The Ultimate Superheroines Forum

The general press is just discovering that Amazon censors books. Funny, we've know about this for YEARS.

So if no one is buying your books on Amazon, and you don't know why, now you know.

http://heatst.com/world/heres-whats-hid ... p-dungeon/

And now we've got to deal with Amazon RANK STRIPPING.

It's not as sexy as it sounds. Yesterday Amazon stripped all erotica books of store-wide rank. They still have sub-cat ranking, but it looks like they are making it much harder for readers to find erotica. So writers, if your super heroine books are categorized as erotica, you might want to take a look.

Hooo boy.

Is the situation any better over at Smashwords or any of the other big book-selling sites?

Hurm, disappointing but not massively surprising, I guess.

Doing a quick browse of the site I still seem able to find the same books with the same searches, so it doesn't look that troubling. Is this something that only affects people with a filter of some kind? I'm still impressed Amazon has the balls to host and distribute SHIP content. Could this even be seen as an encouraging sign - that they would rather partition racy, potentially offence content from those who don't wish to find it, rather than raise the bar of what they are willing to sell?

Either way, thanks for the heads up.

Void wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Hurm, disappointing but not massively surprising, I guess.

Doing a quick browse of the site I still seem able to find the same books with the same searches, so it doesn't look that troubling. Is this something that only affects people with a filter of some kind? I'm still impressed Amazon has the balls to host and distribute SHIP content. Could this even be seen as an encouraging sign - that they would rather partition racy, potentially offence content from those who don't wish to find it, rather than raise the bar of what they are willing to sell?

Either way, thanks for the heads up.

Amazon could be taking the long view. There are people who would want certain books banned depending on their politics, some who would demand Amazon support the BDS.

You start appeasing one group it never stops.

when Barnes and Noble was the dominant book seller, there were plenty of people demanding the erotica and sex and relationship sections be removed

Smashwords still seems the most open to erotica and heroine peril books. Barnes & Noble had a mini-purge of erotica in 2017, but are still accepting it.

They don't want people who aren't looking for erotica to find it by accident -- because the vast majority of customers who aren't looking for erotica don't want it cluttering their search results.

But Amazon wants everybody to buy everything from Amazon. And some people want to buy erotica.

Writers Beware!

Starting in April, Amazon has begun targeting writers in Select / Kindle Unlimited for CHEATING. Basically, if an auto-bot borrows and reads your book, they take away HALF of all of your page reads, then threaten to terminate your account if it EVER happens again.

Well, as a writer, I cannot control who borrows my books in KU, so to save my account I am being forced to pull all of my books out of the program. Honesty, I earned half my income from borrows, but I can take the chance. This is how I earn a living.

So think twice before placing your books in Amazon's Select/Kindle Unlmited program. They have no mercy, compassion, and will terminale you in a heartbeat if a bad actor you have no control over reads your book.

Thanks for the heads up Don

Disciple (our story mod) It might be an idea to flag this up in some way in our story sections for a spell just to draw peoples attention to it

tallyho wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Thanks for the heads up Don

Disciple (our story mod) It might be an idea to flag this up in some way in our story sections for a spell just to draw peoples attention to it

Not a bad idea.

@MightyHypnotic could you move/duplicate this to the stories section when you get the chance?

Done. I also stickied the post.

Thanks. People need to understand the danger of Select / KU on Amazon.

OOOhhh, you guys are talking about real writers. Phew, I'm safe. But man, this sounds sucky, it's like there's no decent burden of proof to just junk someones reputation or livelihood. There's got to be a better way ....

Just a quick question... Are there any sites selling ebooks belonging to explicitly erotic categories, where the author can self-publish?
It would be a way to avoid the "Amazon dungeon" and other harassment...

Heads up to writers:

This week, obviously to celebrate Thanksgiving, Barnes & Noble cut our royalty rate from 65 percent to 40 percent. Yep, more than one third of you royalties is gone.

Readers, everyone else pays the writers better than Barnes & Noble. So buy at Amazon or Smashwords (who pays best rates) to help your favorite writers keep writing.

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by... bitterness, I guess.

Let me get this straight... the author does all the heavy lifting of creating the intriguing story arc, the captivating characters that draw in readers and the clever plot twists that amaze and delight everyone and yet now only receive less than half of the money from these efforts and the freaking distributors get the lion's share of things? Yep! Sounds fair to me.

DrDominator9 wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Let me get this straight... the author does all the heavy lifting of creating the intriguing story arc, the captivating characters that draw in readers and the clever plot twists that amaze and delight everyone and yet now only receive less than half of the money from these efforts and the freaking distributors get the lion's share of things? Yep! Sounds fair to me.

Yep. Thank God they can keep paying heir CEO millions. We wouldn't want him to "downsize" his mansion or anything. Besides, writers are used to being poor. Not a problem. Right?

Mans needs moar yachts.

Okay, I don't know if it was glitch at Barnes & Noble, or there was more push back than anticipated, but B&N is paying the original royalty rate, backdated to the 19th of November. So my panic attack was a waste of time. LOL

Panic is a survival instinct. So its good to panic.On occasion.
Picnic isnt though so dont get them confused

I'd rather have a picnic attack than a panic attack, because...FOOD.

Panic creates backlash, which (sometimes) creates walkback.

Glad to hear it worked out!

arkane wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Just a quick question... Are there any sites selling ebooks belonging to explicitly erotic categories, where the author can self-publish?
It would be a way to avoid the "Amazon dungeon" and other harassment...

Not that I know of. If anyone else finds such a site let us all know.

BTW, Amazon took a lot of heat for their heavy handed ban hammer approach, so have backed off a lot. They are a "little" more careful before banning a writer now.

Boy...talk about snail mail.