erotica

How Indie Authors Can Make Two Categories Count On Amazon

by

This post by Cate Baum originally appeared on Self-Publishing Review on 5/20/15.

Amazon made a decision sometime in the last two months or so to cut off new indie books to the five plus two categories allowed to all indie/self-published authors who had both paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon. Why could this decision have been made, and how can authors make the most of the measly two categories now allowed when publishing on Kindle?

Spoiling It For The Rest Of Us

What happened? Maybe the mounting problems for authors who had trad-published, or had genre books in the last couple of years with categories forced a change. Publishing companies and indie authors on imprints and small presses with money riding on book campaigns were being drowned in self-publishers categorizing their books too loosely in ways to get seen – especially in the erotica genre. I talked about this as being a problem I foresaw Amazon reacting to, and was only two pitchforks from being burned at the stake for mentioning anything that could cause a vibration through the “freedom for writers everywhere” faction.

But hey, it happened as predicted, and very quietly, too.

While some authors were releasing up to eight books of erotica at the same time to flood book charts with their ‘brand,’ and categorized them as “Westerns” when their lover boy rode a horse, or “Crime Fiction” when the book featured a gangster type doing the bedding, Amazon was flooded with books that used to stay in their own little (adult) area – it became nigh impossible to even enter the YA Sci-Fi section of Amazon without a bevvy of bare chests and chiffoned thighs gracing the listing pages.

So the greedy few seemed to have spoiled it for the rest of us. Well done, kids!

 

Finding “The Two”

 

Read the full post on Self-Publishing Review.

 

The Curious Case of Ellora’s Cave

by

This post by Jane Litte originally appeared on Dear Author on 9/14/14. Note that this post contains strong language.

Long before there was the Kindle, long before self publishing, long before the emergence of Fifty Shades, a digital first publisher by the name of Ellora’s Cave began to deliver sexy reads that would transform the face of romance publishing. Ellora’s Cave was established in 2000 as an outlet for Tina Engler to publish books with heavy sexy content that were romantic in nature. Because there was no “ebook” in the late 1990s, Engler would create PDFs and email them to reader who sent her money via paypal. In 2000, EC was established and soon thereafter, it would become a powerhouse selling hundreds of thousands of ebooks a year in a world where ebooks did not exist for the most part.

Engler’s path was not dissimilar to that of JK Rowling. She went from welfare to millionaire in a short time.

Ellora’s Cave fed an unheretofore unexplored appetite of women for explicit scenes, bold women, and frank language. Prior to 2000, references to the penis would often be couched in terms such as “manroot” “stalk” and “pleasure rod”. The clitoris or vagina would be known in equally obscure terms. Now it’s not uncommon to see the use of “cock”, “cunt”, or “pussy” within many mainstream romances whether they be historical, contemporary or paranormal. Today the line between erotic romance and non erotic romance appears blurred, not just for readers but authors and publishers as well.

But in 2000, erotic romance was a new and somewhat scary thing for mainstream publishers. In fact, the recent acquisition or launch of digital publishing arms for mainstream publishers followed a similar trajectory to the old acquisition and launch of erotic romance lines. While it might seem ludicrous today, in the early to mid 2000s, agents had to identify which publishers would accept erotic romances and which would not. And it was a big deal when traditional publishers started accepting erotic romances regularly.

 

Click here to read the full post on Dear Author.

 

More Verbal Abuse Among Young “50 Shades” Readers

by

This post by Andy Henion – Michigan State originally appeared on Futurity on 8/22/14.

Young women who read Fifty Shades of Grey are more likely than others to show signs of eating disorders and have a verbally abusive partner, a new study suggests.

Further, those who read all three books in the Fifty Shades erotic romance series are at increased risk of engaging in binge drinking and having multiple sex partners.

All are known risks associated with being in an abusive relationship, much like the lead character, Anastasia, is in Fifty Shades, says Amy Bonomi, the study’s lead investigator. And while the study did not distinguish whether women experienced the health behaviors before or after reading the books, it’s a potential problem either way, she says.

“If women experienced adverse health behaviors such as disordered eating first, reading Fifty Shades might reaffirm those experiences and potentially aggravate related trauma,” says Bonomi, chairperson and professor in Michigan State University’s department of human development and family studies.

“Likewise, if they read Fifty Shades before experiencing the health behaviors seen in our study, it’s possible the books influenced the onset of these behaviors.”

 

Depictions of violence

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes a link to the source study, on Futurity.

 

Amazon, World Adult Content Police?

by

This post originally appeared on Adele Journal on 5/23/13. Note that it is on the topic of book listing challenges faced by authors of erotica and other adult-oriented fiction, and the full article (link at the end of this excerpt) may include content that’s NSFW and inappropriate for children.

There’s a new sheriff in town, but I was quite happy with the land being lawless. Because, you know, us settlers were pretty good at regulating ourselves. From recent events, it’s clear to me, at least, that Amazon is trying to take control of the wilderness that is electronic publishing.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t be that surprising. They did make the Kindle, after all, and were pretty successful in making their name synonymous with ebooks for the general, mainstream public. But at the time, it didn’t look like Amazon was taking anything away from the ebook-reading people, just making it more available.

Now, they’re starting to impose their order on the wider landscape of all e-publishers, both amateur and professional, and they are taking things away from us.

 

The Amazon Adult Dungeon

If you haven’t heard of this, the Adult Dungeon is what some erotica authors are calling it when Amazon internally labels a work as “adult.” In itself, this is not problematic, as most erotica authors do a damn good job of laying out warnings and content labels in their descriptions. But when a work gets put into the Adult Dungeon, it is no longer searchable. If you search specifically for the title and author, you will not find it.

Nor will it get recommended in the “Customers who bought X also bought…”

They essentially blacklist any book thrown in their Adult Dungeon. They don’t tell the authors they’re doing this, and they don’t tell the readers, either. It’s done behind the backs of everyone involved. Amazon is taking away your right, as a grownup reader, to make your own decisions about what to read. Or, they think you can’t control your (non-mainstream) sexual imagination, so they feel like it’s their place to do it for you.

(This is also what happened, apparently, a few years ago, when they “mistakenly” marked all LGBT related books as ADULT. Of course, they claimed that it was a “glitch…”)

Author Selena Kitt points out — quite rightly — that erotica readers created the Kindle market. Why does anyone want an e-reader? For a private reading experience.

 

Click here to read the full post on Adele Journal.