# #1 Ranked Romance Author Sinks Into the Abyss



## Jeanie Gold (Mar 8, 2019)

I'm not making this thread to speculate about why a number of authors have appeared to lose their kdp accounts, there have been so many threads about the possibilities for past instances on Kboards already, but I will say it's shocking to me that Alexa Riley is one of them (I'm not a fan, but I've never seen them associated with bad actors). I just find it interesting how KU inflates our perception of author popularity. I already knew a borrow = a sale was always going to skew perception from reality, but this? That writing duo was the #1 ranked author in Romance, yet in 24 hours they have disappeared into the abyss without borrows. Maybe it's amazon intervening, author rank-stripping, but if not, what does that sharp decline mean if anything? How do you think author rank is determined and is KU helpful or not in achieving and maintaining that rank?

_Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_

_[size=8pt]Edited a second time for clarity, though I doubt the thread is salvageable. Can't say I didn't try. -Jeanie_


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

I'm confused. Alexa Riley (if I'm understanding this correctly) has 12 books published. What happened?


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Jeanie Gold said:


> I'm not making this thread to speculate about why a number of authors have appeared to lose their kdp accounts, there have been so many threads about the possibilities on Kboards already, but I will say it's shocking to me that Alexa Riley is one of them (I'm not a fan, but I've never seen them associated with bad actors). I just find it interesting how KU inflates our perception of author popularity. I already knew a borrow = a sale was always going to skew perception from reality, but this? That writing duo was the #1 ranked author in Romance, yet in 24 hours they have disappeared into the abyss without KU reads. Maybe it's amazon intervening, author rank-stripping, but if not, that sharp decline is illuminating.
> 
> They'll probably be back, but does this display validate what many have been saying for a while about KU?
> 
> _Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


That isn't what happened.

All of Alexa Riley's indie books have been removed. Only their tradpub books are remaining. It's not like they were simply booted from KU.

It really has no reflection on their popularity outside of KU.

_Only the quoted post was edited. - Becca_


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

KU reads have nothing to do with rank (which I don't understand how people don't grasp at this point). It's the borrow that affects rank.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

And also, the bulk of her books have been removed. That means they're not getting sales either. The only ones left are the ones that weren't under her account.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Jeanie Gold said:


> I said lost account, not booted from KU, but not having the indie titles in KU does relate to my topic: how KU distorts our perception of what's actually popular. But maybe this point has been argued so many times it's not worthwhile? I don't know, the author rank disappearing that quickly instead of slowly declining as days go by surprises me, it's Titanic to me. Maybe I'm alone in my thinking, wouldn't be the first time.


All of her indie books have been pulled. We're talking hundreds of titles. Those titles aren't getting sales either.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Jeanie Gold said:


> I get that, and sales on older titles probably couldn't be expected to hold anyone afloat, let alone at the top. I suppose I'm the only one surprised that #1 ranked in romance can lose that rank overnight with the absence of borrows. I thought that something so hard to achieve would also be harder to lose than that.


Not with the volumes they moved ... and that is both sales and borrows.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Jeanie Gold said:


> Tomayto Tomahto.
> 
> Replace reads with borrows, and it's still the same question, though clearly not one people want to talk about.


Because there's nothing to talk about. There last no premise here. You want to blame this on KU but the books aren't getting borrows or sales so what's the topic again?


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2019)

Jeanie Gold said:


> That writing duo was the #1 ranked author in Romance, yet in 24 hours they have disappeared into the abyss without KU reads.


KU has nothing to do with the rank drop. Amazon pulled ALL their books - any author's rank would drop if all their books vanished overnight. The proportion of borrows to sales is irrelevant when the book disappears from the store. Or are you suggesting that if Amazon pulled all of your titles, you would maintain your current author rank? Which would be quite some trick with no books available for purchase.


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## RPatton (May 28, 2017)

Tilly said:


> KU has nothing to do with the rank drop. Amazon pulled ALL their books - any author's rank would drop if all their books vanished overnight. The proportion of borrows to sales is irrelevant when the book disappears from the store. Or are you suggesting that if Amazon pulled all of your titles, you would maintain your current author rank? Which would be quite some trick with no books available for purchase.


