# Erotica Store-wide Rankings Missing



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

It appears erotica lost its store-wide rankings. Does anyone have thoughts on why Amazon decided to do this? I understand it happened on Amazon Germany some time ago.


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## Ambran (Jan 6, 2018)

It would be nice if Amazon would explain, or respond to an e-mail I sent 7 hours ago to them!


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## Tara KH (Aug 31, 2017)

Makes me wonder whether they will try to crack down on erotica again...


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

I suspect it's a pretty clear message. If you want to write erotica, find another platform.


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## SherylNantus (Oct 5, 2011)

While my self-pub BDSM books got hit, it's also affected publishers like St. Martin's Swerve imprint as well. I wrote two threesome books for them, "Betting on Both" and "Game On", and both have had their rankings pulled. Dropped my editor at St. Martin's Press a note - they may not be so happy about having the 'Zon do that to them.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

*************


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

I wonder if this is anything to do with the AMS ads problem. The bad boy romances flooded AMS ads in most cats and didn't stay in their lane, my books were targeted with them, and my readers were complaining to me like it was my fault, were they complaining to the zone? Those ads disappeared a while back as amazon had a clear up, and now the ads seem to be pretty much genre related. I've noticed more ads with bare man chest that are PNR being rejected lately as well.

There also seems to be more books getting thrown into erotica, on other forums people are complaining about it, and now this. 

Could there be a purge on books that should be in erotica but aren't and how many hapless authors will get caught up in it this time?


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

PhoenixS said:


> Watching.
> 
> I had noticed last night that E.L. James' GREY (pubbed via Random House) is overall-rank stripped too. It's Book 1 from Christian's POV. Book 2, DARKER, is categorized as Romance, and is #676 overall. GREY is #7 in Erotica, but not on the BS list.
> 
> Not sure yet whether it's affecting the API and algos, or is a page code glitch. While I have some books that *should* be categorized as erotica on my watch-list, I don't have any that are catted as erotica, so don't have history to compare to.


It hits some heavy players for sure. It's definitely a category decision, a broad sweep, with possible surgical strikes to follow.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

PhoenixS said:


> Watching.
> 
> I had noticed last night that E.L. James' GREY (pubbed via Random House) is overall-rank stripped too. It's Book 1 from Christian's POV. Book 2, DARKER, is categorized as Romance, and is #676 overall. GREY is #7 in Erotica, but not on the BS list.
> 
> Not sure yet whether it's affecting the API and algos, or is a page code glitch. While I have some books that *should* be categorized as erotica on my watch-list, I don't have any that are catted as erotica, so don't have history to compare to.


I just checked my Author Central page for my erotica only pen name and the graph shows a rank, BUT there is a message at the top (where you can select the time frame) that says:
This format of "TITLE HERE" is no longer ranked.

The overall rank has been removed from the store front, but the subcat rankings are still there.

This "rank stripping" seems to be targeted at erotica only. My other books are fine.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

They've eliminated the Top 100 list for erotica authors too. It's looking more like a purge now than some minor housekeeping.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

PhoenixS said:


> Watching.
> 
> I had noticed last night that E.L. James' GREY (pubbed via Random House) is overall-rank stripped too. It's Book 1 from Christian's POV. Book 2, DARKER, is categorized as Romance, and is #676 overall. GREY is #7 in Erotica, but not on the BS list.
> 
> Not sure yet whether it's affecting the API and algos, or is a page code glitch. While I have some books that *should* be categorized as erotica on my watch-list, I don't have any that are catted as erotica, so don't have history to compare to.


It isn't a page glitch. My sales ranks on my erotica titles are MIA in Author Central as well. They're definitely up to something, and in the well-thought out way that Amazon does *everything* it's going to blow up in their faces as ten thousand erotica authors rush to slap new covers on their books and recategorize them as anything but erotica to regain visibility.

EDIT: Erotica author ranks are now gone as well. Interestingly, no one is reporting seeing massive jumps in the rankings of all non-erotica titles in the store that should happen if hundreds of thousands of erotica titles suddenly disappeared from the ranking lists.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

I hate this side of Amazon. The "everything store," sure, but ...










... OMG, not _that_.


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## portiadacosta (Feb 28, 2011)

My books at Amazon UK still have ranks. But they've disappeared at Amazon.com

I wondered why my sales at the US store have virtually disappeared this month. Only four since 1st March. I don't sell many as a rule, but this is a new low, even for me, and I was wondering why... obviously the disappearing ranks would account for it.

My trad published stuff has lost rankings too.

Edited to add...

Rankings are missing at Author Central, but I just checked the books on Amazon.com and I see rankings [not very good ones, but they're there]. I wonder if I can see them because I'm searching from the UK?


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

KelliWolfe said:


> It isn't a page glitch....it's going to blow up in their faces as ten thousand erotica authors rush to slap new covers on their books and recategorize them as anything but erotica to regain visibility.


It would be smart and avoid the blow-up if this was part of Amazon's plan to give erotica its own ecosystem. A proper "back room" in other words, so the category didn't mix with non-erotica in general searches.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

KelliWolfe said:


> It isn't a page glitch. My sales ranks on my erotica titles are MIA in Author Central as well. They're definitely up to something, and in the well-thought out way that Amazon does *everything* it's going to blow up in their faces as ten thousand erotica authors rush to slap new covers on their books and recategorize them as anything but erotica to regain visibility.
> 
> EDIT: Erotica author ranks are now gone as well. Interestingly, no one is reporting seeing massive jumps in the rankings of all non-erotica titles in the store that should happen if hundreds of thousands of erotica titles suddenly disappeared from the ranking lists.


Actually, I had one book jump from where it was hanging out in the 1100 range to 800-something, but I assumed it was just a normal fluctuation or my redistributed ad budget kicking in. My other ranks looked a little higher too, but that could easily be because of former book, as it's currently my funnel.


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## eroticatorium (May 6, 2016)

Dpock said:


> It would be smart and avoid the blow-up if this was part of Amazon's plan to give erotica its own ecosystem. A proper "back room" in other words, so the category didn't mix with non-erotica in general searches.


yeah I would love that. As long as some erotica authors can get their stuff into non-erotica categories, their books will be easier to find, so that's where erotica-readers will go. If only some people follow the rules, they get hosed.


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## NoBlackHats (Oct 17, 2012)

https://imgur.com/gallery/LJAeNVY Timing seems suspicious.


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## MissingAlaska (Apr 28, 2014)

NoBlackHats said:


> https://imgur.com/gallery/LJAeNVY Timing seems suspicious.


Thanks for that link. I had no idea about that being passed. The elimination of personals on Craigslist is only the tip of the iceberg. There is no way, in my mind, that Amazon's actions are not connected to this law. Between this, the chaos on Facebooks, and the end of net neutrality, I believe we're about to see draconian changes on the internet.


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

KelliWolfe said:


> It isn't a page glitch. My sales ranks on my erotica titles are MIA in Author Central as well. They're definitely up to something, and in the well-thought out way that Amazon does *everything* it's going to blow up in their faces as ten thousand erotica authors rush to slap new covers on their books and recategorize them as anything but erotica to regain visibility.
> 
> EDIT: Erotica author ranks are now gone as well.* Interestingly, no one is reporting seeing massive jumps in the rankings of all non-erotica titles in the store that should happen if hundreds of thousands of erotica titles suddenly disappeared from the ranking lists.*


This. I expected rank to increase all across the board if tens of thousands of books lost their rank, but I haven't seen any significant changes.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

dianapersaud said:


> This. I expected rank to increase all across the board if tens of thousands of books lost their rank, but I haven't seen any significant changes.


Not significant, no, but quite a few are reporting a mysterious bump in general non-erotica rankings around 1:00 pm PT yesterday.


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## eroticatorium (May 6, 2016)

Dpock said:


> Not significant, no, but quite a few are reporting a mysterious bump in general non-erotica rankings around 1:00 pm PT yesterday.


It's also worth noting that, while my erotica sales have plummeted, the erotica sales that have appeared are weird. I'm selling a bunch of failed shorts from years ago, a bundle with an odd theme that has never sold a copy, a weird jokey thing that also never sold a copy. That's consistent with the possibility that Amazon has updated its algorithms leading to unpredictable consequences for erotica, especially stuff that's weird or difficult to categorize.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Dpock said:


> Not significant, no, but quite a few are reporting a mysterious bump in general non-erotica rankings around 1:00 pm PT yesterday.


I'm not seeing that on my non-erotica pen names, especially not on the books with higher rankings where it would be less attributable to single purchases/borrows. It would be very obvious on my YA pen if it was happening.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

dianapersaud said:


> This. I expected rank to increase all across the board if tens of thousands of books lost their rank, but I haven't seen any significant changes.


How many erotica books are in the top 10k? Top 100k? It's not a huge percentage. The one time I was shoved into erotica, I made #1 with a rank of 100-something. (Book was definitely not erotica, but I used the keyword "sexy." Of course, it took three or four reps before I figured otu why I'd been placed in erotica).

Last time I checked the erotica top 100, it ended in the ten-thousands, so the rankings are probably spread out enough not to cause a noticeable difference to other books. If 2k of the top 100k books are erotica, that's not really going to be a significant jump. Going from rank 100k to 98k looks like a normal fluctuation.


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## eroticatorium (May 6, 2016)

Crystal_ said:


> Last time I checked the erotica top 100, it ended in the ten-thousands, so the rankings are probably spread out enough not to cause a noticeable difference to other books. If 2k of the top 100k books are erotica, that's not really going to be a significant jump. Going from rank 100k to 98k looks like a normal fluctuation.


True but we shouldn't assume the bump would be evenly spread out. Amazon probably made other changes at the same time. They might have thought "we're reducing the accidental erotica-buyer's chances to buy erotica, but in the absence of that, they will typically default to historical romance, nonfiction about feminism and YA fantasy, so we'll modify the algorithm to give those genres a boost". Or even not the algorithm, like if some people in the parenting category used to buy hucow erotica but now don't, the bump in rank should accrue to lactation books that aren't hucow erotica because that's what now fills the category they're looking through. We might not expect to see a bump across the board at all.


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## SomeoneElse (Jan 5, 2016)

dianapersaud said:


> This. I expected rank to increase all across the board if tens of thousands of books lost their rank, but I haven't seen any significant changes.


As someone with some books languishing very low, I can report rank increases across the board with my books, with my lowest ranked book (in the 2 mil + zone) jumping more than 200K places.


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## AssanaBanana (Feb 1, 2014)

The absence of a rank doesn't mean sales aren't happening. The books are still searchable in the store. READERS can still find them through the usual channels - the general search engine, especially, and they still have subcat ranks, too. I don't really see this as anything to be particularly alarmed about unless it persists AND long-term sales are affected going forward.


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## avppublishing (Oct 5, 2016)

LSMay said:


> As someone with some books languishing very low, I can report rank increases across the board with my books, with my lowest ranked book (in the 2 mil + zone) jumping more than 200K places.


Agreed. We have a huge erotica catalog and just three Roms. Looking at the little sales history graph on Author Central looks like a flat-lined patient hit with a defibrillator mid-afternoon yesterday. One was sitting at 1.2m or so, then jumped 150k ranks. Hasn't had a sale or page read since the middle of January. I'd think it might be a borrow where the person didn't actually read it, but all three were similar.

Not really worried yet. Today's sales are well within our usual range. Will be interesting to see what happens, indeed.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

*************


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

PhoenixS said:


> Silver lining: This'll make it easier to spot the erotica trying to pass as nothing more than steamy contemporary if categorized erotica titles aren't showing up in the overall BS lists.


I would imagine that a whole lot of people are probably busy downloading new stock art as we speak to clean up their covers/titles and get their stuff recategorized as romance. And a bunch of the romance/erom writers who've been publishing in erotica because it's easier to hit the top lists are going to be shifting gears as well. Expect to see a flood of new titles in romance in the next month or so, unless sales aren't impacted - which from what I'm hearing is not the case at all.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

KelliWolfe said:


> I would imagine that a whole lot of people are probably busy downloading new stock art as we speak to clean up their covers/titles and get their stuff recategorized as romance. And a bunch of the romance/erom writers who've been publishing in erotica because it's easier to hit the top lists are going to be shifting gears as well. Expect to see a flood of new titles in romance in the next month or so, unless sales aren't impacted - which from what I'm hearing is not the case at all.


