Non-con in Erotica

This is a SRS BSNS blog post, and may trigger some people as it concerns rape and the non-consent kink. Read at your own peril


There's evidently a big controversy going on right now about an indy book which was published a couple days ago which involved a woman being stalked, kidnapped, raped, and then falling in love with her rapist. I went and looked at it myself, and found the preview and categorization offensive. (The writing wasn't that good--it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good as there were a couple typos in the preview.) The preview illustrated a man who was taken out of school at a young age to help on his dad's farm after his mother died, who grew up fairly isolated (but likes it), and who committed a double homicide when he found his wife cheating on him. Just blew them away, fed them to his hogs, then called the sheriff saying he'd killed a couple of rabid raccoons HYUCK HYUCK HYUCK. The "hyucks" are mine. I dunno My mind just added them in.

That's all I've read in this book, cause I didn't want to bother with more than the preview. I think it still says something that this dude committed a double homicide within the first few pages of prose and was casual about it. But Alana, you might say, you write about your protagonists committing murder ALL THE TIME! This is true. Hence, for me to criticize this is hypocritical, yes? Not necessarily. The books where I have violence in them are first categorized as sci-fi/dark fantasy... ie supervillains. The other series where violence is going to happen is going to be categorized when necessary as "erotic horror", because that would be Delilah, and she'll go through some horrific things. Caprice, the protagonist in Villainess, is NOT put up as someone to like or admire. She admits to manipulating people, using them, and all sorts of other nasty things. Delilah is more sympathetic, but she's just begun her fall.

I had actually just observed that my two main series are complete opposites of each other. One is about someone losing her soul, and the other is about someone finding it. *shrug*

So what's the difference? The difference comes in expectation. The first book I described above? It was put under "erotic romance". Kidnapping and rape is not what I expect when I look in "erotic romance". "Erotic horror"? Sure! That sounds like it could be erotic and horrific, bring it on! Dark fantasy? Sure! Straight up horror? Sure! There are places for desires which run on the darker side, absolutely. But if someone were to pick it up thinking it wasn't so bad because it was in the erotic romance section, they're going to be very surprised.

As much as some people don't like it, rape fantasies do have a place in erotica. Many people, men and women alike, have fantasies about non-con (non-consensual), being on both ends as the aggressor or the victim. Many retailers choose not to carry non-con books (as well as books containing incest or sex with animals or sex with children, rightfully so in my opinion as all of that is gross and wrong no matter what, totally not sorry for my opinion there). Because they choose not to carry them doesn't mean those books are being "censored", which some people get worked up into a tizzy about. As a retailer, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iBooks, and whoever else get to choose what they want to sell. You can still sell it. It's not censored. But what some edgy erotica writers seem to forget is that retailers are under NO obligation to sell your books. None whatsoever. That's why you gotta play in the rules they set up if you want to sell books on that site.

All that being said, I don't have anything against noncon in erotica. It does have its place. However, it does need to be labeled correctly. If anything, it should be under "erotic horror", not "erotic romance". Rape is a horrific thing. There's no sugar coating it. And yes, many people get aroused by reading about it, but it doesn't make it less horrific. There are people who get aroused by blood, by violence, by corpses... there's literally a fetish for everything under the sun, and thus, there's a niche for everything under the sun. In my opinion, to label it anything but erotic horror is mislabeling it... and a black hat tactic. Frankly, the way the protagonist was portrayed in the first chapter of this "controversial" book sort of horrified me. I... I can't see him as a romantic protagonist. Maybe it's personal opinion? Yet the beginning didn't scream romance to me at all, and I think that's why I found it kind of offensive. I'm expecting romance. The writing read "serial killer". That sort of discordance in what you expect versus what is there is why I think a lot of people found it offensive.

EDIT: I wanted to add, and I'm going to bold this, I do NOT in ANY way condone or approve of people taking advantage of other people, ESPECIALLY when it comes to violating their bodies. The opinion above is ONLY about fiction. People who violate others are vile and horrible, whether it's via rape, assault, murder, torture, or abuse in any way, shape, or form. 

"Free" on Kindle Unlimited Isn't Fucking Free

I try not to go off (too much) on here. This is a positive place filled with smutty books and updates and some weird musings from me now and again! However, I keep seeing this all over the place... and it bugs the shit out of me.

I'm a voracious reader. I devoured Game of Thrones in five hours, just to give you an idea of the speed at which I read. Not a speed reader, but pretty fast. Because I read a lot, and also to do research for writing, I decided to enroll in Kindle Unlimited. Now, a lot of authors bitch about the low payout (and it is), and they feel like Amazon is strong-arming them. If you don't put your book into Kindle Unlimited, then it won't get the visibility other books IN KU will. However, you have to be exclusive to Amazon for the term of being in KU. Kind of sucks for an author.

However, it's fantastic for a reader. You can borrow up to ten books at a time, and I've found some fantastic books this way. Some not so good ones too. Some downright awful ones as well. But I would NEVER have tried those authors had they not been in Kindle Unlimited. In one case, reading an author's book made me a fan of hers. You basically get as many books as you can read for ten bucks a month. That's a great deal!

I pay for that service.

Let me repeat that: I PAY FOR THAT SERVICE.

