For writers of erotica, one of our worst fears is that Amazon will throw our story into the Adult Dungeon, where it will languish unseen and unread!
Previously, when Amazon content ranked your story as “Adult” and not “Safe,” then it would be excluded from the search engines. When this happens, a potential reader would need a direct link to the story for it to show up and for most of us, that is the kiss of death.
Apparently, without any fanfare, Amazon has changed their policy about erotic stories. Now a story is ranked Adult but is not excluded from Amazon’s search engines. At least, this is the story that I’ve been told, and it appears to be true.
Backing up a few weeks, I published Idle Hands, a hot tale about bored cheating wives and the sordid life they lead. Almost the instant, I clicked Publish, the story was ranked Adult! WTF I said it wasn’t even available and Amazon threw Idle Hands into the dungeon.
To find out how your stories are ranked, use SalesRankExpress to check. Just fill out the search criteria and look for the Content Rating. If it says “Adult,” then you are in the dungeon.
After finding Idle Hands strapped to the cross and presumably being beaten into submission, I fired off a letter of “Why Me?” After a few days, I got a letter stating that it was being ranked as Safe and would show up in the searches.
I kept checking SalesRankExpress, and the story stayed Adult. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and asked again. I got the same answer and the story stayed ranked Adult.
After waiting with bated breath, I wrote again and this time I got a different response. The appropriate part is below:
Upon receiving your email, I understand that you would like to know how to confirm if a book’s content is considered adult or not.
Please know only our Review Team can determine if your book’s content is rated adult safe or not. This process happens when you submit you book for publishing, it goes into a review states for a period of 72 hours before going live.
For more information, please see on link below KDP content guidelines:
https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/A3KIRDTX1UQJX0
Also I would like to mention that if you book is considered adult content it will not be excluded from the Amazon search engines.
For reads to find your book on our platform, they would need to be over 18 and logged into their accounts in order to locate your book.
Notwithstanding, the urge to correct his English, I realized that apparently, Amazon is taking the step I’ve been begging for them to take.
I did some minor editorial changes to another story, The Dancer, which was previously ranked Safe and as soon as I published the revised story, it went to Adult.
If I use a different account and search for my “Adult” stories, they now seem to show up. One story, Alyson Discovers the Glory Hole, has always been Adult despite multiple attempts. Now if I search for “Glory Hole,” my story shows up in a general search, which appears to confirm that Amazon now is ranking new erotica as Adult but not keeping it out of the search engines.
If anyone has a comment on this, please share as writers of erotica need to know.
Larry Archer's World (LarryArcher.blog) 
Reblogged this on M.R. Leenysman, Erotica Author and commented:
This is great news for erotica authors. It still looks like your readers have to be logged into a profile that lets them see erotica, but at least they can find your books!
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If you find out any different let me know but I’m cautiously optimistic.
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that cool! 😀
i just started posting my stuff to Amazon and i was a little afraid.
https://www.kinkyliterature.com/book/6112-rain-down-temple-prequel-to-dakota-son-/
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Use SalesRankExpress.com to check and if your stories are marked Adult instead of Safe, try using a different login to Amazon and search for your stories. If they show up in generic searches, you’re good. If you don’t see it working let me know as I’m still not 100% convinced about this.
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Your Rain Down Temple story is currently marked as Safe but I’d check it every few weeks to be sure.
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Not getting the same mileage from my login, Larry.
I logged in and searched Larry Archer Idle Hands and got nothing. I searched Larry Archer Dancer and got the sequel to your dungeoned The Dancer.
Amazon’s response you quoted is consistent with prior practice. If you login and disable the adult filter (ie declare yourself as an adult) then dungeoned titles are included in search results.
Another confounding factor is that if you search with the precise title, you will get a dungeoned title even without the filter disabled or having a link.
Are you sure you didn’t disable the filter recently and forget? Try clearing your cookies or using incognito browsing and see if you’re still good.
Anyway, glad it’s working for you, but no change for AU customers that I can see.
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Belinda,
I’m confused and cannot duplicate your results. I went to Amazon.com.au and searched for “Larry Archer Idle Hands” and the story popped right up. I don’t understand why it didn’t work for you? I wasn’t even logged in and it still found my stories in the AU? Possibly searching from an IP address in AU returns different results.
Then I searched for “Larry Archer” in Books and it seemed to return all of my stories even those marked “Adult”. SalesRankExpress only lets me search in the US and UK. Searching the UK returned what appeared to be the same results as the US search.
I’m searching on my “straight” computer that doesn’t have any smut on it and is logged into a different Amazon account.
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Belinda I just used my VPN to connect to a site in Melbourne and used Edge (which I don’t normally use) on my non-smut computer. Searching for “Larry Archer” in books, it brought up all my stories including the ones ranked Adult. Would you try your test again?
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Belinda, I must confess I only tried the US Amazon which allows me to find my Adult stories if I log in as an adult using a separate computer that never sees my smut. This is what the guy from Amazon emailed me is that Adult stuff shows up in the US but apparently not in Australia. That’s too bad as 17.1% of my sales come from down under and you blokes are my second best customer behind us heathens across the pond.
I couldn’t find a title authored solely by you that was Adult. Girl, you need to up your game! But the book Sex and Sorcery (S&S 1) which is ranked Adult came up straight away at the US site when searched by me with a different login.
Hopefully, this change in terms will propagate throughout the world! Thanks for taking the time to make an informed response, but that’s nothing short of what I would expect from you.
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My adult title is still blocked unless I’m logged in to Amazon. My trick to get around this is to link the paperback to the kindle version. The paperback didn’t get Adult tag, so it shows up in search and is linked to the ebook.
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Huck – how did you manage to have the paperback edition of the same book be marked safe?
Larry – with Amazon, nothing is every simple, is it?
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Ingenious Huck!
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I did a search of a few authors using SalesRankExpress.com who I thought might have material classified as adult.
On two of them (Erotic Jill & J. S. Deacon) i could see books on their author page that were marked as “adult” by SalesRankExpress.com.
This was Amazon US and I was logged in.
Not sure if Amazon applies the same rules Larry described regarding searching that they do to viewing an author’s page, or SalesRankExpress.com wasn’t correct on the Adult rating.
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Mark – I think SalesRankExpress is still working okay and am more convinced that Amazon is relaxing their censorship. Previously if you had a book ranked as “Adult,” it would not show up in searches on Amazon. “Alyson Discovers the Glory Hole” is one of my Adult stories that I have not been able to get out of the dungeon but now the story comes up in searches where it previously didn’t.
I’m not sure what you mean by “Not sure if Amazon applies the same rules Larry described regarding searching that they do to viewing an author’s page, or SalesRankExpress.com wasn’t correct on the Adult rating.” but all of my stories show up on my author page including the ones marked adult. http://amazon.com/author/larryarcher
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Larry,
Sorry I wasn’t clear.
What I meant was that if one was logged in to an “adult” account, then Amazon would not only show results flagged as “adult” when one searched, but also when viewing an author’s page, just as you describe.for your page.
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True, and that’s why I sign in with a different computer under a different login to try and understand what the average reader sees.
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