Yup. This will probably result in a flood of books moved into inappropriate categories.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

KelliWolfe said:


> I would imagine that a whole lot of people are probably busy downloading new stock art as we speak to clean up their covers/titles and get their stuff recategorized as romance. And a bunch of the romance/erom writers who've been publishing in erotica because it's easier to hit the top lists are going to be shifting gears as well. Expect to see a flood of new titles in romance in the next month or so, unless sales aren't impacted - which from what I'm hearing is not the case at all.


That's why I think Amazon has just taken the first of several steps to follow. If they're not putting Erotica in its own store they're getting rid of it. To do neither means a big mess is coming.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

Monique said:


> Yup. This will probably result in a flood of books moved into inappropriate categories.


I think those authors should watch and wait. Amazon have been scooping up books and throwing them into erotica, probably as a pre-emptive strike. I think they've had enough of authors straying from their lanes and they're about to clean house. This is going to get messy.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

Dpock said:


> That's why I think Amazon has just taken the first of several steps to follow. If they're not putting Erotica in its own store they're getting rid of it. To do neither means a big mess is coming.


Ha! Great minds think alike.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Atlantisatheart said:


> I think those authors should watch and wait.


We agree again. I wouldn't be surprised if they're prepared and on the lookout for erotica authors trying to slip under the radar in an attempt to switch titles into romance. Assuming it'll be more than few, they may end up getting blocked.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

I agree with you guys. It would be wisest to wait for this to play out. Amazon is obviously in the middle of something.


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## Spinneyhead (Nov 4, 2010)

I've got a few stories that I put in Romace>Erotic (and Romance>Contemporary) which had no ranking when I looked earlier. They were just beginning to get a little momentum, too, so I hope this doesn't hurt that.

I'll see how this develops before deciding whether to take them out of KU when their next 90 days are up.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

KelliWolfe said:


> Interestingly, no one is reporting seeing massive jumps in the rankings of all non-erotica titles in the store that should happen if hundreds of thousands of erotica titles suddenly disappeared from the ranking lists.


I saw it. Yesterday my rankings on almost all my books increased by about 200,000 without any corresponding sales. I'm a prawn, maybe that's why I was able to see it.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

loraininflorida said:


> I saw it. Yesterday my rankings on almost all my books increased by about 200,000 without any corresponding sales. I'm a prawn, maybe that's why I was able to see it.


My ranks are up even though I haven't released a new romance in three weeks and my usual new release spike was starting to fade.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

maybe xhamster will get into ebooks and then everyone will be happy.


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## eroticatorium (May 6, 2016)

Seneca42 said:


> maybe xhamster will get into ebooks and then everyone will be happy.


There's already Excitica (and Lot's Cave, though they are difficult to get into, I think).


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## L_Loryn (Mar 1, 2018)

I am excited to finally add my 2 cents to this thread.

I've seen a little bump in rankings (I don't know if I'm a prawn or not-- my paid books rank around 100ks). 

My free romance novelette is ranked just barely in the 2ks when it was 3ks earlier today and I haven't had an increase in downloads.

The other two books attached to the first went up like 10-20k spots but are still in the 100ks.

I noticed something else interesting-- my ams budget took forever to spend completely today which is unusual. It's usually spent just after noon (my budget is small and CPC is high because romance) and it wasn't spent until nearly 8-9 pm here. I don't know what amazon is doing, but they need to leave well alone.


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## Lady TL Jennings (Dec 8, 2011)

I'm currently in contact with KDP and I'm trying to move my Gay Romance titles into the romance categories (where they actually belong). I've been meaning to do this for quite some time, but never got around to actually doing it until now... 

I write both romance and erotica (my short stories are more erotica, while my novellas and novels are romance). 
I want to be fair and keep my erotica short stories into the erotica, but to be honest the Amazon erotica categories are quite messed up (Victorian erotica 100 list is now filled with modern stories about hot mothers or stepsiblings, etc.). 

On a brighter note, my latest novel that I just released has increased in ranking and my free erotica short story has had an unusual high number of downloads.


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## avppublishing (Oct 5, 2016)

Lady TL Jennings said:


> I want to be fair and keep my erotica short stories into the erotica, but to be honest the Amazon erotica categories are quite messed up (Victorian erotica 100 list is now filled with modern stories about hot mothers or stepsiblings, etc.).


Yep, all it takes is one keyword! I see erotica authors stuffing them all the time. I'm pretty liberal about using the category keywords myself, but no part of my nerd-gets-the-girl stories are even vaguely Victorian...or Westerns.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

avppublishing said:


> Yep, all it takes is one keyword! I see erotica authors stuffing them all the time. I'm pretty liberal about using the category keywords myself, but no part of my nerd-gets-the-girl stories are even vaguely Victorian...or Westerns.


I miss the old days when you could see all the categories a book was in, and you'd see the same one listed under Victorian/Western/action/urban/poetry/science fiction.


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## Lady TL Jennings (Dec 8, 2011)

KelliWolfe said:


> I miss the old days when you could see all the categories a book was in, and you'd see the same one listed under Victorian/Western/action/urban/poetry/science fiction.


Yes, sometimes I wonder how on earth Amazon's algorithm (or gremlins?) works. It is clear that some people are trying to game the system, but then again sometimes things just go wrong...

I've recently published a new book and I added a handful of keywords to my new book that seemed relevant (e.g. romance, historical, gay, Victorian, London, LGTB fiction) and the two categories: Romance> Historical and Romance>Gay.

I honestly don't know what went wrong, because although the book is listed: 
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Gothic (which is correct), it's _also _listed:
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender eBooks > LGBT Studies > Gay Studies
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Special Groups

Gay studies? Non-fiction? Social science? It's clearly Historical Romance! 
Needless to say, I've been in contact with KDP and they've said they're going to change the categories within 72 hours. :-/


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

My rankings are mostly gone (on my erotica books) but sales are up.

Really, I don't think rankings really mean a sh... er poop. Other than an ego-stroke for the author, readers are going to search and find erotica books no matter what the "ranking." Personally, I'm glad they're gone.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

My author ranking as Lesli Richardson (non-erotic) has inexplicably (or not so inexplicably now) shot up over the past couple of days, while my Tymber Dalton author ranking has dropped despite a new release hitting Kindle and a lot of promo.


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## WhiteWitch519 (Jul 1, 2017)

The loss of erotica rankings on Amazon and other book retailers, as well as pulling of personal ads on dating sites, Craigslist and dozens of other websites is apparently the result of the SEPTA/FOSTA legislation overwhelmingly passed by both houses of the American Congress by both parties. Amazon and dozens of other websites/companies are preemptively taking action because of the broadly vague language contained in this legislation that’s supposed to deter sex trafficking. While the American president hasn’t yet signed this legislation into law, he’s expected to do so in the coming days. The ACLU and other organizations espousing victims’ rights with respect to sex trafficking victims have condemned this legislation as nonspecific and useless. It’s a violation of the First Amendment for Amazon or any other website to curtail freedom of expression in any way. The ACLU is already preparing lawsuits all companies who have used this legislation as an excuse to remove erotica categories and rankings, as well as removal of personal ads or similar information on dating and other websites. The ACLU is also preparing a separate lawsuit to be filed once the president signs the legislation into law as being unconstitutional under the First Amendment.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

I think we need to be careful about jumping to conclusions. SEPTA/FOSTA is legislation specific to sex trafficking. While personal ads have been used as a cover for human trafficking, there's no evidence that erotic e-books are open to that kind of activity. I've seen this theory coming up on various forums and there's no real evidence this has anything to do with SEPTA/FOSTA.


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## Ceramic (Jun 12, 2017)

KelliWolfe said:


> EDIT: Erotica author ranks are now gone as well. Interestingly, no one is reporting seeing massive jumps in the rankings of all non-erotica titles in the store that should happen if hundreds of thousands of erotica titles suddenly disappeared from the ranking lists.


Is that what happened? Oh crap.I'm sorry to hear it.
I wrote about it the other day. My books all jumped rank a few days ago. The highest was 150k I think, now they are back down to 3-400k. 
My poetry titles barely changed. They are now ranked between 1-2 mil each I think.

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,261867.msg3642955.html#msg3642955


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Had this from KDP support yesterday (Just to be clear, I only redacted the titles because I don't want to self-promote. I'm not putting erotica into T & YA):

_Thanks for writing back to us.

The below category path has been assigned for your book "X" & "Y" on both US and UK

Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Literature & Fiction > Humorous

Please be informed that Amazon is making some changes to Kindle pages to better match the page layouts and shopping experience across book formats. The "Look for Similar Items by Category" feature will no longer appear at the bottom of the Kindle page._

May be related. 'Making some changes' could be relevant.


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## ubu roi (Mar 25, 2018)

WhiteWitch519 said:


> The loss of erotica rankings on Amazon and other book retailers, as well as pulling of personal ads on dating sites, Craigslist and dozens of other websites is apparently the result of the SEPTA/FOSTA legislation overwhelmingly passed by both houses of the American Congress by both parties. Amazon and dozens of other websites/companies are preemptively taking action because of the broadly vague language contained in this legislation that's supposed to deter sex trafficking. While the American president hasn't yet signed this legislation into law, he's expected to do so in the coming days. The ACLU and other organizations espousing victims' rights with respect to sex trafficking victims have condemned this legislation as nonspecific and useless. It's a violation of the First Amendment for Amazon or any other website to curtail freedom of expression in any way. The ACLU is already preparing lawsuits all companies who have used this legislation as an excuse to remove erotica categories and rankings, as well as removal of personal ads or similar information on dating and other websites. The ACLU is also preparing a separate lawsuit to be filed once the president signs the legislation into law as being unconstitutional under the First Amendment.


The First Amendment applies only to government censorship. Any priviate company or private individual can legally censor whatever they like according to their own interests.


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## It&#039;s A Mystery (Mar 14, 2017)

Simon Haynes said:


> Had this from KDP support yesterday (Just to be clear, I only redacted the titles because I don't want to self-promote. I'm not putting erotica into T & YA):
> 
> _Thanks for writing back to us.
> 
> ...


It could also be related to that 50% royalty option we saw...
*Plays dramatic music*


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Stepping in with a reminder that, due to our prohibition on political argument, KBoards is not the place to debate the merits of the U.S. FOSTA/SESTA legislation. Discussing the bill's possible effects on book retail platforms should be okay, but the focus needs to remain tight.


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## AaronShep (Nov 18, 2011)

Those of you who have lost your ranks: That usually means Amazon has flagged your book with a Content Rating of "Adult." You can check that with Sales Rank Express, which displays Amazon's Content Rating as Adult, Safe (technically, "Not Adult"), or None (usually for print books).

http://www.salesrankexpress.com


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## Mercedes Vox (Jul 22, 2014)

AaronShep said:


> Those of you who have lost your ranks: That usually means Amazon has flagged your book with a Content Rating of "Adult." You can check that with Sales Rank Express, which displays Amazon's Content Rating as Adult, Safe (technically, "Not Adult"), or None (usually for print books).
> 
> http://www.salesrankexpress.com


Nope, not the same thing. In this case, ALL .com titles where the author/publisher placed the title in an EROTICA category in the BISAC listings has been stripped of a store-wide ranking. ALL of them. Not just self-publishers, or small independent presses. ALL erotica titles.

Of my 31 titles, I have 5 that I categorized as erotica because that's what they are. Those books have had their store-wide ranking stripped, but they are NOT in the dungeon.

This happening, as others have posited, is likely only the first phase of something else. I'm hoping that the Something Else is Amazon creating a separate erotica store where writers can place their books without constant worry of yanking, and readers of such books can find what they're looking for without having to jump through circus-poodle hoops to get there.