I think what's intended by the OP is that she expected a gradual slide instead of a complete removal. And for the record, their ranking did slide, until they weren't ranked anymore. They were in the top 50 still and then suddenly they weren't.

My personal opinion is that Amazon wiped them from the rankings since they are missing from all of the subcategories at the same time instead of falling more slowly is less competitive subcats. However, that's pure speculation.


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## Ava Glass (Feb 28, 2011)

It's July. KDP drama time.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

I don't see how you can make conclusions about what author rank means without knowing how it's calculated. AFAIK, that's still a mystery. From my experience, it really skews to short term success/what's hot right now. It says nothing about who actually sells well long term.

But, yes, it says nothing about the popularity of KU that an author who's books were pulled from the store lost a bunch of author rank. No one can buy or borrow their books. If they were booted from KU but remained in the store and lost all that rank, that would say something.


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## LD (Aug 29, 2018)

When there aren't books for sale, there aren't ranks to be had either.  No book, no data to pull from.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Well, anyway... It looks like five romance authors and a cozy mystery writer or two have been 404'd or otherwise removed from Amazon.


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## MMSN (Feb 27, 2019)

Just out of nosy curiosity, anybody have any idea of how much money Riley would have been pulling in every month that now --not?


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## Kingdavid757 (Oct 23, 2018)

Alexa Riley Twitter and facebook page has a post up saying it was a glitch and they are working on getting it fixed


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## lea_owens (Dec 5, 2011)

Kingdavid757 said:


> Alexa Riley Twitter and facebook page has a post up saying it was a glitch and they are working on getting it fixed


That's an expensive little 'glitch', considering how many thousands of dollars a day those sales and page reads would represent.

I have wondered about some authors seeming to have KU books while those same books are not exclusive to Amazon. I don't know if that was the case here, but it seemed a fairly clear rule - if you want the KU reads, you have to be exclusive to the 'zon.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

lea_owens said:


> That's an expensive little 'glitch', considering how many thousands of dollars a day those sales and page reads would represent.
> 
> I have wondered about some authors seeming to have KU books while those same books are not exclusive to Amazon. I don't know if that was the case here, but it seemed a fairly clear rule - if you want the KU reads, you have to be exclusive to the 'zon.


If this was a non-exclusivity issue, the books would be booted from KU, not removed from the store.


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## funthebear (Sep 26, 2014)

MMSN said:


> Just out of nosy curiosity, anybody have any idea of how much money Riley would have been pulling in every month that now --not?


Hard to say since their books were often short, but probably at least 80-100k gross, not counting bonuses.


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## LauraWestbrook (Jun 8, 2016)

funthebear said:


> Hard to say since their books were often short, but probably at least 80-100k gross, not counting bonuses.


I would guess several times that, to be honest. Up until a few days ago, they regularly had multiple books in the top 100 for all of romance on the entire website.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Their books are very short--probably less than 100 KENPC on average-- and .99. They aren't making much per unit. Even if you're moving 5k units a day, if each is worth .40 on average, that's only 2k. Even at 10k units a day, that's 120k/month, not 150k+.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Let's avoid speculation on _why_ any particular author's books may no longer be showing up in the store. This thread hasn't gone much in that direction, which we appreciate. Just popping in to sound a cautionary note.

ETA: A couple limited post-edits have been made, in keeping with the above.


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

On another forum, someone said it appears the glitch is being fixed already. 

Those two authors (AR) own the short reads chart, along with a couple other authors who write similar books to theres. 

IMO the romance short reads chart looks like an erotica chart now.


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## RPatton (May 28, 2017)

BellaJames said:


> On another forum, someone said it appears the glitch is being fixed already.


The books still available are all published by Harlequin and on Amazon under a different account.

The other books available through the other accounts are audio books. Visiting any of the book pages found through a google search still leads to a dog page.

ETA: There are also audio books and paperback books, but it appears as though the kindle books not published by a different publisher are still not available.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Jeanie Gold said:


> This was what I was wondering. If this is true, it surprises me but I get what you're saying. If that weren't the case, though, and the author list wasn't as volatile as the genre top 100s, then wouldn't there be more room for my original line of questioning?


No, because you're insinuating this is somehow KU dependent when it's not.


