A big blow to the romance community has surfaced as romance and erotica authors are having their titles on Amazon stripped of their ranks and reviews.
Towards the end of March, the romance community began to notice romance and erotic novels being stripped of their ranks and/or reviews, without an explanation.
Although Amazon has yet to make a statement about what’s going on, it’s clear that any book that contains adult content could be stripped. Of course that’s devastating to both authors and readers. Both of these things allow authors to successfully sell their works and helps readers to find titles they would be interested in.
In an effort to try and save their reviews and rankings, some romance/erotica authors have taken to removing any keywords that might cause their titles to be stripped. For those that have published in the erotica category, it might prove even more difficult to protect their books from these changes.
Since Amazon isn’t being transparent about what is happening, it’s not clear why these novels are being stripped. Many authors believe it could be in response to the FOSTA bill, while others believe it could be an internal update from Amazon to push these books off the ranks.
The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) was touted as a bill to make everyone safer by creating accountability for internet companies. However, the bill was met with great backlash for many reasons, including the amount of censorship it would allow.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains, the bill will “force online platforms to police their users’ speech more forcefully than ever before.”
One of the first major impacts of the bill was that Craigslist pulled down its personal ads section. And shortly after, the romance community started noticing abnormal activity on Amazon regarding erotica titles, as well as romance titles.
Romance Writers of America seems to be looking into the matter:
We've been in touch with Amazon, providing them with examples, and will report more as we know more. https://t.co/2rdmQrt0UC
— RWA (@romancewriters) March 27, 2018
If you've experienced issues with your Amazon rankings/your books being erroneously reclassified, please contact carol.ritter@rwa.org AND Amazon at crm-sra-compliance@amazon.com. We are currently investigating this matter. All info provided by members is helpful and appreciated.
— RWA (@romancewriters) March 28, 2018
New York Times bestselling romance author CD Reiss also took to Twitter to explain some of the changes she had seen to her own titles on Amazon:
<thread> I like data. By data I mean I don't like getting emotional when Amazon does weird stuff like stripping rank from titles with hot stuff.
When something like this happens – AND SOMETHING ALWAYS DOES – I like to observe.
The first thing I observed was my own titles 1/— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
I have two stripped English language titles. For the purpose of this discussion, I'm using the word "stripped" when the title looks like this. 2/ pic.twitter.com/Gt3KXXzINl
— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
This is not the same as the erotica dungeon, where books aren't searchable and don't show up in also boughts. "Stripped" for the purpose of this thread means the title is searchable, also-bought-ed, but not in overall rankings. The title above looks like this. No dungeon. 3/ pic.twitter.com/tfZEgnatEd
— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
The dungeon looks like this on https://t.co/kWI6EBglaJ.
None of my books are dungeoned, but this is my friend Violet's. You can see the big red ADULT. This book is unavailable in search and also-boughts. 4/ pic.twitter.com/omR0SDpnrM— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
I have seen a keyword-based erotica suppression in the past. Books with erotic keywords showed up in search, but not also-boughts. It was a netherworld between the normal and the dungeon.
This rank-stripping is yet another level. 5/— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
Below is a normal book. There's a rank and an overall ranking of 34K and change. 6/ pic.twitter.com/aXYfS1PNps
— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
Below here is my book USE. You'll see there are only category rankings.
Also take note of the category the books are in, because this is where it gets weird. 7/ pic.twitter.com/BfJMbq9MB5— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
These are the keywords and categories for USE.
Note their complete lack of erotic content.
These particular books are quite experimental and artsy. Indeed, there's sexual content, but it's edgy and makes a point about being human.
(I appreciate porn, but this book isn't that) 8/ pic.twitter.com/ApLMBzXPU8— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
As a side note, USE had a trigger warning when it was released in 2014.
"Trigger warning – this book contains non-consensual sex presented in a non-erotic fashion."
For that, the book was banned. I got it unbanned, but that's something to note for later. 9/— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
@ReidRomance can tell me if that's cause or correlation.
But until then, I have more to share, because you'd think the content was the cause, but….no.
(to get it out now so I can go on to other things, I think the dungeon goes on the book's PERMANENT RECORD) 10/ pic.twitter.com/zDWaTIDYH5— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
So if your book hasn't been in the dungeon, what is it?
Well, I need to disprove content right away. I have nine German translations.
Some are stripped, some are not.
To wit…..
Singen – not stripped. 11/ pic.twitter.com/tDsT1mU1bD— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
Betören – stripped.
12/ pic.twitter.com/lskziT3WyK— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
Unterwerfen – stripped.
13/ pic.twitter.com/QYspBCd0Lk— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
Widerstehen – not stripped.
14/ pic.twitter.com/q9oJlGfeE3— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
What's the correlation? (or cause)
The category. With the exception of USE, which had a red mark on its permanent record, all the stripped books are categorized in erotica but the keywords are all EXACTLY the same..— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
(which begs the question of why I'd put some of the German books in erotica and not others)…to which I'd answer, "Erotic is in the eye of the writer even if the writer doesn't know what she's doing."
OK so we know it's not content (German books)
We know it's not keywords. 15/— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
We might think it could be category, but USE kind of defies that because it's not in erotica.
There's the whole THIS GOES ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD thing but how to prove?
I think this does… 16/— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
BREATHE – rightfully categorized in erotica. English language. Stripped to the bare bone, people.
Category and keywords from my KDP dash are below…. 17/ pic.twitter.com/A4ilwgNhgc— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
I have no idea why/how you get stripped, but if someone put a gun to my head I'd say I know at least two ways
1) Have an ADULT tag in your past or present
2) Be categorized EROTICA or EROTIC ROMANCE
(which used to be two different things but now apparently they're the same) /18— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
I'm removing one German title from the erotica category because the sex is vanilla and integral to the story. It would be happier in romance anyway. I have no idea if it will be unstripped. We'll see. /19
</thread>— CD Reiss (@CDReisswriter) March 28, 2018
For now it’s a waiting game to see how far this will go and how big of an effect it will have on the romance community. One thing is for sure though: Authors aren’t likely to take this censorship lightly.