If you write erotica as I do, one of the first things you learn is to avoid Amazon’s Dungeon. Amazon’s censors seem to delight in throwing me under the bus, even when I’ve been careful and followed all the rules.
One of the first stories I published was Caught Screwing Mom’s Daughter. Amazon immediately classified it as “Adult,” which in their parlance means that the writer has gotten his/her knuckles slapped with the ruler. While tiptoeing up to the line, it doesn’t cross over, but Amazon was not a happy camper with the story.
Caught Screwing Mom’s Daughter is only available from SmashWords as Amazon not only threw it into the dungeon but “BLOCKED” it and in all caps! Unlike my wife, I didn’t go to a Catholic school, but she’s told me about nuns and their rulers.
Let’s face it, people who write smut always want to bend the rules and often come close to skirting the edges of acceptable. I’ve learned my lesson while I’ve had a couple of stories that were initially classified as “Adult,” most of my stuff is acceptable to Amazon’s censors. Acceptable is probably not the right word, and tolerable would be better.
I only write what turns me on, and while I don’t expect everyone to agree. I have to assume there is a particular group of perverts that enjoy my work. Larry Archer’s novels are typically humorous and packed full of explicitly described sex scenes.
Girl-on-girl is one of my favorites, and there is little that tops watching two girls (legally aged that is) get it on. I had a woman ask me, “What about two girls always gets the guys going?”
I don’t know, but I love it when I get to watch and choke my chicken. There is just something about two or more girls getting it on that is hard to beat. Plus, as a photographer, it’s so neat to capture the scene with my camera.
Caught Screwing Mom’s Daughter is about a freshman college student who goes to his first kegger and wakes up the next morning with another freshman freshwoman in bed with him. As they start with still drunk, morning sex, Mom bursts in as she secretly installed an app on her daughter’s cell phone to be able to track her.
The result was that Amazon upchucked into their Wheaties, and the story was blocked before it got even initially accepted. The story is 12,000 words, and I think reasonably good, but hey, what do I know.
I’m Larry Archer, and I write HEA explicit stroke stories for the discriminating pervert with a bag of candy in his/her raincoat pocket. My stories always have a plot of some type, so you can tell your husband that you don’t look at the pictures but only read it for the articles.
To get a copy of Caught Screwing Mom’s Daughter for your phone, laptop, tablet, PC, or Mac use one of the links below. I always recommend Kinky Literature because they are like the room in the back of the video store where the good stuff is stored!
Buy Links:
Larry Archer's World (LarryArcher.blog) 
And if you have all this trouble, I can well imagine how much trouble I’d have with the stuff I’ve written and can write; Amazon would have a fatal stroke or heart attack… and from what you’ve talked about, they wouldn’t be the only point of sale joint who wouldn’t suffer the same fate.
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You’re probably right about that. The big thing they get their shorts in a knot about is underage, or family situations. Sometimes it’s okay to have Daughter-in-law & Daddy stuff as that’s somehow different from Daughter & Daddy or in your case Son & Daddy. The big problem I have is that they just throw you in the dungeon and (1) don’t tell you they did it and (2) don’t tell you what got you there in the first place. You can’t have anyone under 18 but if they appear to be underage, you’re out! I could write a whole post on what is not acceptable!
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Yeah… and there’s no telling what my mind will come with with – and has come up with. I could write in a more PC kind of way… but if one of my goals is to excite and stimulate readers, well, vanilla, PC shit ain’t gonna cut it – but “stepping out of bounds” absolutely works toward that end. And you should write more about your issues getting published – it will help a lot of writers understand what they can expect.
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Because, you know, when it comes to sex, everyone is fair game… if they wanna be.
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I had to check, since I didn’t remember buying this at Smashwords (I did).
However, the search engine there isn’t that great (for book tittles).
I did a search and it didn’t come up on the first page, so I changed my search for you and scrolled down till I saw it and they told me I owned the book.