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## SherylNantus (Oct 5, 2011)

AaronShep said:


> Those of you who have lost your ranks: That usually means Amazon has flagged your book with a Content Rating of "Adult." You can check that with Sales Rank Express, which displays Amazon's Content Rating as Adult, Safe (technically, "Not Adult"), or None (usually for print books).
> 
> http://www.salesrankexpress.com


Nope. "Strictly Business" has a "Safe" rating, when it's clearly marked as BDSM, Domme, etc.

But interesting to know!

Guess we'll all just have to wait and see...


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Is there a reliable way to estimate the total number of erotica titles on Amazon? Searching for "erotica" on Amazon brings up a page saying "1-16 of over 300,000 results" ("romance" brings up "1-16 of over 500,000 results": "new adult romance" brings up 70k). I'm guessing those numbers are off in terms of total books in each category, but they do suggest that relatively speaking, erotica is a huge market. It makes me think Amazon may be working to optimize rather than diminish the category and removing it from general rankings might be the first step.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

When I checked Author Central this morning, not only is my author rank not showing like it used to under erotica, now when I look at the Sales Rank under the Sales Info tab, those are gone now as well for books listed as erotica. (They were still showing up there although the ranks were stripped from the books on the book pages themselves.)


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

If their aim is to completely separate erotica from the main store, it might be logical to assume erotica titles, if we have them, will no longer be shown on our Author Central bookshelves.


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## K&#039;Sennia Visitor (Jan 14, 2014)

I've never paid attention to rank and I don't even look at my author central although Audra has one. I just look at Book Report to see if I've made any sales, and for me my sales are normal. In fact this month has been a wee bit better than others. Of course my sales would be considered nothing by most of you, so I don't suppose that's helpful.  (shakes head)

A separate erotica store with its own ranking system would be schweet though. So it would be cool if that's what they were doing instead of something evil and nefarious.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

K'Sennia Visitor said:


> A separate erotica store with its own ranking system would be schweet though. So it would be cool if that's what they were doing instead of something evil and nefarious.


I really, really hope it is.


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## K&#039;Sennia Visitor (Jan 14, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> I really, really hope it is.


 Me too, but the peeps on reddit think it's just amazon glitching, and there's an unsubstantiated rumor that it's going to be fixed soon. I have as much faith in that as I do in anything else regarding amazon. So we'll see. But it's certainly possible they were trying to adjust something somewhere, accidentally input a zero where it shouldn't be, and blammo massive rank loss everywhere. So maybe not intentional.

I prefer that it was on purpose for something good, but an accident actually feels more likely.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

K'Sennia Visitor said:


> Me too, but the peeps on reddit think it's just amazon glitching, and there's an unsubstantiated rumor that it's going to be fixed soon. I have as much faith in that as I do in anything else regarding amazon. So we'll see. But it's certainly possible they were trying to adjust something somewhere, accidentally input a zero where it shouldn't be, and blammo massive rank loss everywhere. So maybe not intentional.
> 
> I prefer that it was on purpose for something good, but an accident actually feels more likely.


Accidents particularly suck when they affect people's livelihoods, but they do happen. I guess you have to have some tolerance for them, so long as they get fixed (with taking responsibility and apologizing as part of the fix ... ahem).

I just hope it's not an intentional and punitive action.


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## Ava Glass (Feb 28, 2011)

K'Sennia Visitor said:


> Me too, but the peeps on reddit think it's just amazon glitching, and there's an unsubstantiated rumor that it's going to be fixed soon.


Reddit is now saying this is Amazon's new filter for "adult themed" titles. Someone posted a screenshot of an email.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

K'Sennia Visitor said:


> Me too, but the peeps on reddit think it's just amazon glitching, and there's an unsubstantiated rumor that it's going to be fixed soon. I have as much faith in that as I do in anything else regarding amazon. So we'll see. But it's certainly possible they were trying to adjust something somewhere, accidentally input a zero where it shouldn't be, and blammo massive rank loss everywhere. So maybe not intentional.
> 
> I prefer that it was on purpose for something good, but an accident actually feels more likely.


I would be willing to accept that theory if not for the timing of all this and the fact that it wasn't fixed quickly, and only seems to have impacted one particular genre. If it happened across the board, sure.

I have...questions. Many questions. And Amazon isn't answering them, unfortunately. All we can do is wait and see and encourage readers to contact Amazon to ask WTF? and put pressure on them to fix it. Because I think that's where we can best leverage against them is through customers. They won't listen to the writers.


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## K&#039;Sennia Visitor (Jan 14, 2014)

Ava Glass said:


> Reddit is now saying this is Amazon's new filter for "adult themed" titles. Someone posted a screenshot of an email.


 Thanks for the update and screenshot. I guess they did do this on purpose after all. Oy vey!


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Ava Glass said:


> Reddit is now saying this is Amazon's new filter for "adult themed" titles. Someone posted a screenshot of an email.


Since the image has been rendered anonymous, I think we can embed it for ease of discussion:


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

If the email is genuine then Erotica's storewide de-ranking is not a glitch. I have to think there's a broader directive behind the move to filter Erotica.
The giveaway is "adult themed".  Aside from category selection, how will they determine which books are adult themed? I suspect that could only be achieved by scanning book-text for adult keywords and phrases.

Yoicks.


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## RPhoenix (Mar 27, 2018)

I'm not assuming the email is real until Amazon makes an announcement, but it's continued too long for me to think it's a glitch and not intentional so... 

If they're only going by certain key words or assigned category, then we're going to see a mass shift to other categories, and this will be rendered entirely useless. Surely they know this, which means I have to wonder what they'd do next.

When they say they're filtering the rankings out, does that mean that erotica writers aren't going to be eligible for their bounty program anymore? I mean, not that I'm going to get there any time soon, but it's just something I'm wondering. If so, I imagine some of the very large publishing houses are going to have some choice words for them...


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## SherylNantus (Oct 5, 2011)

There's the thing. This isn't just affecting the self-pubs - it's hit Carina Press and SMP/Swerve, for a start. And they're not going to be happy about their books going invisible. These are big companies with big money behind them, Harlequin and St. Martin's Press/Macmillan. 

Should be interesting to see how this plays out.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

RPhoenix said:


> Surely they know this, which means I have to wonder what they'd do next.


The "surely" is a leap, but assuming you're correct, in a perfect world they would give Erotica its own store and AMS program. That would de-incentivize the miscategorizing, and it could become a Gold Rush for Amazon and writers of erotica.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Becca Mills said:


> Since the image has been rendered anonymous, I think we can embed it for ease of discussion:


I think this answer is creating more questions than addressing what has happened. There are a lot of romances that could be deemed "adult themed". In fact, new adult is being categorized now as "adult romance". What about erotic romances? They've been selling really well, especially for Carina Press. A lot of the traditional romance publishers have started up erotic romance lines.

I mean, if all this was going to make it easier for customers to find erotica and eroms, that's all good. But somehow it seems like it's taking them out of the regular searches, and hiding them from the general masses. There is a huge market for these titles if people can find them.

****This might be a good reason to go wide. Thinking of going and pulling all of my titles out of KU. What would be the point to keep it in if no one can find them. But then, sometimes just waiting to see what Amazon is doing can be too late.

I HATE THIS!


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## Ava Glass (Feb 28, 2011)

Dpock said:


> If the email is genuine then Erotica's storewide de-ranking is not a glitch. I have to think there's a broader directive behind the move to filter Erotica.
> The giveaway is "adult themed". Aside from category selection, how will they determine which books are adult themed? I suspect that could only be achieved by scanning book-text for adult keywords and phrases.
> 
> Yoicks.


This

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/978712294803886081 alleges that Amazon uses reviews to help determine if a title is "adult."



> Re-classifying your erotica titles as romance isn't enough to get around having them labelled as erotica, however. Amazon allegedly uses keywords from reviews to assist with categorization now - so if reviewers call your book is "erotica," it will be classified as erotica.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Ava Glass said:


> This
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/978712294803886081 alleges that Amazon uses reviews to help determine if a title is "adult."


Problem with this is that you can have some people call your stuff "porn" and others call it "vanilla". I've had that done before on different titles. A lot of readers wouldn't necessarily think the same about a single title too. It's all subjective. There's dark romance, taboo romance, erotic romance. The difference is some kind of "Happily Ever After" at the end, or basically having a story. So, pretty weird to leave it to reviewers really. So people think "spicy romance" is more pornographic just because it has sex scenes. Really, it comes from what the reader has read before. And that again, is very subjective.

But the Zon is using search logic here, I'm sure. Using the reviews to find keywords is probably faster.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Ava Glass said:


> This
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/978712294803886081 alleges that Amazon uses reviews to help determine if a title is "adult."


I have a book with a review that says "This is a nice erotic romance" followed by "This is wholesome compared to most books in the genre". It sounds risky to put categorization into the hands of reviewers.

Also, it would be easy to sabotage an author: "This is a very EROTIC book. If you like EROTICA, buy this book!"


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## Ava Glass (Feb 28, 2011)

lyndabelle said:


> But the Zon is using search logic here, I'm sure. Using the reviews to find keywords is probably faster.


This other

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/978109145651056640 thinks Amazon uses (will use?) those new keywords that appear at the top of review sections.



> It has to do with the new Review keywords. If a reviewer calls your book "erotic" Amazon has been shoving romances with that review keyword into erotica, which royally ****s romance sales.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

PNR, Reverse Harem, Bad biker boys, Sexy dads, where will it end?


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

"This is why we can't have nice things."

    -Moms everywhere.


As said above, might be a good reason to consider going wide, mainly to spread your risk.

I'm not at all sure this particular Amazon action is related to the reinterpretation of law, though. Given the prevalence of actual visual porn elsewhere, it would be an extremely difficult case to prove that Amazon hosting erotica ebook sales somehow led to culpable liability for something. In fact, I think one could make a better case that hosting extremely violent books or videos might make Amazon liable for violent acts of the consumers. Even that's a long stretch, in the US anyway. Anyone ever tried suing Amazon for selling something like a kitchen knife or a tire iron that later became a murder weapon?


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

I don't think Amazon is all that concerned about erotica being in other categories. I was looking for some free SF romances to do some research on the genre, and probably half the books are outright erotica -- some even have it in the stuffed titles! Fill Me to the Brim, Daddy isn't likely to be a good ol' alien bad boy romance.

Add all that to the weird books that are showing up on the free lists in SF in general (one was outright Harry Potter without any name changes), with bad formatting and odd stories that start in the middle like they'd just been cut from something else. The author names are all something that looks like Russian, the covers and titles are odd.

Sometimes you just can't win. I fully expect for my stuff to end up in erotica, just because Amazon hates me.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

> Anyone ever tried suing Amazon for selling something like a kitchen knife or a tire iron that later became a murder weapon?


People regularly buy ammunition on my Amazon affiliates tag. I suppose it could be used to kill someone *waggles eyebrows*


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

she-la-ti-da said:


> I fully expect for my stuff to end up in erotica, just because Amazon hates me.


They hate employing humans to vet the integrity of their KDP platform. Amazon relies on algorithms to tend the store. Writing a "go fetch" program to find "hot p***y" in a book's content is easier and cheaper than hiring 100 humans to read 800,000 titles on the same quest. They know they'll snare innocents, but that's the price of doing things their way.

They also know most of those innocents will remain oblivious. I suspect those who complain will be accommodated if their gripe is legitimate.


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## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

You've got to love amazon's attitude, while women are taking on the world and empowering themselves, especially in the creative industries, amazon are taking books written by women for women and putting them in a box and throwing away the key. Put a bit or bare-naked man chest of the cover and you're going to amazon jail.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Just did a search on my Kindle using "erotica" as a keyword. I found different titles and tried looking at one. I had a pop-up warning saying it was "ADULT CONTENT" and if I would allow it. I hit "Yes", and continued with my search. I'm guessing if I hit "no", it would have blocked the erotica or other books Adult Themed. 

