigh down on you too heavily at face value, because you're gonna carry that weight.

The box is open and the ride cannot be stopped, so there's no fear of that it will. That's why I haven't even touched on Amazon's reaction to these recent events. For a wonder, they've been much more controlled and effectively reasonable about it. I say effectively in emphasized italics because of course this happening at all will never be a nice, good or straightforward thing that people can just bounce back off or feel comfortable being around. Consider though, that if they handled it as awkwardly as Kobo, none of anyone's books would be available until they did the sweep they've done. That would be utterly ridiculous.

Also consider how they've handled it. As an author to have to deal with the ADULT Filter which is likely now gone in place of putting the offending title on Draft and contacting you, I honestly prefer this method, if not what's caused them to go into a refreshed search for offenders. This way, there is open contact over the issue. That was one thing sorely missing from their old system which may as well have put most people's work back on Draft status. If there's at least some open dialogue, I can appreciate the effort.

I was affected by it as many have been, and had Becca's Birthday Wish pushed back to Draft with a mail about what I need to do about it. Perhaps what wasn't as clear as could be, and led back to knowledge garnered from having dealt with their trial-and-error system in the past, but after tweaking the synopsis to remove the word Daddy, it was accepted, published and sold once again. I still need to re-submit the CreateSpace version but that isn't so important.

Unless they hate money or something, I'm expecting Kobo's poor excuse for a storefront to do the same once it's done with handling the damage control as poorly as they handle the storefront in general, so I might be down a book that needs republished with more neutral wording. We'll see.

Moral: Persevere and flow with the subtle changes in the current. Also WH Smiths can go fuck itself.

Now, I have real writing to get back to finishing now available here as if nothing's on fire, because the only thing that will let your publishing die is your resolve. Now to start running through the All Hallow's End specials.

A rant on morality of content in erotica (Becca's Birthday Wish)

Well that's been annoying. My latest book's published fine just about everywhere, no problem, no ADULT filtering. All's well and good... UNLESS! For once, Smashwords has been the more restrictive of places and I think just a little over-sensitive. They seem to think implication that someone under 18 could but didn't have sex, in their words "exploring such things" is unacceptable. 

Now I don't want to give them too much crap about it since I can understand where they're coming from and they are keeping open review dialogue with suggestions to add clarification that all characters are over 18. If it was Amazon I'd probably just get some rejected marker and have to ask some obscure email address why and they'd just go "Because it's unsuitable. We are able to offer free shrugs". I do like that Smashwords cares, but maybe a little too much this time. 

But maybe it just got a bit risque and scary, all these age numbers flying, it could get pretty crazy and try to fly something under the radar, right? Sure, but not here. Underage sex isn't publishable and I'm never going to try to, between people of the same age range or whatever. The point was to acknowledge that it does happen, and can be a very serious thing to young adults, but that peer pressure to participate in any sort of sexual culture isn't necessary to be seen as attractive or whatever. You'll find someone you love and want to have sex with at whatever age and they'll be worth the wait, but perception of time and age is different when you're younger and "everyone's doing it". 

The moral was very anti-underage sex exploration.

That's where things start falling apart here though, and what's bothered me enough to go on a rant about it. Ideally the fixes I've done are enough since I'll admit there was a couple other button presses that needed fixed too, and I don't know how I missed those, but all in all could have made it look a bit suspect. So far, I've just removed the age number from the synopsis and made a patronisingly obvious content warning that there isn't any sexual content involving minors (and won't ever be), just reinforcement of proper morality. 

Otherwise, I know it might not be the best avenue to make a moral out of it but it was a simple plot device rather than some grand crusade I was looking to devote a message to. And no, I'm not really writing to 'educate' and change the world but when you're open to writing sexual lifestyles and morals, you kind of expect to have the freedom to write "it's okay to not be pressured into having sex early" and not get it brought to questioned for being unacceptable. You expect it to make people smile and appreciate the modesty of the advice. The key point is not everything in (my) erotica is written for sole purpose of sexual gratification just because it's erotica. There's purpose, plot and feelings behind actions and plot drives that people think should be censored for sanctity through silence, as if "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" really means no evil will occur.

This really isn't a world of rainbows and wish fulfillment where cute buzzwords that people "need" will herald enlightenment and world peace. I might be being slightly hyperbolic about it all but really, I'd have expected other places to shoot it down faster if it was actually an issue of suspect content. Blargh ranting, I should be writing 17th century sisterly incest instead.

Bonus moral: Teach and practice sanity and equality free of any form of impersonal discrimination at your discretion. Don't expect something else to do it for you.

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.