BTW, the google “site” trick searching for the tittle had it as the first hit.
I wonder if this will help people find stuff in the Amazon dudgeon?
I tried this on an author who’s Amazon page is now blank, and got multiple hits in google for her books, but got one of the dogs when I clicked on the link.
Not sure if the same thing happens if a book is in the dudgeon.
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The problem with being in the dungeon is that Amazon will not suggest a book that’s in the dungeon. For example, if you’re looking for Hotwife stories, they won’t pitch a story that’s in the dungeon. That’s what hurts is a new reader searching for a story that yours matches perfectly, will never find you. Used to we could use SalesRankExpress and it would directly display if a book was “Adult” or not. Amazon changed their use of the API’s and kicked them to the curb. Now I don’t know of a definitive way to determine if your story is ranked Adult or not. It’s now somewhat of a trial and error process and the whole time the clock is ticking. When I publish an erotic story it gets higher search rankings for 2-4 weeks. So if you have problems in the first month, it really hurts sales. It’s called the “30-day cliff” and after that period, the search algorithm doesn’t give you a bump. SmashWords on the other hand ranks popularity, ratings, and sales as key factors in their search engines. If you search in the categories I publish in, you can typically find 3-5 of my stories listed and some several years old. But with Amazon as the 900# gorilla, they sell around 70% of electronic stories so we’re forced to keep licking their boots.
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Why did this particular story get Amazon’s knickers in a twist? Sounds almost vanilla to me!
Sigh. We have no power…
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As best I can tell, it was two things. The schoolgirl even though it was clearly stated she was a college student, therefore over 18 was likely the first thing. The next was that the girl’s mom got screwed by her boyfriend helped push the story down the basement stairs. I don’t know if Zon keeps track of how many times they’ve rapped you on the knuckles or not but this was one of my first stories. I hadn’t built up a track record of how I write.
They are secretive about their internal operations and I have to make educated guesses as to how they react to an erotic story, which is why dealing with them is problematic. If I didn’t make a big chunk of my money from Zon, I’d stick with SmashWords.
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After writing this blog post, I decided to contact Amazon one more time and got the answer I expected. The salient part of the response below.
===
I would like to inform you that currently we do not have such feature.
I understand your points those are valid.
However there is no option at this time, I’ll make sure to pass this request as a feedback to our development team, who will definitely think about possibility of incorporating this feature in future.
===
From the writing style, I’m assuming that the answer was generated in another country and not from Amazon headquarters, but that is just speculation on my part. My opinion is that Amazon wants to handle porn with their rubber kitchen gloves on and while they appreciate our business, they don’t want to get their hands dirty. As long as they can avoid having to deal with us, the better. I know that Selena has previously had numerous discussions regarding censorship with little success.
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Well they’re not only secretive, but they keep mucking with the web page features.
I have a few authors I follow (Yes, Larry and Lisbet are on that list).
I go to their page at Amazon frequently and have it set to sort on low to high.
Many authors put books on sale, or even free, for some period of time, and I’m checking to see if there’s a book I don’t have in that bin.
Well they used to have the “Buy now with 1 click” button be green and tell you you already own this book on the author’s page.
It got wonky for a bit a few months ago and seemed semi random if it would do that. You could reload an authors page and sometimes it would work.
Then it seemed to be fixed and working for a bit.
Now it’s not working at all. You have to load the book page to find out if you’ve already bought it.
I have no idea why they did this. It’s not like they are going to get more ad revenue from the clicks.
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Larry,
You ever read Simone Scarlet’s book “In Violation”? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00U9UD9TA/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
She claims it’s a “guide” to avoid getting tossed in the dudgeon, or banned.
Most of the reviews are positive and it’s got a 4 star rating.
I have no idea if she’s accurate in her description, but she’s got a pretty extensive library (including her other nom de plume Felicity Fleming), so one would think she’s had some experience in this area.
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I’ll check it out and it would be good to have more advice in avoiding the dungeon.
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