So, looks like Amazon is finally doing what Smashwords and some other sites did 3 years back, like 2014, when all those cross categories were happening with babysitters, stepdads, etc. I mean, that erotica purge was awhile ago, and now they are doing it the adult content "button" finally. I mean, I wonder what took so long, but then, at least it's happening. 

So, maybe, it's a good thing, if it's going to block "adult content or themed" books. I'm guessing parents can do the "no" button on accounts for their kids. ABOUT Time, Zon. It's about time.


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## josielitton (Jul 21, 2014)

This thread popped into my mind when news broke yesterday that Walmart is removing Cosmopolitan from checkout lanes. They'll still be selling it but only in the magazine aisle. People who want it will know where to find it but the number of people encountering it spontaneously will go down hugely. I have to wonder if Amazon will follow suit and sequester erotica (however they decide to define that) in its own "aisle".  On the one hand, I can see that making it easier for readers to find what they want. But on the other, finding new readers could get a lot more difficult. And that's before even trying to deal with the erotica versus erotic romance issue.


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## Desmond X. Torres (Mar 16, 2013)

What annoys me...skip it, what pisses me off to no end about this kind of thing is the lack of communication on Amazon's part. And frankly, it's a attitude that's pervasive in high tech. The decision makers arrive at a strategy, implement it, and leave the users completely in the dark as to:
- just what they did
- why they did it, as in goals, objectives, reasons, etc
- and what options users have to deal with it.

For example, a show of hands- how many of us had to deal with massive headaches every time Microsoft updates windows? It's not like we really have a choice at this point to not use the platform? In an earlier post, Van **** wisely suggests going wide as a way of coping. He's got a lot of good points, but for me it's just too much of a PITA to undertake at this stage. Sure, ultimately it's my choice; I get that. But I still reserve the right to be P.O'd at the fact that the organization has left me with such a narrow field of choice. 

Here's what this sort of an environment creates:
2018 is shaping up to be a banner year for us. After years of struggling in this biz, we're circling around joining the cool kids at the five figure club table in the lunchroom. Since our lifestyle is simple, and where we live, we're able to live decently on $3K/month or so, and that's been what it's been for some time. But now... hooo boy... whoa.

BUT

BUT
We ain't happy. We do a little jig in the am, sure... but walking on air? No.
Feeling excited? Nope. 
If anything, we're nervous. 
Because somewhere out in the cyber mist, someone can take all that away with a few taps on a keyboard and click of a mouse. I've seen it happen here on the forums to tons of people, leaving many of them completely confused as to why/who/etc

I got a bud (who I met here years ago) who's seen his sales ROCKET from about 1,500/month last year to $12K/month currently. And he feels exactly the same way. 

Gaughrin/Pheonix and many others have had the experience of getting the rug yanked out from under them for spurious reasons, being left to flounder for answers and then have to struggle getting a problem fixed THAT THEY DIDN'T CAUSE. 

Yeah, yeah, I know, I get it- it's part of the game.
Doesn't mean it doesn't suck. 
The lack of communication from Amazon up front is shameful.


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## Trent Evans (Mar 22, 2012)

lyndabelle said:


> Just did a search on my Kindle using "erotica" as a keyword. I found different titles and tried looking at one. I had a pop-up warning saying it was "ADULT CONTENT" and if I would allow it. I hit "Yes", and continued with my search. I'm guessing if I hit "no", it would have blocked the erotica or other books Adult Themed.
> 
> So, looks like Amazon is finally doing what Smashwords and some other sites did 3 years back, like 2014, when all those cross categories were happening with babysitters, stepdads, etc. I mean, that erotica purge was awhile ago, and now they are doing it the adult content "button" finally. I mean, I wonder what took so long, but then, at least it's happening.
> 
> So, maybe, it's a good thing, if it's going to block "adult content or themed" books. I'm guessing parents can do the "no" button on accounts for their kids. ABOUT Time, Zon. It's about time.


Thank you for passing this along! I haven't been able to replicate this pop-up when searching using the exact term you did. Can you confirm a few things?

1. Were you searching in Amazon.com, or one of the other international stores?
2. Was this pop-up from the Amazon site itself, or was it at the browser level?
3. In your search, were you searching in "All" or "Books" or "Kindle Store?"
4. Which browser were you using when you conducted this search?

I'm sorry for the (possibly dumb) questions, but with the near total blackout on communication from Amazon over this issue (which is ridiculous, btw), I'm trying to piece together _anything_ that will help me discern a pattern. Any help is appreciated.

(edited for typos)


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Seems to me if the rank is stripped, the book can't appear on Amazon's own ostensibly-not-curated poplists. Since those lists are fairly new (in the past year) and since the Washington Post recently said they would be using the Amazon lists the same way the NYT uses their (very curated) lists, this looks like a solution to a future PR problem for the company.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Amazon has always had an "Adult" flag for books. Typically it is applied to books with covers/titles/blurbs that Amazon deems overly explicit, and sometimes it can be content-based like when they went after the pseudo-incest erotica books as a group. They don't appear to be applying it in bulk to the erotica categories. The only books in my erotica catalog with it set are the same ones that have been flagged for months/years that I haven't bothered fixing up with new covers to get the flag removed.


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## Trent Evans (Mar 22, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> Amazon has always had an "Adult" flag for books. Typically it is applied to books with covers/titles/blurbs that Amazon deems overly explicit, and sometimes it can be content-based like when they went after the pseudo-incest erotica books as a group. They don't appear to be applying it in bulk to the erotica categories. The only books in my erotica catalog with it set are the same ones that have been flagged for months/years that I haven't bothered fixing up with new covers to get the flag removed.


Hi, Kelli. Don't know if this was in reply to my questions, but just in case it was, yes, I'm well aware of the "adult" flag. I've got the scars to prove it

Lynda seems to be experiencing something new though, which was why I wanted to get confirmation on the exact circumstances of her search. It's quite possible that this isn't really a new change, but if it is, it would be a big clue as to what else may be coming.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

lyndabelle said:


> But the Zon is using search logic here, I'm sure. Using the reviews to find keywords is probably faster.


And that would explain why, not too long ago, keywords started popping up on the reviews section. :/


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Trent Evans said:


> Hi, Kelli. Don't know if this was in reply to my questions, but just in case it was, yes, I'm well aware of the "adult" flag. I've got the scars to prove it
> 
> Lynda seems to be experiencing something new though, which was why I wanted to get confirmation on the exact circumstances of her search. It's quite possible that this isn't really a new change, but if it is, it would be a big clue as to what else may be coming.


What Lynda described is exactly how the "Adult" flag has always worked in searches. If you search in the bookstore (not general search) and adult items are in the list, at the top of the search results Amazon displays "Excluding adult items. Show all results". There's no popup, it's just a text link above the search results.


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## Trent Evans (Mar 22, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> What Lynda described is exactly how the "Adult" flag has always worked in searches. If you search in the bookstore (not general search) and adult items are in the list, at the top of the search results Amazon displays "Excluding adult items. Show all results". There's no popup, it's just a text link above the search results.


Yes, I understand that, and I've seen that same text link before; it's still appearing as it usually does. I'm not just now learning about the Adult flag and how it works. Been around a lot longer than the ol' post count implies

But what she described appeared to be something distinct from the Adult flag. Hence the clarification questions.


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## Mercedes Vox (Jul 22, 2014)

Tymber Dalton said:


> And that would explain why, not too long ago, keywords started popping up on the reviews section. :/


Tymber, you and others who've been in this game for a while probably remember when anyone could add "tags" to a book on Amazon. There was a whole lot of rival author/rabid street-team/small- and self-publisher shenanigans going on during that period. "Tagging parties," anyone?

I was very happy when Amazon eliminated the tagging system in January 2013. If they are now scraping reviews for keywords and using those keywords to adjust categorizations, I would expect to see the same types of abuses taking place.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

My understanding is that it's not just books. Haven't looked yet but I hear that sex toys etc are experiencing the same ranks missing issues.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

GeneDoucette said:


> since the Washington Post recently said they would be using the Amazon lists the same way the NYT uses their (very curated) lists, this looks like a solution to a future PR problem for the company.


Heaven forbid Washington Post subscribers -- like, you know, me -- get an inkling that humans enjoy sex.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Going Incognito said:


> My understanding is that it's not just books. Haven't looked yet but I hear that sex toys etc are experiencing the same ranks missing issues.


And wow. Just looked. Same issue but man, the things they allow to be shown while side boob on a book cover gets you dungeoned, lol. Nothing like keeping it consistent there Amazon. 
There's an orange best seller tag for the sex swing category, but a sales rank? Nope.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Going Incognito said:


> And wow. Just looked. Same issue but man, the things they allow to be shown while side boob on a book cover gets you dungeoned, lol. Nothing like keeping it consistent there Amazon.
> There's an orange best seller tag for the sex swing category, but a sales rank? Nope.


I looked in incognito mode. Most of what comes up for "sex swing" is labeled "yoga swing" and have rankings. A couple items labeled "sex swing" don't, and suggests an algorithm is grabbing the sexually blatant merchandise in its sweep, but not very accurately. It missed "Deluxe Aerial Hammock Door Swing Inversion Sling Flying Antigravity For Couple Indoor Sex", currently ranked #30,432 with a single and rather to the point five-star review. Beneath it is another swing with models demonstrating in explicit detail the item's purpose, ranked #40,191.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

And as I predicted earlier, lots of erotica is being given a quick makeover and then republished as romance. Will Amazon _ever_ learn?


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> And as I predicted earlier, lots of erotica is being given a quick makeover and then republished as romance. Will Amazon _ever_ learn?


It does seem they have not learned a basic rule about humanity: find a good way to give people what they want, or they're going to get what they want anyway and make you look like a fool as they do so.


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## lilywhite (Sep 25, 2010)

Trent Evans said:


> Thank you for passing this along! I haven't been able to replicate this pop-up when searching using the exact term you did. Can you confirm a few things?
> 
> 1. Were you searching in Amazon.com, or one of the other international stores?
> 2. Was this pop-up from the Amazon site itself, or was it at the browser level?
> ...


She said "Just did a search on my Kindle."


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> Accidents particularly suck when they affect people's livelihoods, but they do happen. I guess you have to have some tolerance for them, so long as they get fixed (with taking responsibility and apologizing as part of the fix ... ahem).
> 
> I just hope it's not an intentional and punitive action.


My concern is what will be considered adult themed in the end. I mean some bestselling romance authors have adult themes. And now erotica is being repackaged and put out there as romance as we speak. Anyone who doesn't write clean romance could take a hit.


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## Trent Evans (Mar 22, 2012)

lilywhite said:


> She said "Just did a search on my Kindle."


That's an important detail in her post... and I missed it. Thanks for pointing that out.

And here I was so hopeful this might indicate a substantive (positive) change -- such as a separate Adult-filtered "back room" on Amazon. Unfortunately, still no evidence of that though -- which sucks.

Back to the drawing board on determining commonalities... :/


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Dpock said:


> I looked in incognito mode. Most of what comes up for "sex swing" is labeled "yoga swing" and have rankings. A couple items labeled "sex swing" don't, and suggests an algorithm is grabbing the sexually blatant merchandise in its sweep, but not very accurately. It missed "Deluxe Aerial Hammock Door Swing Inversion Sling Flying Antigravity For Couple Indoor Sex", currently ranked #30,432 with a single and rather to the point five-star review. Beneath it is another swing with models demonstrating in explicit detail the item's purpose, ranked #40,191.


Yep. Just incognito moded into Amazon fresh again. Just typed 'sex toys' into the search bar, touching nothing else and keeping it set to all departments. Touched each category under the results titled 'shop by category' and the only category that seems to still have products ranked in it is the apparel category. Lots of stuff is very blatant, and very realistic looking lol, tho most shuttle over to the 'health and wellness' categories, but all are missing rank. Except for clothes, like I said. 
Very interesting.

ETA- The funniest thing tho- only the apparel button then took me inside a category that actually had "Excluding adult items. Show all results" at the top. So garter belts gave me that option. But realistic veined body parts did not, lol.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> Heaven forbid Washington Post subscribers -- like, you know, me -- get an inkling that humans enjoy sex.