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## Ava Glass (Feb 28, 2011)

Unsurprisingly, the glitch claim has pivoted to "we don't know why Amazon has restricted the sale of our books," and "our legal team is looking for answers."

It was far too focused for a glitch.


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## RPatton (May 28, 2017)

Ava Glass said:


> Unsurprisingly, the glitch claim has pivoted to "we don't know why Amazon has restricted the sale of our books," and "our legal team is looking for answers."
> 
> It was far too focused for a glitch.


In all fairness, the glitch comment is a safe comment to make. No fault is being assigned or accepted and it's completely neutral. Until information trickled down/out it's a relatively safe statement as opposed to the "I did nothing wrong and Amazon is just a great big meanie" statement.

Another safe comment would be "We're aware of the problem and looking into it." The pro of using the glitch is the drama is minimized because the narrative focuses on the system being problematic.


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## LD (Aug 29, 2018)

Jeanie Gold said:


> I've definitely seen in the past authors mentioning that Amazon takes action and never explains themselves, but would they leave an author team like them in the dark? I mean, I guess this could be bot triggered, but it seems more likely to me that their #1 romance author would get a different treatment/direct contact with a human than a peon like myself.


 Which is what makes me think it's not a glitch, but that they did something wrong.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

The author list is as volatile as normal rankings, at least rankings high enough to get you on the author list.

I just jumped 30 places on the romance list because my new release just entered the rank calculation. As far as I can tell, the author rank lags a day or two behind title ranks.


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## Guest (Jul 3, 2019)

If it's a "glitch," then why was Madison Faye's entire catalogue pulled too?

https://www.amazon.com/Madison-Faye/e/B019Q7NTNC%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share


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## RPatton (May 28, 2017)

aspengrey said:


> If it's a "glitch," ...


No one is claiming glitch any more. It's now that Amazon has removed the books and attorneys are involved.


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## Guest (Jul 3, 2019)

Jeanie Gold said:


> When I checked author rankings I didn't see Alexa Riley at all in the top 100...


You don't seem to understand how rank operates - it is dependant on sales (or borrows). No sales/borrows means there is no data to calculate rank. But you seem determined to make this all about KU with your sarcastic comments at people who point out that pages read has nothing to do with the drop in author rank. The issue is the books pulled completely from the store (and in ARs case they are floating down because of trad published books still selling). Your OP is very clearly aimed at blaming KU/pages read. If we are (supposedly) deliberately misinterpreting you, then perhaps it would help if you edited your original post to remove the comment that their rank drop can be blamed on lack of pages read (which again, is not a factor in calculating rank and an erroneous statement by you).


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## Anna Petrova (Jul 1, 2019)

We can safely say at this point that it's not a glitch anymore.

So Alexa Riley are now trying to use their legal muscles to make Amazon fall back on line. Too bad for them, Amazon is way too powerful for their legal team.

_Edited: two paragraphs removed. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

I wonder if these best selling authors will now migrate to another retailer, carrying their readers with them.


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## Guest (Jul 3, 2019)

Interesting. Any update on Madison Faye?


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

aspengrey said:


> Interesting. Any update on Madison Faye?


Check their facebook or other social media. They are updating their fans on there. Just legal teams involved at the moment.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

There are many things you could say about Alexa Riley. "They failed to create a meaningful brand with long term success and a large following" is not one of them. They may have other issues and they may publish boderline stuff (I blame Amazon for that, as Amazon's content policies are still useless), but they clearly have a strong brand that appeals to a wide variety of readers and works long term.

_Edited only to removed quotation of a now-deleted post. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

Crystal_ said:


> There are many things you could say about Alexa Riley. "They failed to create a meaningful brand with long term success and a large following" is not one of them. They may have other issues and they may publish boderline stuff (I blame Amazon for that, as Amazon's content policies are still useless), but they clearly have a strong brand that appeals to a wide variety of readers and works long term.


Alexa Riley know what they are doing.

They know the difference between erotica and romance. They were book bloggers. They just saw an opportunity to market their books with softer covers to a romance audience that like steamier romance. Read their interview on the _Frolic_ website. They tried to see how much they could get away with.

