I have to admit I’m often a little frustrated by Amazon. So far, I have exactly two books in their system. Both are distinguished by the relationship between their characters. That is to say, their characters aren’t related at all. Not if they’re having sex with each other.
The characters in One Room are business associates, forced to share a hotel room because of a convention in town. According to one review, the story is a polemic against Christianity. The conventioneers are evangelicals, and one of the preachers does a little groping in the elevator. Two or three paragraphs, I’m thinking, do not a polemic make. This particular preacher is an asshole, which a surprising number of them are, but it’s just a passing incident and hardly different than if I’d made the jerk a Shriner or an Elk at a convention. People are known to misbehave when they’re in a town where no one knows them.
The main point here, of course, is that you can write about sex and publish the story on Amazon, but you have to be careful about how you do it. No one under eighteen can be involved in anything sexual. Incest is right out. No sex with animals, except maybe werewolves, but only when they’re human.
This is a good example of something you can’t do on Amazon. The title alone will likely get the book thrown into “blocked” status, since it certainly implies there’s incest going on. It might even get blocked for something as innocent as the author’s pen name. And, of course, there’s simply no way that cover illustration is ever going to be allowed. There are naked boobs! Children might be watching, for fuck sake! Mind you, I sort of like that effect. Even though it’s a photograph, it has the look of those old painted covers that once adorned the better sort of one-off porn novels hidden behind the counter at the smoke shop.
I’ll be honest, an author might get away with this for a while. Amazon has humans who can pass final judgment on the titles they allow, but initially you’re dealing with bots, and bots may not catch the boobs, the implication of the title, or the “cuss word” in the author’s name (I wonder if I should use that one on a title or two, but maybe change it to “Randi”). In any case, they’ll eventually catch you, and while they probably won’t ban a commercial publisher who tries to slip in an incest title from time to time, they’re a lot more likely to do so to a self-published author.
If one were to use this old Victorian photo as the basis of a story, some routes would be just fine at Amazon, while others would definitely not be. If the story suggests that this is a Victorian gentleman enjoying the company of a pair of filles de joi from the local brothel, it would probably pass muster. On the other hand, if your story implies that this is young Lord Humpe, passing the time by nibbling on his sister’s cunt while his other sister plays with his generative member, it won’t be long for the list. In actual fact, I have no idea who these people were, though a pimp and two of his stable would likely be a safe enough guess. About the only thing I can say for sure is that it’s a studio shot, since real Victorian houses didn’t have painted canvas walls behind the sofa.
You could not, in any case, actually use the photo in your book, or on the cover. Not only are there naked boobs, there’s also a naked dick. There’s a good chance they wouldn’t even allow that inside the book.
This is another good example of a book you won’t find on Amazon. You will, naturally, find it on Lot’s Cave, and on several other online marketplaces. The cover, curiously enough, might just pass muster at the river site, the model’s breasts being sufficiently covered by her hair, but the subject matter would never make it. It’s a pretty good little book, in my personal opinion, though I suppose you could argue I might be slightly prejudiced in its favor. I got a little experimental with this one, keeping the story flowing, but changing the narrator, so you end up with a continuous first-person story told by four different people. I think it works rather nicely.