Yeah, it's only ten bucks a month, and some months Amazon gets my ten bucks for free without me reading shit. Other months, I read the hell out of everything I can get my hands on. It comes and goes. The point here is that money goes out of MY pocket to Amazon's for the right to read the KU books as many times as I want. It's not free.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen authors advertise, "FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!" and it annoys the fucking hell out of me every time. I advertised like that once, then took it down because I felt dirty and weird. Afterwards... never. I'll mention my books are mostly on KU, because they are (mostly), but I never put the word "free" in there. It's not free. I FUCKING PAY FOR THE SERVICE.

Sure, I get it. Authors want to get their books attention. I totally get it. I do! I would love my books to pick up in popularity! And while it's a small thing, saying it's free on KU, it still annoys me. It's false advertising. You heard me: false advertising. Some people might say, "But it IS free on KU! The reader doesn't pay for it." But they do. Hence, it is a lie, a falsehood. Perhaps it's a well-intentioned falsehood. Perhaps the author simply didn't think about it. And I know I'm definitely in the minority here. Heck, I might be the only one in the world that annoys. (But it's my blog, so I write about what I want. :P )Doesn't matter. It is still a false statement.

And I don't borrow those books.

I don't buy them either.

I skip the authors who advertise that way. It annoys me that much it drives me away. If they want to advertise it's on KU, that's great! Do it! We people who are KU subscribers know that hey, we can borrow it at NO FURTHER COST to ourselves, great! To those people who aren't KU subscribers, the word "free" has a very different connotation, and that's where I feel it's really disingenuous. They go in expecting the book to be a freebie if they don't read carefully enough, and lo and behold, it's not.

I can't make anyone stop doing that, but I wish they would. Ah well, le sigh.

No, No, 'Zombie Tree Gangbang 17' is Really Action Adventure! Really!

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Black Hat Tactics

I'm interrupting my writing process because, well, the story is still brewing and I'm procrastinating, but also I was doing a little research. I often look at other erotica writers because it gives me an idea of what sells and what doesn't, how other people are doing, and so on. Now, there's some of them that use some pretty disingenuous tactics in order to get people to read their stuff and to make money. One of them I've sort of covered before, which is mirroring. Amazon is fine with mirroring so long as at least 30% of the book is different. It can be a useful tool to reach more audiences, but if people read different kinds of smut, I can imagine they'd be pretty pissed getting a mirror of something they've already read.

Another "black hat" tactic is excessive bundling. Let's say you have five stories, and you bundle them together, no big, right? Excessive bundling would be making like ten stories (or more) out of those five... which is really disingenuous. Although I plan on bundling some stories together (the Janus Key stuff) in certain configurations, it's going to be up front and honest, and it's actually for my readers benefit. What if they're gay and they don't like Debbie as a protag? Well, then I'm putting together a Dirk bundle. Vice versa with Debbie. Then doing the first five, second five... and then the first ten (when I get there) in a mega bundle. It'll be very honest about what it is, and it's for convenience's sake, not to make extra cash from it (though that will be nice). Out of ten, those excessive bundlers would be able to get like a zillion combinations from them.

The one that's really bothering me though is something quite a few erotica writers use: they don't label them as erotica. There's a huge thread on reddit about that, and I know a few erotica writers that are basically labeling their books, "MILF FUCKING" and putting it under a different category. Another big one is "INCEST HERE" and shit, stuff that would get banned or at least filtered in the erotica category... but it's fine if it's in romance. That's not god damn romance! I feel it's dishonest for a couple reasons. First... well, it's not romance, sorry. It's smut. It's fucking. If it's romantic erotica, there's actually a category for that! Put it there! Second, it opens it up to avoid adult filters people may have at home so that children have access to it. That's just... creepy. And gross. And creepy. Did I mention creepy? Lastly, it devalues the romance category making it harder for readers to find what they actually want.

I'll admit I'm a little jealous sometimes of other people's success, but I won't be successful at the cost of my morals, such as they are. I could go back and relabel all of mine into a different category, but I won't. I am a little stuck on the Rock Harden stuff because I'm not sure that's actually erotica! Heh. We'll see how it turns out in the end, if there's way more story than sex, then I may just try action/adventure or thriller, depending on length. Again, though, it depends. I started writing it to write sex. I have a story around the sex, but it's still sex. I think it would be really dishonest to represent it in a different light to fool people into buying it.

There was this one author, who shall remain nameless, who was putting out erotic fairy tales which sold decently. That's fine, bully for them. However, when I clicked on their stuff, it was all Disney stuff, down to the point where they had the characters on the cover of the books which were directly from the movies. Aghast, I did a little research and made sure of some things... well, Aladdin I knew had no "Jasmine" in the actual story since I'd just read it, but Belle from Beauty & the Beast was actually named "Beauty" in the fairy tale, the original, and so on. So, they were actually stealing from Disney. Unashamedly, I reported them to Amazon and Disney... that kind of shit just makes everyone look bad, and while I might not agree with authors putting their books into non-smut categories when it's obviously smut... evidently Amazon must agree with it since it goes through a vetting process.

Seeing those obvious copyright infringements though makes me wonder how good their vetting process really is.