For romance writers publishing romance now, if your book has an open-door sex scene, or foul language, have you checked the adult only content box and NOT gotten put in the dungeon?

And also horror or crime writers – if there’s violence that’s not appropriate for kids in your story, are you checking the adult only content box, and are your books staying out of the dungeon?

Thanks for your feedback. I suppose you are right.. a lot of us indie authors do tend to catastrophize a bit. lol The three categories are not an issue for me either. I never jumped on that 10 category bandwagon, because it was more important to me to get my books seen by the right readers and not try to make some best seller list in some elusive genre… those best seller badges are transitory anyway and really say nothing on your books ability to sell long-term. I also noticed that you can’t really sell books without marketing them, so that does make the algorithm a bit pointless for a lot of us these days anyway. The only thing I’m worried about is the “erotica dungeon” but I think you managed to alleviate my fears a bit. So thank you. 💜

From what I’ve seen, many of the authors who thought they were in the Amazon dungeon, were not. They just hadn’t given their books time to show up in searches after updates or uploading new books under the new system. Some might’ve had issues but I believe that’s more about their keywords and blurbs and not so much this new category system. And it is actually very difficult to be thrown in the dungeon where you are not searchable. You have to be writing some pretty far-out and risky stuff to be thrown in the dungeon, that’s why I don’t believe authors are really ending up there at a large rate. I think it was a handful of authors who got caught in some glitches, they were extra vocal and others ran with it. Again, this is what the indie community does. They cook up fear and spread misinformation before they even understand what’s going on. Some even blatenly making up stuff such as saying you can no longer have phrases in the keyword boxes on single words. Um… no. Where do they get stuff?

Anyway, the positives seem to outweigh the negatives. I have had no issues with this and not been thrown in the dungeon or anything. We have more control over our cats now and don’t have to ask Amazon to move us from cats we don’t belong in. A big plus is if you are wrongfully put in erotica, you can now change it yourself without having to ask Amazon.

I am glad they changed the 10 categories. I have seen many authors crying about this but you know what? It WAS NOT FAIR. Authors were getting extra cats under the table and getting their books to appear in all those places, getting all that visibility when most authors were stuck with just 2 categories. Many authors didn’t know that you could ask for extra categories first of all. This evens the playing field. Some authors should not have more cats than others, sorry. No. We all have the same amount now and it makes it easier for other authors who didn’t have the benefit of 10 cats to now chart and have visibility.

I don’t feel sorry for anyone bellyaching about the lack of extra cats, sorry. That was a privilege granted to a select few who knew a back-door channel that many authors didn’t know about. It allowed some authors to take up space in the WRONG categories as well as allowed a few authors to monopolize several Top 100 lists, therefore, taking spaces from other authors who might’ve been there who had the 2 cats (which you were supposed to have). I blame Amazon because they never should have been giving authors extra cats. If they wanted authors to have 10 cats, ALL of us should’ve had 10 cats.

Of course, authors who benefited from this back-door channel are going to be upset. A huge advantage and gaming of the system (yes, that is what it was even if Amazon allowed it) is now gone and these people who had been having their way with the Amazon store and having their books in millions of places no longer can. Now they are back with the other authors where they are supposed to be. Why some authors think they should have extra cats is beyond me. Indies always preach about fairness when it comes to indies and trade pubs, but when it comes to sticking it to fellow indies just so they can get ahead themselves, they don’t care about fairness.

Most authors LOVE that Amazon changed this because again, it was not fair. A few months back authors whined because Amazon changed it to where you could still be in 10 cats but only chart in three. And oh, did some authors make a fuss. Authors who had been riding this back-door channel and getting all these advantages and sucking up space on the Top 100 everywhere (even in places they didn’t belong) they had a fit. But every “good” thing comes to an end. This is why you don’t ever get too comfortable especially with Amazon and thinking that everything will stay the same. So I feel no sympathy for authors who are upset because they now have to play the same game as the rest of us who followed the rules. Sorry, not sorry. Most of us knew this was unfair and now others will get their chance in the spotlight.

I also think the new changes show authors that now more than ever they need to stop being so dependent on Amazon’s rankings, and algorithms. Even if you are in KU, Amazon has been moving away from organic placement and organic sales. They are trying to force people to buy ads with everything now. It’s obvious. Authors now need to focus on more ways to be seen OUTSIDE of the Amazon store and bringing readers to your books on there because the browsing feature that used to find us readers is dwindling and this cat thing might be another example of that.

But, I remain positive. What choice do we have? Why complain and get upset when we can’t change things, anyway? Some will like the new change and others will balk but that’s life. The truth is, this is Amazon’s store so they make the rules and we gotta accept them if we sell there.