Well my god they're not _supposed_ to. You lunatic.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Trent Evans said:


> Thank you for passing this along! I haven't been able to replicate this pop-up when searching using the exact term you did. Can you confirm a few things?
> 
> 1. Were you searching in Amazon.com, or one of the other international stores?
> 2. Was this pop-up from the Amazon site itself, or was it at the browser level?
> ...


So, I was reading on my Kindle. It wasn't on a computer or with a browser. I was browsing in the Kindle Store on my Kindle though. I searched in the erotica section, and actually looked through a listing of my books. Another was in the search that was definitely erotica, menage I believe, similar to mine. When I clicked on it, a box popped up on my kindle with a "Warning: Adult Themed Content" asking if I wanted to continue or something like that. Well, I was in the bath tub(where I do my Kindle reading and main reading in general) and I believe I hit "yes". Thing is, I didn't write it down since I was submerged in water.

I've read on my Kindle for years, and downloaded a lot of erotica to read and check out genres. I am also a KU member too. Not sure if that could have made it happen too. But I've NEVER seen a warning like this pop up, EVER, for any reading or download on my Kindle before. This wasn't a separate line or description, it literally was a pop-up box that shaded all the other content behind what I was looking at. So, it was definitely something NEW I haven't seen before. And I've had a Kindle for several years.

I was wondering if anyone else has seen warnings pop up on their Kindles while they were reading. I'm guessing it may be having to click on an erotica title. This was a new title, keep in mind, that I hadn't read or seen yet. A lot of my own titles are already in my library, of course. SO, the fact it was a new one for me might have triggered it.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

GeneDoucette said:


> Well my god they're not _supposed_ to. You lunatic.


Oh noes!!! 

I clicked that "show adult material" link ages ago, and there seems to be no way to revisit the issue. Seriously, it's not a real toggle if they just ask the question once, and that's that. People should be able to log in, toggle adult products off, hand their phone to their six-year-old, get it back, log in, and toggle adult products back on.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

lyndabelle said:


> a box popped up on my kindle with a "Warning: Adult Themed Content" asking if I wanted to continue


If you click "continue" does the Kindle dim as soft jazz begins playing the background?

Makes me think Amazon is just covering its behind. A programming expert could probably shed more light on what's going on, tell us how de-ranking an entire category helps Amazon sequester adult entertainments (with the de-ranking being part of a larger scheme).


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## Trent Evans (Mar 22, 2012)

lyndabelle said:


> So, I was reading on my Kindle. It wasn't on a computer or with a browser. I was browsing in the Kindle Store on my Kindle though. I searched in the erotica section, and actually looked through a listing of my books. Another was in the search that was definitely erotica, menage I believe, similar to mine. When I clicked on it, a box popped up on my kindle with a "Warning: Adult Themed Content" asking if I wanted to continue or something like that. Well, I was in the bath tub(where I do my Kindle reading and main reading in general) and I believe I hit "yes". Thing is, I didn't write it down since I was submerged in water.
> 
> I've read on my Kindle for years, and downloaded a lot of erotica to read and check out genres. I am also a KU member too. Not sure if that could have made it happen too. But I've NEVER seen a warning like this pop up, EVER, for any reading or download on my Kindle before. This wasn't a separate line or description, it literally was a pop-up box that shaded all the other content behind what I was looking at. So, it was definitely something NEW I haven't seen before. And I've had a Kindle for several years.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone else has seen warnings pop up on their Kindles while they were reading. I'm guessing it may be having to click on an erotica title. This was a new title, keep in mind, that I hadn't read or seen yet. A lot of my own titles are already in my library, of course. SO, the fact it was a new one for me might have triggered it.


Thank you SO much for replying back on this, Lynda. Very helpful indeed.


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## writerc (Apr 15, 2016)

Desmond X. Torres said:


> What annoys me...skip it, what p*ss es me off to no end about this kind of thing is the lack of communication on Amazon's part. And frankly, it's a attitude that's pervasive in high tech. The decision makers arrive at a strategy, implement it, and leave the users completely in the dark as to:
> - just what they did
> - why they did it, as in goals, objectives, reasons, etc
> - and what options users have to deal with it.
> ...


^^ This^^

And OMG  now I want to go look at swings on Amazon...


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

catlife said:


> And OMG  now I want to go look at swings on Amazon...


When I looked around Amazon at "sex swings" and then "sex toys" it banished all of my earlier notions that Amazon was trying to give Erotica its own store and possibly an AMS program--you know, make it a more viable category so schemesters would quit dumping it into romance. That now looks doubtful.

If forthcoming "sweeps" are on the horizon, they're likely to be much more personal and it won't be pretty for some.

On the bright side, I know two authors who had titles arbitrarily shoved into Erotica over the weekend. After making some noise, their books were returned to Romance categories.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Dpock said:


> If you click "continue" does the Kindle dim as soft jazz begins playing the background?


Lol!



Dpock said:


> ...That now looks doubtful.
> 
> If forthcoming "sweeps" are on the horizon, they're likely to be much more personal and it won't be pretty for some.


And agreed, sadly.



catlife said:


> And OMG  now I want to go look at swings on Amazon...


And you totally should. It's eye opening. They have these things called bangin seats, lol, that I did not know was a thing. Do eeeeeet!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Going Incognito said:


> And you totally should. It's eye opening. They have these things called bangin seats, lol, that I did not know was a thing. Do eeeeeet!


Kboards is so educational.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Let's not get *too* education, folks. Family friendly, family friendly ...


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> Let's not get *too* education, folks. Family friendly, family friendly ...


But, that's how families are made...


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## koralyd (Mar 28, 2018)

Atlantisatheart said:


> You've got to love amazon's attitude, while women are taking on the world and empowering themselves, especially in the creative industries, amazon are taking books written by women for women and putting them in a box and throwing away the key. Put a bit or bare-naked man chest of the cover and you're going to amazon jail.


I love this quote. Just wondering if there are any female authors who feel their work has been mis-classified as adult by amazon and believe their book is not adult but rather romance or literary fiction etc who are happy to be quoted for a possible article I am writing?


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Mercedes Vox said:


> Tymber, you and others who've been in this game for a while probably remember when anyone could add "tags" to a book on Amazon. There was a whole lot of rival author/rabid street-team/small- and self-publisher shenanigans going on during that period. "Tagging parties," anyone?
> 
> I was very happy when Amazon eliminated the tagging system in January 2013. If they are now scraping reviews for keywords and using those keywords to adjust categorizations, I would expect to see the same types of abuses taking place.


Crud, I'd forgotten about that. Ugh.

Great, just what we need, another way for trolls to carpet-bomb us.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Going Incognito said:


> But, that's how families are made...


LOL 

Also, how dare you quote my typo?? Now I can't fix it.


----------



## Lisa5 (Oct 23, 2012)

The idea was ostensibly that victims of sex traffiking in the USA could seek recourse from websites where advertisements were placed by their kidnappers selling their services against their will. 
The idea that anyone is going to successfully legally attack any website for simply publishing erotica that people want to buy is moronic unless it was underage pedophile fiction which is something already banned from every major site. 
The fear is all around the fact that technically "obscenity" is a free speech exception I think. Never-the-less it's still extremely silly for any website to suddenly think erotica is a danger to them because of this new law. 

Also ironically Hustler's Barely Legal edition still has it's store wide ranking and it's "books" ranking in the Amazon store.  

Something else I noticed is that fiction books on kindle suddenly don't have their store wide ranking when you click on them only "paid in kindle store" ranking instead? Is this new?


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## Ava Glass (Feb 28, 2011)

KateDanley said:


> I have no facts! This is all hearsay! But I've heard some rumors that several authors have received notifications from Apple and Radish (new publisher to me) that they will no longer be accepting erotica...? Anyone get that email or have a link to an announcement?


Tweet with screenshot of Radish announcement

https://twitter.com/andrewtshaffer/status/979137503461625856


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Ava Glass said:


> Tweet with screenshot of Radish announcement
> 
> https://twitter.com/andrewtshaffer/status/979137503461625856


That could just be Radish catching up Apple's long established policies.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

No realistic portrayals of people or animals being killed, maimed, tortured, or abused, or content that encourages violence - so no thrillers, suspense, horror, mysteries, police procedurals, accidental run overs, boiled bunnies, dead bodies or death of any kind that would feel real or elicit any kind of response, no crime or using violence to hurt and/or save anyone.
No depictions that encourage illegal or reckless use of weapons and dangerous objects, or facilitate the purchase of firearms, so no armed good guys or bad guys at all, even with knives, sticks or rocks. Or cars even, in case that dangerous car-object might be used recklessly or driven illegally, so no car chase scenes either.
Dont offend or upset anyone, don't be overtly sexual or intend to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.

No Watership Down even, cause dont at least one of the bunnies die? No Old Yeller, can't kill the dog. No Of Mice and Men.

"Enemies" within the context of a game cannot *solely *target a specific race, culture, real government, corporation, or any other real entity. So, for any Tom Clancy types making games, did you bring enough bullets to target the rest of the world, too? Hate for anyone to be left out. Oh, wait... the bullets... can't... Maybe if he handles his weapons legally and not recklessly? Oh, but there's that darn 'violently' aspect, so...

So, no more stories then. Basically.

But- Professional political satirists and humorists are generally exempt from this requirement. I wonder if they're hiring?

Now none of ya'll kids should try posting a politically satirical humor post like this, boys and girls. Remember, I am now a professional. Don't try this at home.


----------



## Atlantisatheart (Oct 8, 2016)

Going Incognito said:


> No realistic portrayals of people or animals being killed, maimed, tortured, or abused, or content that encourages violence - so no thrillers, suspense, horror, mysteries, police procedurals, accidental run overs, boiled bunnies, dead bodies or death of any kind that would feel real or elicit any kind of response, no crime or using violence to hurt and/or save anyone.
> No depictions that encourage illegal or reckless use of weapons and dangerous objects, or facilitate the purchase of firearms, so no armed good guys or bad guys at all, even with knives, sticks or rocks. Or cars even, in case that dangerous car-object might be used recklessly or driven illegally, so no car chase scenes either.
> Dont offend or upset anyone, don't be overtly sexual or intend to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.
> 
> ...


We've gone back to the future, we're in 1984, George Orwell's 1984.


----------



## Mercedes Vox (Jul 22, 2014)

KateDanley said:


> I have no facts! This is all hearsay! But I've heard some rumors that several authors have received notifications from Apple and Radish (new publisher to me) that they will no longer be accepting erotica...? Anyone get that email or have a link to an announcement?


I have several erotica titles clearly categorized as such on Apple via D2D. I just checked and they're still for sale.


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## Lady TL Jennings (Dec 8, 2011)

Mercedes Vox said:


> I have several erotica titles clearly categorized as such on Apple via D2D. I just checked and they're still for sale.


My Victorian erotica and romance short stories are still available on Apple, too. 
(They're published through Smashwords.)


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## Nate Hoffelder (Jun 9, 2014)

Amazon PR is aware of all the talk about the new policy, but they're not willing to go on the record with a statement:
https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/03/29/amazon-has-shadow-banned-romance-titles-from-the-kindle-store/


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Nate Hoffelder said:


> Amazon PR is aware of all the talk about the new policy, but they're not willing to go on the record with a statement:
> https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/03/29/amazon-has-shadow-banned-romance-titles-from-the-kindle-store/


I have a feeling we're not even near the crest of the wave that's coming. Amazon must have some purpose for keeping us in the dark, but it's too scary to think about that.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Nate Hoffelder said:


> Amazon PR is aware of all the talk about the new policy, but they're not willing to go on the record with a statement:


So, business as usual then? About what you'd expect.

Has anyone else noticed that they seem to have even cleaned up the main page? When I log into Amazon, not incognito, as myself, my main 'buy all this stuff! We know you read these! And this!' page is now- I don't know how else to say it- cleaner. 
All the books they usually push at me are way down at the bottom and the top sales space is all- things you'll love... in electronics... that you've never bought from us before so we're guessing you'd like this tv! And under that is 'Deals recommended for you! Some batteries! And men's jeans! And here, try these paper towels!

