Forum: Author Hangout

Erotica for "incest" returns several thousand results.

Ayep, just means a complaint hasn't been lodged yet, or the sales are so high Amazon doesn't want to upset the golden goose, or the author is too big to push too hard.

For a few dozen, I could buy that, but for thousands, I don't think so.

The Amazon TOS specifies that any 'explicit' depiction of incest is grounds for banning an author outright, as is any depiction of underaged (i.e. under 18) incidents or description of sex. What authors get away with is another thing.

I won't get into whether it's right or not, I'm only explaining how Amazon deals with it. Since Lulu deals with Amazon, they follow their dictates (i.e. any complaint is the same as explicit guilt).

In my case, since "The Catalyst" spanned several books before the issue of incest was ever explicitly broached, no one ever complained so it was never technically an issue, but for this new book, it's broached in the fist few chapters.

but for thousands, I don't think so.

It depends on the total business they get, not just the one book. But they're a law unto themselves and they never consult with the authors before banning them. Hell, the bitched about Power Tool several years ago, but still display it as for sale through them.

Strange, searching Amazon.com with their internal search engine under Kindle eBooks : Literature & Fiction : Erotica for "incest" returns several thousand results.

Funny thing about that. Despite Lulu's claim that Amazon and others include pseudo-incest in their prohibitions, at Amazon the first page of results searching "sibling incest kindle" turned up 11 fiction results, every single one of them pseudo-incest, i.e., a step- or adopted sibling or parent (so their search engine is crappy). The first five:

In the Barn (Selena Kitt)-adopted brother
Man of the House (Felicia Scott)-stepfather
Forbidden Taboo (unk)-stepfather
Bound by my stepbrother
Taken by my Twin Stepbrothers

For a little extra laugh, at least two titles included "Billionaire."

For us incest fans, pseudo-incest doesn't cut it.

bb

11 fiction results, every single one of them pseudo-incest,

More to the point, can anyone turn up a book at Amazon that is (a) fiction and (b) true incest?

OK, I cheated. Spring Break in Napa at Lulu includes "incest" as a key word. It has sibling incest, nothing pseudo about it. "Spring Break" is also listed at Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Spring-Break-Napa-California-Central-ebook/dp/B00U6E8K4I

although I can't find any key words at all in that listing.

(This isn't an invitation to call up Amazon and tell them, thanks very much.)

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The big stickler for these issues is Amazon itself, as they won't allow any story featuring under 18 characters or any reference to incest. However, they've got no way of determining it. So if you're receiving a complaint, it means they (Lulu in this case) got a complaint (probably from Amazon, though they didn't specify) about the book and they've pulled it. That means, the book won't be available to anyone unless you rectify the issue.

Well, that's not quite the way it's working. Julie's Spring is still available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Julies-Spring-Joe-Bondi-Beach-ebook/dp/B015D3WYGQ, and Lulu's message said they would keep it available on the Lulu marketplace until I revised it to meet whichever of their [long list of bad things] the book contravened.

Of course, they could indeed pull it from Amazon and their other partners any time they want, but they didn't pull it a year ago when I had the same notice, so there's no telling what they'll do now.

bb

Well, that's not quite the way it's working. Julie's Spring is still available at Amazon:

It's the same principal, though Amazon isn't the culprit this time. Chances are, there was a complaint filed on Nook, Google, Apple or Kobo (which, since it serves a mostly international crowd, is often more judgmental than the more Western sites (overly racist comment?).

The point is, these notices are sent because a single complaint was registered from one of your sales sites. If Amazon still offers it, and Lulu is leaving it on their marketplace, then the complaint must have originated on one of the other sites.

I'd check those sites to see whether there were any negative reviews complaining about the contents of the story. That won't help much, as it won't resolve the complaint, but it accounts for the difference between the different responses. Generally, you submit, no one analyzes the stories, until someone complains, and then everyone flies into a panic!

For many thousands of years there was an Internationally recognised Age of Consent, the last remnants of it is still celebrated by some communities when a girl is 13 and a boy is 14 and they're declared to be adults by the ancient rules. From the middle ages on until the mid 1800s the was no such thing as an age of consent at all in most Western societies. What we have today is a modern law that was introduced to help control the population and give the powers that be authority over the behaviours of young people.

One major problem with such a ruling as "Age of Consent" is that there is no one standard age which applies to every place. Every state and country has its own "Age of Consent"

In the U.S., character age for porn is set by the Federal government at 18. Anything under 18 is child porn. It doesn't matter what the age of consent is in the state.

Notice I said every country. In other words a world wide standard age that covers all nations and cultures. There can be a difference even between neighboring countries.

The role of organizations like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Apple and Kobo have largely established a legal precident for 18 as the international legal standard. Individual countries can fight it in court if they want, but they can only charge someone for violations if they reside inside their countries. Thus anyone who fights to challenge the 18-year-old standard stand to face an economic boycott by authors/movie studios/publishers. No economic organization wants to deal with the uncertainty of nonstandard legal standing. They just won't sell to those markets.

Sorry, but no, they haven't established a legal precedent.

Sorry, I meant a 'defacto standard' instead of a 'legal standard'. In lieu of any existing standards, those--despite a lack of historic precedent--often tend to sway public and court opinions (either positively or negatively).

