Amazon Is Going Further to Hide Erotica...Even When You're Looking for It!

Well, if the weirdness with Red Phoenix's latest release, The Keeper Finds Her Mate (Keeper of the Pack #2), wasn't bad enough, Amazon is now hiding erotica books even when you're looking for them.

Late Wednesday night, I started poking around Amazon by entering my favorite authors or erotica writers I've met online. I got some interesting search results. If one or more of that author's books has been flagged with the dreaded ADULT label, those books won't show up, even you go to the Books>Kindle submenu. And it is more than one writer that this is happening to:

To get around the ADULT label, some authors, like Selena Kitt, are going through their library and changing covers and titles.

This is the original cover of Selena's book Connections and is still used on the Excessica storefront. Excessica is a cooperative of erotica authors headed by Selena.

By the time I downloaded the book from Amazon on July 25, 2012, Selena had to digitally add a bikini to the cover model, but the book was still listed as erotica.

(By the way, this is the cover that still appears on Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.)

Jump forward to the Kernel Pornocalypse in October of 2013. Everything labeled as erotica was getting banned, regardless of how covered the models were.

So Selena tried a different tactic. Not only did she create a brand-new cover, she changed the category of the book. It is no longer in Erotica, but listed as New Adult.

In this case, a reasonable argument can be made that the story is New Adult. There's only one sex scene, and it's not all that graphic. Also, Selena would be the first to warn against misleading readers.

But to paraphrase a statement Kallypso Masters made on Facebook during the Red Phoenix incident earlier this week, just how many hoops do writers have to jump through?

And she's got a point.

How long will Amazon continue to pretend it's not selling erotica? And why are their rules so arbitrary?

DH commented that putting out a defined set of rules means people will twist them to get away with things. I responded that many of us are already gaming the system to get around Amazon's undefined rules that we are figuring out.

I guess the point of all this rambling is why does Amazon make it so hard to find things that readers do want to read. Is it worth pissing off readers by hiding things, or in Red Phoenix's case, refusing to put something up for sale without saying why, thereby unleashing hordes of furious fans?

And at what point are we writers going to piss off the readers by gaming the system, changing a blurb too far to where the readers feel betray?

Why the hell can't we just call a duck as duck?

Sales, Wordcounts and the NYT Bestseller List

July was a wild, effing ride!

The not-so-great news first? I was shooting for 50K words on Blood Sacrifice. I made it to 24,608. So what was the problem?

There were several, my own headspace being the biggest. I didn't realize how much writing this blog relaxes me before I start on the day's fiction writing. So, I'm definitely going back to my MWFSa schedule.

Also, I usually have my research done and ready long before I start writing. This time I kept coming up with questions I hadn't thought to ask my Peruvian expert until I hit the necessary point in the story.

Then there's the issue of Blood Sacrifice being the first novel I've written since I finished the first draft of Zombie Wedding in February of 2010. Oh, I've written in the last two and a half years, but it's been eight novellas and short stories or novel rewrites. I need to get back in the long form groove, which I finally managed during the last full week of the July.

All-in-all, July was a major learning experience for me as a professional writer. Therefore, I don't regret my problems as long as I don't repeat the mistakes that caused them.

The EXCELLENT news is that I SOLD 587 books. And no, that number does NOT include the four hundred-plus copies of Zombie Confidential I gave away (still waiting on final numbers from the Smashwords distribution retailers).

The BEST news was not mine, but my friend's. Erotic romance author Lyla Sinclair is the person who nudged and prodded and shoved me to try indie publishing nearly two years ago. We don't always see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, but I know she has my best interests at heart.

Well, last week, Lyla hit #26 on the NYT Ebook Bestsellers' List with her latest Training Tessa. Today, she's at #17. I'm SO excited for her. This is a woman who works damn hard at her craft and still has time for noobs like me. If you love fun, flirty erotica, check out Lyla's website! And, Lyla, if you're reading this, I'm so damn happy for you!