It's weird.


----------



## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

kw3000 said:


> RE: Gene/Becca's points regarding Washington Post book listings
> 
> Perhaps Bezos' ownership of the Post plays into this issue somehow?


I doubt it. Amazon does have a real problem with Erotica, largely due to their own mishandling of the category. Read the Look Inside of _Her Best Men: A Brother's Best Friends Reverse Harem_, #1 in Romance>Sports, and decide for yourself if it's erotica. Maybe it isn't. Where the line is drawn is up to random interpretation. Some say as long as it follows the romance beats and sex isn't the focus or driver of the plot, a romance can have as much explicit sex as it wants. Perhaps the book should be in Erotic Romance, but Amazon's buried that category. There's no incentive to put it there. That's the problem they need to correct.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

More links about it:

https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/29/new-federal-rules-blamed-in-disappearance-of-kindle-erotica-titles/

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjpjn4/amazon-erotica-best-seller-rankings-removed

https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/03/29/amazon-has-shadow-banned-romance-titles-from-the-kindle-store/

And the RWA is looking into it:

https://twitter.com/romancewriters/status/979056520242647040


> If you've experienced issues with your Amazon rankings/your books being erroneously reclassified, please contact [email protected] AND Amazon at [email protected] We are currently investigating this matter. All info provided by members is helpful and appreciated.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Don't hold your breath on RWA, they _look into_ a lot of things. But they can't actually _do_ anything about any of them. It's like saying kboards is looking into it.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Going Incognito said:


> Don't hold your breath on RWA, they _look into_ a lot of things. But they can't actually _do_ anything about any of them. It's like saying kboards is looking into it.


Oh, I'm not. I'm not even a member. (I was for my first year published, felt like a red-headed step-child, and didn't renew for a second year.) But the more people who can get the word out, the more people who can put pressure on their lawmakers to amend this Frankenstein of a bill to clearly exclude fiction/art from the law verbiage.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Tymber Dalton said:


> Oh, I'm not. I'm not even a member. (I was for my first year published, felt like a red-headed step-child, and didn't renew for a second year.) But the more people who can get the word out, the more people who can put pressure on their lawmakers to amend this Frankenstein of a bill to clearly exclude fiction/art from the law verbiage.


True. I was actually just coming back to clarify that I meant no snark. They're a non profit collection of authors who write romance. It's a club with a neat concept, just no power. But was being factual not griping.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

It's on slashdot now - that'll generate some interest.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Going Incognito said:


> True. I was actually just coming back to clarify that I meant no snark. They're a non profit collection of authors who write romance. It's a club with a neat concept, just no power. But was being factual not griping.


No worries. No snark was assumed. 

But in all seriousness, I do think if we can get writers to really talk to their readers about this to communicate to lawmakers, THAT might be what tips this over and helps correct the issue.


----------



## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Tymber Dalton said:


> No worries. No snark was assumed.
> 
> But in all seriousness, I do think if we can get writers to really talk to their readers about this to communicate to lawmakers, THAT might be what tips this over and helps correct the issue.


I wish I still had your optimism. I've been thru the Amazon wringer so many times they've spit me out jaded. Most people won't contact their lawmakers about anything, let alone to admit that they wanna find the sex in their books easier again, please.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Simon Haynes said:


> It's on slashdot now - that'll generate some interest.


Some of those comments, lol.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Tymber Dalton said:


> But in all seriousness, I do think if we can get writers to really talk to their readers about this to communicate to lawmakers, THAT might be what tips this over and helps correct the issue.


If it makes you feel better, then sure, but I doubt it would come to much. As defeatist as I sound, I think I'm also being realistic when it comes to mounting an external campaign.

All we can do is defend our own ground. I mentioned in another post a couple of authors who had success getting their books switched out of erotica.

What to do going forward is the real question. If you write sexy but not erotic books, will you be safe putting them in their proper categories? Or will a Zon bot have second thoughts about that? We may even have to back away from optimal covers, titles, and blurbs for our books out of fear of being labeled erotica. Whatever the case, we'll just have to adapt.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Nate Hoffelder said:


> Amazon PR is aware of all the talk about the new policy, but they're not willing to go on the record with a statement:
> https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/03/29/amazon-has-shadow-banned-romance-titles-from-the-kindle-store/


I'm glad to see this issue getting attention, but is "shadow banned" too strong a term? The erotica popularity and bestseller lists still exist, and so far as I can tell, books are ranked on those, as before. Only store-wide ranking has been stripped. Don't get me wrong: implicitly declaring a certain group of books (and, therefore, their readers) too embarrassing/inappropriate/whatever to deserve store-wide showcasing is, IMO, deeply offensive and counterproductive. But so long as the books are still on sale and the various erotica lists still exist, the lack of store-wide ranking may not have a big effect on sales. Or am I missing something?


----------



## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Becca Mills said:


> I'm glad to see this issue getting attention, but is "shadow banned" too strong a term? The erotica popularity and bestseller lists still exist, and so far as I can tell, books are ranked on those, as before. Only store-wide ranking has been stripped. Don't get me wrong: implicitly declaring a certain group of books (and, therefore, their readers) too embarrassing/inappropriate/whatever to deserve store-wide showcasing is, IMO, deeply offensive and counterproductive. But so long as the books are still on sale and the various erotica lists still exist, the lack of store-wide ranking may not have a big effect on sales. Or am I missing something?


I see this as reasons to leave KU and go wide, if not already. Also, sites starting up to sell exclusively "Erotica" might happen. It's just when the Zon starts doing this kind of thing, it's time to rethink your own business plan, and change direction if needed. So, I'm doing some HEAVY thinking about pulling out of KU and going wide. Because I write both, erotic romance and romantic erotica, I'm right on the edge. It was doing well for me, but with this happening, it looks like it might be time to just pull out exclusively with Zon. KU isn't giving back as much with it's promos anymore, and erotica readers might have to suffer with this. It's sad really. The only way to survive was to get new readers, and if Amazon is blocking that too, then it's time to just leave KU2. There is no reason to stay. But of course, maybe that's why they are doing it. To drive the romantic erotica away. But the trend in Romance has been to write erotic romances, and maybe this will kill the trend now. The ZON is that big.

I wouldn't underestimate the power of RWA either. I'm a member, and I know this is going to be affecting A LOT of members both traditional and self-published. A lot of traditional publishers have moved to more spicy and hotter romances, and even have started erotic romance lines. So, this is going to mess with that too.

I haven't seen anything happen this big in Romance since Allromanceebooks.com shut down. But maybe it's just time to pivot, and move on. Taking all the erotica out of searches defeats the purpose of being in KU too. So be it. If they cut the erotica/romance cord, they are slitting their own throats, but probably know that.

I think the new law passing is just an excuse. The Dragonian way has always been the way the Zon deals with these things. It's just sad really. You think they'd want to make money, but I guess they figure they can lose the income romanctic erotica, erotica, and erotic romance brought in. They are that big now. We don't know their bottom line, but then, we need to just deal with ours now.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

lyndabelle said:


> Taking all the erotica out of searches defeats the purpose of being in KU too.


Titles in erotica categories do show up in general searches, though I admit fewer are appearing than was the case even two days ago. Something to keep an eye on.

I'm not sure how this all relates to KU.

My understanding is, the worthwhile non-Amazon outlets are not any more friendly to erotica. I don't have the experience to support this, but that's what I hear.


----------



## writerc (Apr 15, 2016)

Dpock said:


> Titles in erotica categories do show up in general searches, though I admit fewer are appearing than was the case even two days ago. Something to keep an eye on.


Mine doesn't  (My mis categorised sci fi romance)
It's totally invisible unless you search with the exact URL.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Dpock said:


> Titles in erotica categories do show up in general searches, though I admit fewer are appearing than was the case even two days ago. Something to keep an eye on.
> 
> I'm not sure how this all relates to KU.
> 
> My understanding is, the worthwhile non-Amazon outlets are not any more friendly to erotica. I don't have the experience to support this, but that's what I hear.


I just wrote up a whole blog post on the basics, and how I know it will affect my KU. 
https://lyndabelle.com/2018/03/29/erotica-and-erotic-romance-getting-shadow-banned-on-amazon/

I can say since this hit, around March 22, I've had NO KU reads at all. And I had some happening and sales since I'd done a promo in mid March. A lot of erotica readers are in KU, because it's cheaper since a lot of writers had to up their price with the KU1-KU2 change over. And basically, with this change, it will make KU obsolete for erotica and erotic romance writers because no new readers will be able to find their titles. And that was the way to help beat the being paid for pages with shorts, was new readers. So, really, KU is just not going to be very viable for erotica anymore, and I'm starting to move my titles out. It will take like 3 months -4 months to do all this. But then, I'm also considering to see if I should wait.

But EVERY TIME the Zon does something like this, my sales always go down and it's hard to scramble up to make any sales after. I had recovered some from the KU1-KU2 change, but this is probably the straw that broke the camels back. I think it's going to be time to go WIDE for erotica and erotic romances, and not look back. Kobo is looking pretty nice right now, because they're in Canada. And yes, I'll refrain from any Handmaid's Tale references, even though, it's just so tempting and I just finished the book.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

catlife said:


> Mine doesn't  (My mis categorised sci fi romance)
> It's totally invisible unless you search with the exact URL.


I think that means it's been dungeoned? To check, go to Sales Rank Express (http://www.salesrankexpress.com/) and search for your book. When it shows up, it'll have an "ADULT" flag if Amazon has banished it.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Becca Mills said:


> Or am I missing something?


So far, and on the surface, you haven't. Erotica is still on lists and selling, and new titles are loading daily. But I can't escape the feeling that this global de-ranking is just step one of some broader agenda.

This email from Amazon is troublesome (I haven't received one):



> We've re-reviewed your book and confirmed that it contains erotic or *sexually explicit content*. We have found that when books are placed in the correct category it increases visibility to customers who are seeking that content. In addition, we are working on improvements to our store to further improve our search experience for customers. To remove your book from its current categorization you will need to remove the erotic or sexually explicit content and resubmit as a new ASIN.


Forget about erotica for the moment. Many of the _Look Insides_ on the New Adult toplist contain sexually explicit content, as do plenty of the non-sweet general romance novels. Should their authors be fearing the hammer? At this point, there's no reason to suggest they shouldn't, especially regarding _new_ releases.

Tough times.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Dpock said:


> So far, and on the surface, you haven't. Erotica is still on lists and selling, and new titles are loading daily. But I can't escape the feeling that this global de-ranking is just step one of some broader agenda.
> 
> This email from Amazon is troublesome (I haven't received one):
> 
> ...


Yeah, I find this very worrying. I'm mulling over how explicit any sex scenes in my series will be, when they finally arrive. I'm not much of an erotica reader myself, but there's plenty of sex in urban fantasy. I love a well done hot sex scene and could imaging writing one. Am I going to have to edit my book file according to the whims of some random KDP rep?

It's ridiculous that a writer should feel concerned about such a thing, in this day and age.


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## Nate Hoffelder (Jun 9, 2014)

I just got this one sentence statement from Amazon:

"A recent Kindle Store change inadvertently affected the display of sales rank for some titles. We have corrected this issue."

In other words, Amazon backed down.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Holy shizballs, my rankings are back!! They were gone as of a couple of hours ago, and now they're back!

Author ranking for erotica in the back-end on Author Central still defaults to an old graph, but the books are BAAAAAAAAAACK bishes!!!!!! WOOOHOOO!!

Oh, and here's a shocker--my OVERALL author ranking suddenly JUMPED up tonight. Gee. WHY would that be


----------



## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Oh, and yeah, I'm JUST cynical enough to wonder if Amazon's shares tanking after attacks from POTUS combined with possibly seeing a huge sales drop from ALL those books not being visible was enough for someone on the upper floors of their HQ to say, hey, waaaait a minute, maybe we're shooting ourselves in the foot.