Second, there is little history in the US of courts being swayed by such defacto standards in any way, particularly when it comes to criminal matters. The US constitution is explicitly hostile to common law crimes.

First, I wasn't talking U.S. courts, and secondly, it's more a matter of 3rd and 4th world countries either 'playing ball' by going along with the international companies or not being allowed access to the global markets. Thus it has less to do with law than 'Do you wanna buy cheap shit or not?' Any nation that questions the sales legally can expect to be frozen out of the market, which is likely to cause a revolt among their people who prefer the international market of their local, inefficient markets. (In other words, it's a 'fixed' game with unfair rules.)

Congress passed a virtual child porn band in 1996

What sort of songs did they play and sing?

What sort of songs did they play and sing?

I don't know what they sing, but boy, oh, boy, do they ever play!

@philhebe

From reading this topic it appears there isn't a chance in hell in getting it published.

That's why God invented self-publishing (because he got tired of reading what he's told everyone over the years and wanted some better reading material).

Hell, back in the early 50's my father got a Masters in Church History and published a scathing paper about the Methodist Church, but got disillusioned when no publisher would even consider it. As a result, he lost the desire to ever write or publish anything ever again, but he remained a dedicated writer (letters, notes, sermons, etc.) for his entire life.

That's why God invented self-publishing

God got really fed up with how his messages were so badly distorted by church leaders to increase their personal power.

God got really fed up with how his messages were so badly distorted by church leaders to increase their personal power.

Not that would be a fun story to write: God, fed up with not being listened to, starts self-publishing (since there isn't a religious publisher who'll consider his works) fictional stories containing sex (after all, God must like sex since he based the entire world around it, right?), only to have the Christians of the world harass him with hate mail, not for his depictions of religion, but for his kinky, erotic sex scenes!

Not that would be a fun story to write:

Well, keep watching, it's a part of a work in progress, except I have God getting fed up and helping someone to work for him fixing it up. Not sure when I'll get it finished.

Edit to add: he also tasks the guy with doing the usual "Go forth and multiply" to clean up the gene pool.

Technically, that is for the ages of models/actors/actresses, not for characters.

As of yet, virtual child porn is legal in the US.

True. I was differentiating between the age of consent to have sex and the legal age to make porn. As to characters in fiction, it's all about passing the Miller Test which is very subjective.

True, but the Miller test is about general obscenity law, not child pornography, so the purported ages of the characters would be of little relevance.

Except they're more likely to go after you if the characters are under 18.

Maybe, but it isn't likely to make them more successful.

The two that I know were successful were both sites that were kiddy porn. Red Rose and Frank Downey.

Frank Downey wrote about sixteen/seventeen/eighteen-year-olds on the whole, late teenage, not something I'd call kiddie porn. and as his website is still up

Maybe I got his name wrong. The person I'm referring to was barred from using the Internet as part of the settlement.

The person I'm referring to was barred from using the Internet as part of the settlement.

And thus wasn't able to do anything about his website - what they ended up getting him on was the fact he had a link to another site that had child porn images on it.

Frank Downey

My apologies to Mr. Downey.

It was Frank McCoy.

Karen Fletcher, the woman behind Red Rose was sentenced to home confinement on a plea deal.

She was too ill to continue fighting it, so she cut a deal. All her porn was a way of releasing her anger at being treated that way as a child, more of a fictionalised versions of her early life, than anything else.

haven't found any evidence of this usage in the top few slang dictionaries suggested by Google, so the usage may have been very local and is in danger of being lost completely.

I've heard it used as "really something," i.e., not derogatory. "The fight was a real lulu." But I haven't heard it or read it recently and never often. Maybe one of the founders had a grandmother named named "Lulabelle," known to her grandchildren as "Lulu."

bb

Maybe one of the founders had a grandmother named named "Lulabelle," known to her grandchildren as "Lulu."

"That Lulabelle, and her online-book sales company, are a couple lulus!"

I've heard it used as "really something,"

Ayep, I've heard it used that way by the older people down here, as in, a great party was 'a Lulu of a bash.'

edit to add: found this stating lulu as a slang noun, meaning:

A remarkable person, object, or idea.

https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=lulu

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/lulu

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/lulu

has it as probably 19th century origin, and:

informal
An outstanding example of a particular type of person or thing: as far as nightmares went, this one was a lulu

An outstanding example of a particular type of person or thing: as far as nightmares went, this one was a lulu

Reading that usage, I can recall hearing it here in the States as well (either in the south or the midwest).

I am writing a historical novel based at the turn of the twentieth century in Chicago's red light district. It is about a fourteen year old getting swept up in white slavery. From reading this topic it appears there isn't a chance in hell in getting it published.

Since I am an attorney of the outhouse variety, I'm fully qualified to advise you on this: unless you go into detail about how your little white slave is, er, you know what 14 ways from Sunday, the mere fact that a character is under 18 years is irrelevant.

EDIT TO ADD: This assumes you're writing a real historical novel and not an excuse to show how 14-year-old girls get screwed, literally and figuratively.

bb

topic it appears there isn't a chance in hell in getting it published.

That'll depend on how graphic the sex scenes are.