Update on Recent Amazon Issues

Interesting response from Amazon...

Except they constantly throw books NOT originally listed in BISAC's "FIC005000 FICTION / Erotica" series of headings into "Erotica" for no apparent reason -- meaning no reason they will provide the author. I was told one of my books was moved (from Romance > Historical > Ancient World) to Erotica because the male model on the cover was shirtless. Seriously. I had to republish this book with a new ASIN in order to get my romance out of the "Erotica Dungeon".

And only ROMANCE is affected by this. Amazon never throws books from Sci-fi, Fantasy, Thriller, or any other traditionally male genre into Erotica. Only Romance.

RWA needs to no longer accept Amazon's deceptive and evasive responses from corporate tools. They have a strategic campaign to repress fiction written (mostly) by and for women. It's pure sexism from what is practically a monopoly.

As Regina mentioned, the bigger issue here is that Amazon, in an authoritarian move, reclassifies books into Erotica on their own without notification. Based on simple perception or maybe a misunderstanding of the definition of Erotica as opposed to Romance, they smack a virtual scarlet letter on books that give out any sexy vibes.

None of our books are classified as Erotica in their category selection, none of them contain problematic terms in the description nor in the keywords, yet six of them are currently buried in the Erotica dungeon so deep you can't find it even by searching for title+author name. It turns 0 results even though it *is* live in the store. You have to have a direct link to find it.

When contacted, they give silly reasons like the one Regina got about the shirtless model.

A large number of  Romance covers uses shirtless models. Trad or Indie. If they were to send all books with shirtless models or suggestive covers to jail, there would be very few left to represent the genre.

Because of lack of representation, we are ignored or told that the issue is closed and we can't complain under the threat of having the book pulled or account terminated.

We'll contact the email provided, but honestly, we have no high expectations to have this resolved unless there's pressure from higher-ups.

I think the page stuffing and scammers were getting out of hand. They were completely monopolizing the romance algorithms. It just seems like they've done a sweeping action instead of going through the usual sustpects and figuring out who the offenders are. I don't do shirtless men on my covers, and have actually seen a boost in sales since they took this action, but there has to be some middle ground. Shirtless men are way to common throughout romance to be considered offensive or edgy. It's ridiculous. I'm so sorry this has negatively impacted legitimate authors. Thanks for keeping us updated.