*edited for typo


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## Lisa5 (Oct 23, 2012)

Oh that's good to hear. What is so infuriating is that all Amazon staff are apparently fine with selling Hustler titles like "Barely Legal" they are all fine with selling magazines full of photographs of women in obscene poses, because no funny business ever happens with the dirty magazines, but every so often it appears some of their staff want to come down hard on the horror of women reading and writing sexy books. It therefore appears to be pure sexism. 


Sounds like some staff told the other staff to stop it and put them back so good for those people.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Lisa5 said:


> Oh that's good to hear. What is so infuriating is that all Amazon staff are apparently fine with selling Hustler titles like "Barely Legal" they are all fine with selling magazines full of photographs of women in obscene poses, because no funny business ever happens with the dirty magazines, but every so often it appears some of their staff want to come down hard on the horror of women reading and writing sexy books. It therefore appears to be pure sexism.
> 
> Sounds like some staff told the other staff to stop it and put them back so good for those people.


I have no illusions that it was most likely a monetary decision that brought the rankings back. Between the bad PR, and then someone likely seeing a sales sinkhole opening up where they'd had nothing but pure profit before, someone realized they'd opened a can of worms they never should have disturbed.

Whatever prude thought this would be a spiffy idea hopefully got their head handed to them on a conference call today. We can hope.


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## Lisa5 (Oct 23, 2012)

Tymber Dalton said:


> I have no illusions that it was most likely a monetary decision that brought the rankings back. Between the bad PR, and then someone likely seeing a sales sinkhole opening up where they'd had nothing but pure profit before, someone realized they'd opened a can of worms they never should have disturbed.
> 
> Whatever prude thought this would be a spiffy idea hopefully got their head handed to them on a conference call today. We can hope.


The prude was fine with porno mags for men, because they still held their store wide rankings in "books" when the books in erotica categories lost their overall in books ranking. I checked when the other ones were still down.


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## Sam B (Mar 28, 2017)

Lisa5 said:


> The prude was fine with porno mags for men, because they still held their store wide rankings in "books" when the books in erotica categories lost their overall in books ranking. I checked.


That seems pretty standard. If it's making a ton of money (50shades) or for men (porno mags), it's fine. It's everyone else that gets stepped on.


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## Lisa5 (Oct 23, 2012)

Sam B said:


> That seems pretty standard. If it's making a ton of money (50shades) or for men (porno mags), it's fine. It's everyone else that gets stepped on.


Except THIS time I read that EL James lost her rankings too? I can't confirm though because I didn't check that myself before it went back. 
This one was a bit more shocking that the usual attacks because books from even the big publishers had their rankings stripped I gather.


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## mama_bear (Oct 17, 2017)

Glad to see the ratings are coming back.

With Craigslist pulling personals, subreddits disappearing, I was watching this and biting my nails down to the bone.



> We�ve re-reviewed your book and confirmed that it contains erotic or sexually explicit content. We have found that when books are placed in the correct category it increases visibility to customers who are seeking that content. In addition, we are working on improvements to our store to further improve our search experience for customers. To remove your book from its current categorization you will need to remove the erotic or sexually explicit content and resubmit as a new ASIN.


This is disturbing. So books are either erotica or G-rated? Did anyone else receive this?


----------



## Trent Evans (Mar 22, 2012)

Nate Hoffelder said:


> I just got this one sentence statement from Amazon:
> 
> "A recent Kindle Store change inadvertently affected the display of sales rank for some titles. We have corrected this issue."
> 
> In other words, Amazon backed down.


KBoards _soooo_ needs a Like button.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

This keeps getting more bizarre. Either they changed their mind, or the sales ranking didn't have to do with the erotica and erotic romance that was being put in different categories. 

Holding on yanking all my KU out just now. But really, am wondering what is going on. I don't think it's over yet.
I hate it when the Zon does weird stuff like this. Sometimes it's good to wait and see what the Zon is up to. I think we just have to wait a bit longer to see what might roll out next.

I'm guessing they might choose the beginning of the month, April 1. But then, that might not be the best day to do changes.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Someone should set up Amabonk.com to sell erotica. (no, I have no idea if that exists. I don't want to know.)


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## Lisa5 (Oct 23, 2012)

lyndabelle said:


> This keeps getting more bizarre. Either they changed their mind, or the sales ranking didn't have to do with the erotica and erotic romance that was being put in different categories.
> 
> Holding on yanking all my KU out just now. But really, am wondering what is going on. I don't think it's over yet.
> I hate it when the Zon does weird stuff like this. Sometimes it's good to wait and see what the Zon is up to. I think we just have to wait a bit longer to see what might roll out next.
> ...


As well as erotica and erotic romance titles having their store wide ranking pulled I also noticed kindle fiction titles even from big publishers seemed to have store wide rankings pulled and they only had "in the kindle store" rankings, Am I getting confused by something? That Lucky Charms romance book that was at 27 store wide has disappeared from the top 100 books overall and now only has a kindle store ranking? 
Maybe I'm getting this all wrong and getting confused somehow.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Nate Hoffelder said:


> "A recent Kindle Store change inadvertently affected the display of sales rank for some titles. We have corrected this issue."


So a glitch after all, then? Wow. But really glad it's fixed.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

Personally, I don't think Amazon could find a way to fairly and evenly separate erotica and erom from the regular store.  This wasn't an accident or an oopsie - Amazon has simply backed down for now. Could this be due to bad press, slowing sales, nervousness about attacks from the White House?

Who knows?

But I'm not ready to breathe a sigh of relief quite yet. If you write erotica, this should be a huge wake-up call. Have a back-up plan in place sooner rather than later. Remember the "Grasshopper and the Ant".


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> But I'm not ready to breathe a sigh of relief quite yet. If you write erotica, this should be a huge wake-up call. Have a back-up plan in place sooner rather than later. Remember the "Grasshopper and the Ant".


Didn't they ban animal porn some time ago?


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

Simon Haynes said:


> Didn't they ban animal porn some time ago?


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## writerc (Apr 15, 2016)

Trent Evans said:


> KBoards _soooo_ needs a Like button.


Yusss!


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## writerc (Apr 15, 2016)

Becca Mills said:


> I think that means it's been dungeoned? To check, go to Sales Rank Express (http://www.salesrankexpress.com/) and search for your book. When it shows up, it'll have an "ADULT" flag if Amazon has banished it.


Thanks Becca. It wasn't dungeoned, just invisible. But it has been taken out of Erotica as of last night. I used an amazon email address supplied by the RWA on Twitter because of all this hoo-ha going on and FINALLY got a reply from a real person who has put my book in SciFi romance where it belongs.

There will be wine tonight!

Sadly, going forward there will be no more nekkid man chest on my books. It's too risky.


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## Sati_LRR (Jul 10, 2017)

Lisa5 said:


> Except THIS time I read that EL James lost her rankings too? I can't confirm though because I didn't check that myself before it went back.
> This one was a bit more shocking that the usual attacks because books from even the big publishers had their rankings stripped I gather.


She did but either her publishers complained and/or Amazon very quickly moved Grey to a Holiday category, outside of erotica, to get her main store rankings back. So the little guy still got stepped on.


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## JeanJoachim (Mar 22, 2011)

So I'm hearing all "adultl content" books may be affected. Is it worthwhile to change my books that have adult content checked off on Amazon and uncheck the box?? Or not?


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

PaulineMRoss said:


> So a glitch after all, then? Wow. But really glad it's fixed.


Doubt it was a glitch. The last Great Erotica Purge (of 2015) was when they shoved entire author catalogs (including kids books) into Erotica based on the account holder having any erotica books on their account. It was just bad programming. Or a false assumption that authors only write one kind of book.

I had one of my romance books shoved into erotica where it currently resides, even though it's a romance. No one lost rank during that purge.

My guess is that they did something similar and screwed it up royally.

As for the assumption that sexually explicit= erotica, that tells me whoever came up with that policy is NOT a reader. Sexually explicit can be found in non romance genres.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

dianapersaud said:


> Doubt it was a glitch.[...] It was just bad programming.


That's what I mean by a glitch. Computer-driven systems don't just malfunction all by themselves. Someone changed *something* and it had unintended consequences.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

lyndabelle said:


> Holding on yanking all my KU out just now. But really, am wondering what is going on. I don't think it's over yet.
> I hate it when the Zon does weird stuff like this. Sometimes it's good to wait and see what the Zon is up to. I think we just have to wait a bit longer to see what might roll out next.


No, I would still pull out of KU and go wide. Don't forget about Smashwords for other retailers as well. If Amazon repeats this [expletive] in a few months when they think they've figured out how to separate romance from erotic romance from erotica, then you're back to square one and having to wait. That's just my $.02.

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


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Lisa5 said:


> Except THIS time I read that EL James lost her rankings too? I can't confirm though because I didn't check that myself before it went back.
> This one was a bit more shocking that the usual attacks because books from even the big publishers had their rankings stripped I gather.


On one of her books, yes. I think it was Grey, maybe? The others were listed as romance and not impacted.

But that might have been another reason they backed down, because how could they allow the FSoG books to be "romance" and indie writers writing stuff on the same level in terms of heat and force them into erotic without it being a PR nightmare for them?

Never mess with romance writers. We will sic our readers on lawmakers. LOL


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Sati_LRR said:


> She did but either her publishers complained and/or Amazon very quickly moved Grey to a Holiday category, outside of erotica, to get her main store rankings back. So the little guy still got stepped on.


Ah, I didn't see that. When I'd checked it was still shadow-banned.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

dianapersaud said:


> As for the assumption that sexually explicit= erotica, that tells me whoever came up with that policy is NOT a reader. Sexually explicit can be found in non romance genres.


Well, they might be a reader, just a reader who thinks romance/e-rom/erotica is beneath them as a genre. *tongue in cheek*


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

There might be more going on here than this new law. Walmart just pulled Cosmo off the racks in their checkout lines. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation is claiming responsibility for the move. Apparently they've been bringing lots of pressure on those who publish "naughty" material to get it out of the public eye, including Amazon, which is at the top of their Dirty Dozen list.



> Their Kindle e-reader is riddled with sexually explicit content containing incest, babysitter, and group-sex themes.





> While Amazon took strict measures to rid this popular e-book device of hardcore pornography and explicit erotica in previous years , thousands of self-published pornographic books are for sale and even included for free in the monthly subscription service KindleUnlimited. Searches by NCOSE yielded dozens of these books included in completely unrelated categories, and included themes of incest, child and teen, and rape. A search conducted by NCOSE of "Teen Books" yielded both e-books for toddler, as well as hardcore porn. Unfortunately, a 12-year-old girl did this same search...


All of which is of course perfectly true, and has led to stories on the BBC, Daily Mail, NBC, and CBS. And with their stock dropping because of fears that the DOJ may be looking into them for anti-trust violations, the last thing they need is more bad publicity.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

KelliWolfe said:


> There might be more going on here than this new law. Walmart just pulled Cosmo off the racks in their checkout lines. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation is claiming responsibility for the move. Apparently they've been bringing lots of pressure on those who publish "naughty" material to get it out of the public eye, including Amazon, which is at the top of their Dirty Dozen list.
> 
> All of which is of course perfectly true, and has led to stories on the BBC, Daily Mail, NBC, and CBS. And with their stock dropping because of fears that the DOJ may be looking into them for anti-trust violations, the last thing they need is more bad publicity.


So, again, I'm trying to bite back the Handmaid's Tale comments, because it is too much like the book. Just too much. 
Again, god forbid that women actually try to like sex and put it in a positive light, with men actually being able to make the women enjoy it. But if that is kept in romance, so be it. Because a lot of romance is fantasy too, about guys getting it all right. Just saying.

