As an author of erotica, I thread a fine line when creating a cover for my porn. I like a cover that is sexy and eye catching, while not being too far over the edge. You may not realize it but Amazon and Apple are very particular about cover images.

Butt shots are out, nudity naturally, and a lot of things that may surprise you. While you can get away with most images on Kinky Literature, SmashWords, or Excitica other sites are not so friendly to writers of erotica.

The bad thing about all this is that you typically don’t know that you got kicked to the curb unless you continually monitor the various distributors and they don’t make it easy to figure out either. Sometimes a story will be fine for weeks and then reranked.

If Amazon thinks your cover is too explicit, what they will do is slap an “Adult” rating on it. Now in normal situations, you’d think that erotica should have an Adult rating rather than “Safe” but what Amazon does is filter you out of the search engines so your story is basically unfindable without knowing the exact title.

For an author of erotica, this is the kiss of death because if readers can’t find your smut, then they can’t buy it. As an author, it sometimes appears that the decision is somewhat arbitrary and they will never tell you exactly why you were thrown under the bus but only that you violated the rules.

In some cases, I’ve had to make multiple submissions on stores to get the adult rating taken off and even have one story that Amazon refuses to rate as “Safe”. Alyson Discovers the Glory Hole is one that I’ve finally given up on and is a best seller at other sites such as SmashWords or KinkyLiterature. You can find the story at Amazon if you know where to look but otherwise it’s invisible.

P.S. The cover you see there is the one I originally published until I realized that Amazon and Apple don’t like butts.

A popular theme is incest and it’s almost comical to see authors trying to figure out how to get past the Amazon censors. Now I think that currently Step Dads or Step Daughters are still okay but that will probably change.

I enjoy writing erotica and specialize in what is known as “stroke erotica” or smut that is not romantic erotica but basically fucking and sucking, as we say in the Lifestyle. Stroke stories are those that you read in the bathroom or under the sheet with a flashlight.

A lot of stroke stuff is really poorly written and riddled with typos and poor English structure. I’d like to think that my porn is “Smut with a plot” and well written.

While the story line is not always complex, I’ve created a set of characters that inhabit most of my stories. I may dabble in BDSM but most of my stuff is HEA or Happily Ever After.

HEA is themed from fairy tales where the good guy get the fair damsel and rides off into the sunset with her. A lot of porn is not HEA and typically involves cheating and divorce. Wifey and I are happily married and we’ve always enjoyed the lifestyle, which for us doesn’t mean cheating and fighting. So I use my life experiences along with my vivid imagination to create my stories.

You can check out my erotica at KinkyLiterature by clicking here.
Amazon by clicking here.
SmashWords by clicking here.
Apple by clicking here.