Charlie J Forrest

Hi All,

Well, those who pay lots of attention to these things (Hi Mum!) will have spotted a growing discrepancy between the cover art I post here and the cover art and, indeed, titles as they appear on Amazon. There’s a reason for this and, gutted though I am to say it, it all comes down to money.

Put simply, following the big hoo-ha last year about e-book erotica, Amazon is clamping down on anything they deem “shocking” in the title, cover or blurb of an e-book. They’re not really trying to be prudes about what goes on inside the book (Hooray! Cock balls pussy cunt fanny cum spunk!) but they have started putting stealthy ‘filters’ on things that do appear ‘adult’. They’re still available, but if you go onto the main page and type in a search term, anything filtered won’t show up.

In principle this is to protect people who aren’t interested in erotica from having their search results peppered with diaper porn, pony play, or all the other fun things I keep meaning to get around to writing (more on that soon). But it’s not applied uniformly and (again sorry for bringing business into this) there’s a big disparity between how a book performs when it is and isn’t filtered. If they made it standard that anything categorised as ‘erotica’ won;t show up in whole site searches then that’s one thing, but this simply isn;t the case. So, in these circumstances, the only viable option for a poor newbie trying to make it, is to pander to their requirements and put up covers that they don’t deem to be ‘shocking’.

This can make it very difficult when you realise they’ve started putting filters on books that include the word ‘milk’ and ‘lactation’ on the cover… especially if you’ve just released an incredibly hot, exciting and enjoyable romp about said fetish. [Subtle hint: go read it; it’s awesome! It has firemen in it!].

No real reason for this, I just love the picture!

I was faced with the very real problem of how to tell the reader what they’re getting without shooting myself in the foot. I eventually opted for “Cream Tea” for the Amazon title, mainly because tea plays an important part in the plot and, well, between the word ‘cream’ and the picture of an ecstatic woman having thick white liquid poured over her face, I hoped it would get the message across.

But this is getting ridiculous. I have literally no idea how I’ll get my next few titles out without plain omitting what they’ve got in them. So, with that in mind I’m finally getting my behind in gear and looking at other publishing outlets. It’s going to take a while but, all being well, my future releases should also become available on i-tunes, Nook, Kobo and assorted other places and, most importantly, they should be released with their proper titles, so you can know what you’re getting, and get what you’re wanting.