I think this is definitely going deeper and it's more important than ever to fight censorship. This making sex "bad" and "violence is okay" is so ingrained in the US culture, it just isn't seen unless you go elsewhere in the world. I could go on that girls need to be comfortable with their bodies, and that at 18, much of the sexual exploration begins really in college, whether parents like it or not. And that is what new adult (now adult romances) deal with as a theme often. Women exploring their sexuality. If that isn't a super #metoo outcome, supporting that, then the movement has failed. Women have got to own their bodies, and coming down on this kind of writing is a way to suppress it. Respecting women during sexual scenes needs to be written up in literature, over and over again, until the culture finally embraces it.

I've always written my erotica/erotic romances to show strong women, enjoying sex, and the men respect them and enjoy it with them. That is what is really scary for some people. Strong women owning their own bodies and enjoying sex. I mean, in Victorian times, women went to doctors and they were fingered to help relieve stress. I mean, geez, they had to go to a doctor. The women's body has been so suppressed that women didn't even know how it worked. Where else are they going to learn it from? Doctors can't do that now, right?

I think this is just a real sign of the times we are living in, and I was bracing for it back in Nov. 2016. Took a year and a half, but here we go again. Back to the 1950s.


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## Tymber Dalton (Mar 6, 2016)

Lilly_Frost said:


> Unfortunately, some erotica authors who are determined to get their material in front of viewers, no matter what, are poisoning the well and clever semantics like saying an HEA or spaceships makes graphic sex something else besides graphic sex isn't something the vocal customers are going to care about.


There's also no objective way to differentiate erotica from romance. In general, romance/erotic romance is a story with love/sex scenes in it, but sex isn't the focus of the story. Erotica is mainly sex, and it is the focus of the story. In the first, if you take the sex out, there's still a rich, full story. In the second, if you take the sex out, there's pretty much nothing left but sex, maybe a plot outline.

And the scammers will still try to get their books in the other categories regardless. I looked the other day at Westerns, for example (not romance, just Westerns) and it was full of obvious romance/e-rom/erotica.

Um...no. They won't stay in their lane. Those of us trying to "behave" are punished while the scammers are unchecked.

Even adding a human element to filtering this isn't going to be helpful, because what if you get a real prude who says nope, stick that into erotica when it's a YA or NA book that's actually appropriate for 16-18 y/os?

If Amazon had an erotic romance or "spicy" romance section, in addition to the erotica section, that'd be helpful. Or if they simply have us tick a box that it's an 18+ book regardless of genre (because let's be honest, as stated already, there are plenty of other genre books like horror, suspense, etc that should be "adult" tagged) and have a filter setting on the user account, that should be enough. Or let the USER go through their account and tick boxes next to genres they don't want. Or let us designate heat levels for language, sexual content, etc.

Shadow bans aren't just hurting the authors, but the readers who are actively looking for our content. And it's going to hit Amazon's bottom line, too, in lost sales as well as ticking off both content creators and customers.

But does Amazon reach out to the INDUSTRY its actions are going to impact the most and say, "Hey, here's our issue, what are your ideas?"

Nope. Why should they do THAT?? *eye roll*


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

So, I've officially unchecked the KU box for a major number of my titles. I'm keeping just 2 titles in KU, since I want to use them as samples to maybe draw readers to my catalog, though I might just eventually take them out too.

I guess this has been brewing with me for awhile, and this episode all this week has just been the last straw. KU is not worth it anymore to me, and I can just use Instafreebie and list titles I want at $0.99 to use in promos. SO, that KU draw is totally dead. After almost 3 years in KU, I'm pulling out.

***All that is left is to write a post to my readers that I'm pulling out of KU, and they've just got about a month before titles start to leave. 

Going wide is going to find me the new readers I need to make my bottom line. So, yeah, got to choose my business plan for me. I've got to look out for my bottom line, because the Zon is looking out for no one but its bottom line. Do I blame it? No. Just gotta do what I need to do to stay in business.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Erotic romance isn't a problem because the real issue is of appearances. The true erotic romances generally have titles and covers that fit within the romance genre, and aren't the kind of thing being objected to. The people complaining aren't going to read those and neither are their 12 year old girls. The problem is when little Suzie searches for "babysitter stories" and Amazon serves up 99 pages of "Three-way with My Stepbrother and the Babysitter," with covers to match. This is why certain categories of erotica get slammed so hard from time to time, like monster sex. Kids love books about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and dinosaurs and chupacabras and cavemen and such. Guess what was showing up when they or their parents searched for those? So Amazon blocked some titles and adult filtered others and banned accounts to clean it up until the screeching died down. Later, once it was quiet, they backed way off and those books started to creep in again.

It's all about appearances, and putting forth the least amount of effort possible to deal with problems.

To actually deal with the problem would require Amazon building a completely firewalled store for erotica with no crossover between it and the general store or bookstore, and having a human vet each published title before it went live the way that iTunes does. And Amazon is not going to do that. It's too expensive and in direct violation of their culture of "automate everything."


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

KelliWolfe said:


> To actually deal with the problem would require Amazon building a completely firewalled store for erotica with no crossover between it and the general store or bookstore, and having a human vet each published title before it went live


I dunno... I agree Erotica should have its own ecosystem with its own AMS, Top Lists and Also Boughts. I don't see how segregating it would be an insurmountable task. We're all aware of the limited vocabulary used in sex scenes and the peripheral terminologies of fetishes and kinks. An algorithm could spot those easy enough. Sure, it would snare some innocents, but a beefed-up support system could handle those cases. It already does actually.

Some people are being very coy on the erotica/romance debate, claiming if there's a "story" it's not erotica, no matter how explicit the sex. I mean, come on. If erotica is buried in the romance, shouldn't it be in Erotic Romance and gated? I don't think anyone would mind it if Amazon didn't treat Erotica like an airless, dirty back room. They should give the category some new paint and allow it the bells and whistles other categories enjoy. Human sensuality is a great thing and should be celebrated, but it isn't for minors or those who view it otherwise.

Maybe Amazon will catch on. Erotica could be a cash cow (and probably is already. Let's say it could be a huge cash cow). Just thinking of the product tie-ins with the rest the store boggles the mind (referring here to Amazon's "Sexual Wellness Products" department).


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Content deleted. I do not consent to the new TOS.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

CoraBuhlert said:


> So basically, some busybody group is bothered that there is sex in certain media and that people might be enjoying it, so they try to put pressure on businesses to comply with their personal idea of morality. And Cosmopolitan, honestly? In spite of the lurid headlines, that's mag is not even close to the likes of Playboy, let alone harder erotic mags, which you can freely find in every German supermarket, though they'll hopefully put it on the top shelf where kids can't reach it.


When I was growing up in the 80s you could walk into any convenience store and find hardcore porn magazines sitting out on the shelves with all the other magazines. Video rental stores also had porn movies right out on the shelves. This changed in the late 80s/early 90s as legislation was passed which forced them to hide it.



> I do think that Amazon should introduce an adult filter similar to Smashwords and others to avoid unsuitable content showing up in searches for kids. Though I'm still not always sure what counts as adult content in the US, because the sensibilities are so different. For example, I think that both graphic sex and graphic violence count as adult content, but that swearing is okay, unless it's a children's book. Meanwhile, in the US people get upset about sex and swearing, but never about graphic violence.


It's great in theory, but children use their parents' accounts to shop on Amazon so they'd see it anyway. I know, I know, adult supervision, it's the parents' fault, but at the end of the day it's how things work in real life and the problem that has to be solved. And there are mandatory ratings for graphic violence in the US on both movies and video games, but you're correct in the idea that the vast majority of people don't care because they grew up with media that was saturated with it in one form or another.

As for erotic romance, the best definition I've heard to separate it from romance has nothing to do with heat level, it's that the sexy bits are crucial to the story being told. 50 Shades of Grey is a perfect example. You could take out the sex/BDSM and still have a romance story, but it wouldn't be the _same_ story without it. In 99% of romance you can eliminate the sex completely or fade to black without changing the story at all, but taking it out of erotic romance would substantially change the story.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

KelliWolfe said:


> As for erotic romance, the best definition I've heard to separate it from romance has nothing to do with heat level, it's that the sexy bits are crucial to the story being told.


That's pretty much the standard definition but it presents quite a loophole. Using that definition, a romance with dripping bucket loads of gratuitous, explicit sex that's irrelevant to the integrity of the story wouldn't be erotica. And technically, it isn't erotica, if the sex didn't drive the story. If sex _did_ drive the romance, then I guess it would be erotic romance. If it had no storyline or romance and was just about sexual encounters, it would be erotica (just thinking out loud).


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## Lisa5 (Oct 23, 2012)

lyndabelle said:


> So, again, I'm trying to bite back the Handmaid's Tale comments, because it is too much like the book. Just too much.
> Again, god forbid that women actually try to like sex and put it in a positive light, with men actually being able to make the women enjoy it. But if that is kept in romance, so be it. Because a lot of romance is fantasy too, about guys getting it all right. Just saying.
> 
> I think this is definitely going deeper and it's more important than ever to fight censorship.


Definitely, because again I'll bring up how Amazon sells porno mags for men with no problems, but the women writing erotica for women are seemingly in a constant battle with them, and this time they even rank stripped 50 shades and it's follow on books. 
Then _COSMO_ is what they're banning from Walmart! Scary stiff.


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## Lisa5 (Oct 23, 2012)

KelliWolfe said:


> When I was growing up in the 80s you could walk into any convenience store and find hardcore porn magazines sitting out on the shelves with all the other magazines. Video rental stores also had porn movies right out on the shelves. This changed in the late 80s/early 90s as legislation was passed which forced them to hide it.
> It's great in theory, but children use their parents' accounts to shop on Amazon so they'd see it anyway. I know, I know, adult supervision, it's the parents' fault, but at the end of the day it's how things work in real life and the problem that has to be solved. And there are mandatory ratings for graphic violence in the US on both movies and video games, but you're correct in the idea that the vast majority of people don't care because they grew up with media that was saturated with it in one form or another.
> 
> As for erotic romance, the best definition I've heard to separate it from romance has nothing to do with heat level, it's that the sexy bits are crucial to the story being told. 50 Shades of Grey is a perfect example. You could take out the sex/BDSM and still have a romance story, but it wouldn't be the _same_ story without it. In 99% of romance you can eliminate the sex completely or fade to black without changing the story at all, but taking it out of erotic romance would substantially change the story.


Almost the first half of 50 shades doesn't really have any sex if I remember right? Which would mean it never would have made the cut for the old erotic romance publishers that were popular before the self publishing revolution.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

*************


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

PhoenixS said:


> This is an update of my control book's ranks, which very clearly shows when the erotica overall ranks were stripped and when they were restored, giving us a nice visual of the space (number of books) that erotica occupies. Nothing new, just picture, thousand words, value...


I'm having a pretty much dead month. Nothing. Absolutely no sales, including in the other genres I write. It's like all the sales or any promos from March was wiped on April 1. Not sure if what ever was being made ready the last week of March launched on April 1 or not.

Is anyone else having no sales too? To note, I still have AMS ads running too, which had sales the last week of March.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

lyndabelle said:


> Is anyone else having no sales too? To note, I still have AMS ads running too, which had sales the last week of March.


Today has been slow (the 1st and 2nd were normal) but I doubt it's related to the recent "Erotica Rankings Incident of 2018". Also, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays seem less robust than the other days, and today is the first day "back to work" after the brief holiday (for most).


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Erotica sales are fine for me. Not fantastic, but better than any April in my memory... so far.


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## eroticatorium (May 6, 2016)

lyndabelle said:


> I'm having a pretty much dead month. Nothing. Absolutely no sales, including in the other genres I write. It's like all the sales or any promos from March was wiped on April 1. Not sure if what ever was being made ready the last week of March launched on April 1 or not.
> 
> Is anyone else having no sales too? To note, I still have AMS ads running too, which had sales the last week of March.


My sales aren't quite dead, but they are about to start pining for the fjords.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Dpock said:


> Today has been slow (the 1st and 2nd were normal) but I doubt it's related to the recent "Erotica Rankings Incident of 2018". Also, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays seem less robust than the other days, and today is the first day "back to work" after the brief holiday (for most).


No holiday in the US. US does not do Christian holidays other than Christmas.


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