There are still newbies today asking if a romance is just a bunch of sexy times with a HEA tacked on the end. That's what many of them think it takes to write a romance bestseller.

There are a bunch of authors who are following their lead. A couple of them are ex-erotica authors who now write borderline romance and some used to talk about how to get away with it on other forums.

Alexa do have a strong brand, Insta-love stories which I call OTT instalust stories. They do have a fanbase that love their stories.

I blame Amazon for letting these ex-erotica authors and newer authors get away with filling the romance charts (especially contemporary, na romance and now romantic comedy sub-genres) with erotica shorts and erotica novels that are borderline romances.

Amazon keeps pushing erotica authors around and then some resort to cheating and scamming to make a living.


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## MMSN (Feb 27, 2019)

I note she says that she doesn't know why Amazon has done this, and her lawyers are trying to 'get answers.'

Has that ever worked?

_Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## Nina Huffney (Apr 28, 2019)

I'm aware that these are sensitive issues, but this is several pages in now and I'm still quite confused. Terms like 'stuffing', 'gaming the system', 'blackhatting', 'manipulating' and 'cheating'... I don't understand how these things are even done let alone what they mean in this context. 

When this thread started, I'd assumed Amazon's actions had to be due to that most serious of author crimes. But perhaps that is a taboo subject? I admit that I'm not entirely sure of what topics or words are considered no-gos here.


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## LD (Aug 29, 2018)

Nina Huffney said:


> I'm aware that these are sensitive issues, but this is several pages in now and I'm still quite confused. Terms like 'stuffing', 'gaming the system', 'blackhatting', 'manipulating' and 'cheating'... I don't understand how these things are even done let alone what they mean in this context.
> 
> When this thread started, I'd assumed Amazon's actions had to be due to that most serious of author crimes. But perhaps that is a taboo subject? I admit that I'm not entirely sure of what topics or words are considered no-gos here.


KU pays by pages read, so the more pages read, the more money you make. So [some publishers] would write a story, usually short, then add in additional books to pad the page count. The books they pad it with are found in multiple books. So not only are the readers in actually getting a shorter story than they thought they were getting (the one the blurb is written for), but the additional stories are all old recycled content. So, for instance, a book shows up as 150 pages, but in actuality the reader is only getting 20 pages of new content. Amazon doesn't allow authors to stuff the books (bad customer experience for the readers), so [some] do other tactics to try to go unnoticed.

I think that's the gist of it. But as I'm not in KU and I'm only vaguely familiar with Alexa Riley's work, I might be wrong. Anyone feel free to correct me.

_Edited. The bracketed terms are mine, replacing name-calling. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## RPatton (May 28, 2017)

Nina Huffney said:


> I'm aware that these are sensitive issues, but this is several pages in now and I'm still quite confused. Terms like 'stuffing', 'gaming the system', 'blackhatting', 'manipulating' and 'cheating'... I don't understand how these things are even done let alone what they mean in this context.
> 
> When this thread started, I'd assumed Amazon's actions had to be due to that most serious of author crimes. But perhaps that is a taboo subject? I admit that I'm not entirely sure of what topics or words are considered no-gos here.


For several reasons, it's difficult to have open discussions in public forums so there is a lot of assuming people know what others are talking about to minimize the difficulties (not always successfully).

But stuffing, generally speaking, was including bonus books at the end of a new release. These bonus books were previously published and went from a single bonus book to like 10 bonus books. I actually saw a book with 15 bonus books. The first book ended at the 10% mark. THey weren't being sold as box sets or anthologies, but instead as single books with bonus content.

Gaming the system applies to doing anything that is exploiting the system or using a weakness in the system to use it in ways that aren't intended to your own benefit. Sticking a link in the front of a book to the back of a book to get full reads would be gaming the system.

Black hat is anything that is deliberately done to gain an advantage and possibly harming others. (Wanna know why bonus content is limited to 10%? Because of people stuffing back catalogues into new releases. Wanna know why Amazon polices links in front of books? Because people used it to link to the back of the book. Almost every reaction from Amazon can be traced back to an act done by someone attempting to game or manipulate the system.)

