Cornelia Quick

I’ve been experimenting a bit with Payhip as a platform for selling ebooks directly to readers, rather than through the big retailers like Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc. It’s a nice system: it’s easy to add titles and cross-promote them (for example, if you buy one of the Cassie Snow stories, you get 20% off the rest), and the storefront is attractive and uncluttered.

Some erotica authors whose advice I listen to have been using Payhip for their taboo output. I haven’t delved deeply into taboo topics (I do have a little somethin’ on the edge coming out next week, though …), but I have been interested in Payhip as a place where there’s a little more leeway in the covers that can be attached to ebooks.

Amazon, the 800 pound gorilla for indie publishers, is weirdly prudish about how it treats erotica. The category is almost certainly a moneymaker for them, but they’re skittish about its limitations: there are taboo topics that will get a book banned and possibly get an author’s account removed; there are words that can appear in blurbs and books that will get a book tossed in “the dungeon,” where they’re very difficult to find through normal search and promotion methods; and there are weird and inconsistent rules about what can be shown on a book’s covers.

What makes Amazon even more frustrating is that most of their rules are not clearly stated, and are not evenly applied. For example, there’s been a big discussion lately about which words for sex can be used safely in titles, and which will get you blocked, banned, or dungeon’d. Some of the big authors I follow have had books tossed in the dungeon that use the same words that I have (“pounded“, “shagged“, “groped“) without incident, no doubt because I’m selling few enough that I fly under the radar. But there’s no official list of naughty words you can consult: it’s all trial and error.

Book covers are, in some ways, an even trickier situation. Amazon doesn’t like flesh, especially female flesh: parts that could be on view at a public beach must be demurely draped if visible on a book cover. They don’t like implied nudity, either: hand bras are out, bare backs are questionable, and if a fella is shown naked from the waist up, we’d best be able to see his waistband lest we imagine he might be naked from the waist down as well. But again, not all covers in violation of the unclear rules get the treatment. It’s a bit like dealing with a prudish but near-sighted chaperone at the homecoming dance.

Payhip feels a bit more like a playground where I can experiment, so I’ve created a few alternate covers for some titles that would probably draw the ire of the Amazon chaperone. There’s nothing particularly racy in these: a little implied nudity goes a long way, but all would certainly risk a stern response from the algorithmic nanny. There are still limits — “pornography” is on their list of prohibited items, though it’s not defined in their terms, so the covers (though not the content) needs to be a bit on the coy side. But to the extent that making covers for ebooks is at all fun (I’m getting a little better at it), adding some spice increases my happiness a good 5%.

Note that on this first round of not-safe-for-Amazon editions, only the cover has changed. If you have the ebooks already, then you already have the absolutely filthiest level of smut available in these titles (and some of these are truly shameless). In the future, though, I may experiment with versions that cross some lines of taste that you can only get through Payhip: my February gangbang, for instance, will likely have a bonus scene that would be unwelcome on Amazon.

Incidentally, if you’re looking for the limits of taste in book covers, you should check out Golden Age Erotica Books, which sells ebook versions of dirty paperbacks from the ’60s through the ’80s. There are some exceptionally depraved examples on display there.