Amazon? Well, it´s complicated.
The many faces of censorship: When it comes to eBooks, Amazon has virtually swept the global market.
And while it has opened the door for self-publishing authors, it has now all the control over a huge part of the literature business.
Why this is bad?
Well, the company subjects us and everyone else to their privacy policies.
And they are not erotica-friendly.
Erotic literature makes at least 10% of the book market worldwide.
Yet, when you try buying erotica on Amazon it feels like entering a dungeon. The “dirty” side of the Kindle store.
And on top of that, erotica authors have been experiencing systematic censorship on their work.
How does Amazon’s censorship work?
First, you need to understand that there are different ways for your eBook to be censored. It can be;
• Filtered as “adult” content – meaning it leaves the mainstream ranks, including “best-sellers” and can only be found on the specific adult session.
• Shadowbanned – This is the one censorship we have faced the most at BERLINABLE.
An eBook becomes unsearchable. So, while it’s still for sale on Amazon, you can only reach it with a direct link.
• Struck out completely – In some cases, authors are given the opportunity to “fix” the content (we have to do this quite often with our cover art) And then, upload the content again.
But many strikes can cause the author’s page to be banned.
Now we have covered what could happen to your eBook (and sales).
Let’s dive into some of the possible causes of censorship. And this is where it gets confusing.
Amazon’s content guidelines are pretty vague. They offer very little explanation of what is accepted and what is not.
The official statement says, “as a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable.
That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate material.”
What exactly counts as pornography or inappropriate material is difficult to define. But if your eBook has been censored, there could be a number of reasons why that happened. Some of them include:
• Explicit nudity, like penetration (or worse: nipples!) and/or BDSM elements on the cover and stories that content words such as “reluctance,” “master,” slave,” and others of the sort.
• “Inappropriate” sexuality: Displaying people or things that may disturb people in certain countries or communities. This can include presenting open homosexuality (yes, you´ve read right!) or transgender (and wtf some people think is not to be trusted).
• Trade-marked names and content – writing that a character decided to grab something at McDonald’s could cost the shadowbanning of your book.
Also important to remember:
• Unhappy reviews or reports from readers – If a customer flags your story as “innapropriate,” Amazon likely will censor it, as they have a customer satisfaction policy. Yes, if you disturb the neighbours, you´re kicked out.
As a small, indie erotica publisher, censorship can be extremely frustrating.
So much work for various professionals goes into putting a book out.
Working on a project for months only to have it shadowbanned the day after the launch is disappointing.
Additionally, the process of trying to understand the censorship is even worse.
Amazon doesn’t provide direct answers to what caused the censorship in the first place (as a lot of times the algorithm makes the decision).
They leave us in the dark to how the stories violate policy.
Especially if the policy is very blurry to begin with. Not to mention the fact that we never get a notification on an eBook having a content problem.
Not only Amazon censors – Censorship attacks from all sides
These covers were filed as “inappropriate” by iTunes:
Social media and marketing Services are no safe place either
Instagram & Co have been making our lives absolute hell. Censorship, shadow-banning and punishment.
In other words, they constantly attack us and we can’t fight back – without risking to get ourselves deleted.
This cover especially caught Instagram’s attention, because they deleted it for no reason. You can’t see nipples, sexual organs or anything inappropriate.
We had to stop using Mailchimp!
We didn’t even notice, but a few colleagues in the market and bloggers of trust have opened our eyes.
Mailchimp, our mail provider from the get-go has now jumped in the same pot with Amazon, Instagram and Co.
Their non-acceptable use policy has welcomed a new bullet point: pornography/sexually explicit content!
Blogger Emma Austin has written a pretty good article on this topic and I advise you to go read it, now.
Great, another platform making our jobs harder, harder than dealing drugs.
Indie authors can’t live without Amazon? BERLINABLE says otherwise!
It is time to build platforms far away from the corporates. That´s why we started BERLINABLE.
Since we have launched our own platform, we have been fighting to become an erotic eBook retailer independent from Amazon, with an approach to sex we believe is healthier.
Also Amazon puts a lot of censorship rules in place to draw the limits around taboo content.
But the problem is, with blurry guidelines, these limits are quite loose. For example, a story with incest is one of the best-selling erotic novels in Amazon today.
Of course, we don’t want to offer rape & abuse manuals dressed as fiction. But consented BDSM play between adults can involve words such as “master” with no harm to anyone involved.
While we do understand how important it is to produce ethical erotic content, we believe there are other ways of doing it which don’t include arbitrary censorship.
In order to ensure offering ethical porn, BERLINABLE has a series of rules:
• Clear guidelines: Outside of fantasy and thriller; three rules must apply to all stories. No incest, no bestiality, no paedophilia.
• Content disclaimers: At the end of every story, we promote safe-sex and information about certain practices.
For example, BDSM books advise readers to look into consent, safewords & aftercare.
• Ethical collaboration: Our authors and collaborators are a part of the BERLINABLE family. They have total creative freedom over the stories they put out.
• Beautiful covers: Because like we said, sex is art. We don’t need to censor nudity in our covers; we just make sure it means something.
• We fight to represent minorities: We are not here to promote the oppression of certain groups using sex as a tool – quite the contrary.
Our authors come from different backgrounds, races, genders and sexual orientations.
We encourage them to write about their own experiences, fighting the status quo from the inside.
You are a self-publishing erotica author? Then it might be worth looking at our tips.
Review your books and see if they do better in the rankings.
You want to join us in this fight against censorship?
Become an author!
Click here to learn more *PENG*
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