A lot of these things aren't one-offs either. So when someone another is a black hat publishers, chances are they are including several bad acts under the broad brim of black hat.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Stuffing was allowed until it was specifically not allowed. Alexa Riley and many other authors were not breaking the rules when they were stuffing in the past. My understanding is that they haven't used bonus books since bonus books were banned, so I'm not really sure why people are saying they were cheating or scamming. Is there any evidence of that?

Yes, they do write boderline content and miscategorize, but those are issues much more open to interpretation than "is there a bonus book or not."

On the one hand, I would love for Amazon to enforce its categories. On the other hand, I don't trust Amazon to know the difference between steamy romance and erotica. I don't want my character driven romances thrown into erotica because a bot decided they had too many sex scenes.


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## RPatton (May 28, 2017)

I really want to dispell this Book Stuffing and Dirty Dirty Cheater narrative.

One, from my very limited and possibly irrelevant sampling, there was no overt stuffing. I broke down my findings elsewhere, but I do not believe that anyone can make the claim AR was stuffing and pass the laugh test.

Two, no one really knows what's going on. However from what I have heard from independent sources, cheating and stuffing and romper room tom-foolery was not the issue. Unless you can say for certain and not just "know it in your heart" the cheating and stuffing accusations should probably not be bandied about.

What is more likely (but not nearly as sexy) is that Amazon sent warnings about issues they wanted to corrected. It's possible these authors ignored the warnings, or fixed the issue but continued to do the same thing with every new book. At some point the scales are going to tip and the consequences will be severe.

I think the problem here is that three of the pen names are very different and no amount of mental gymnastics, from what we have been able to see from our point of view, is going to lump them all into the same container. I think the only similarities is that their accounts were removed the same day and that they probably all had a history of either ignoring warnings or repeating the same thing that caused the warning to begin with.


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## Nina Huffney (Apr 28, 2019)

*LD*, *RPatton*, *BellaJames*, and *Crystal_ *your responses have been helpful to me. Thank you all.

Not that I think a small potato like me is that important, but I do wonder now if I've placed my books in the proper categories (contemporary romance/romantic comedy). I've made sure my blurbs inform of adult content, though, as I consider my books to be both erotic and romantic. But perhaps others wouldn't see them that way.

Argh. I think it's time for de-stressing with some hot cocoa and mini marshmallows.


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

When Amazon came down hard on erotica authors and made it harder to sell certain niches, some found ways to disguise their content with softer titles and covers. For the last couple years (maybe longer), a few erotica authors have been putting their erotica books in romance genres, even YA and other genres.

I used to see it all the time on other forums, authors saying they put their erotica books in another sub-genre so they can get some eyes on it.

Amazon has to take some of the blame. What are they doing to make erotica authors lives easier. Give them more visibility and maybe an adult filter on the site.

_Edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## VisitasKeat (Oct 15, 2018)

BellaJames said:


> When Amazon came down hard on erotica authors and made it harder to sell certain niches, some found ways to disguise their content with softer titles and covers. For the last couple years (maybe longer), a few erotica authors have been putting their erotica books in romance genres, even YA and other genres.
> 
> I used to see it all the time on other forums, authors saying they put their erotica books in another sub-genre so they can get some eyes on it.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the detailed explanation. Gosh, I have even read some of their shorts on KU!

_Only quoted post was edited. Drop me a PM if you have any questions. - Becca_


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Those of you who tried to keep the thread open by adhering to my earlier request: thank you, it's appreciated.

For newer members, who have not seen many of these sorts of threads come and go:

KBoards does not host speculation about identifiable individuals. Speculation can end up being quite incorrect, damaging or ruining innocent people, so we choose to err on the side of caution. Our rule is that members can share bad stuff that _happened to them personally_. For instance, if a vendor has provided shoddy service to to you, treated you abusively, absconded with your money ... that sort of thing is fine to share; in fact, we encourage you to share it, for the edification of others. It's also generally okay to link to mainstream, professional news sources, even if they they name individuals in potentially damaging ways. But we don't speculate, share hearsay, or allow copying/imaging of text from non-public groups or sites.

On another subject, we don't allow the creation of additional KB accounts to comment "safely" in controversial threads.

I'll be making some edits to this thread, in keeping with the above, and deleting any second accounts I find.


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