A couple of days ago I went on Amazon.com and noticed The City of Earthly Desire had been removed from the historical fiction and literary categories I had assigned to it and had been placed into the erotica category. I could not help but smile because I sort of saw it coming. It's a strange book, mine. A novel that deals with pornography without being explicitly pornographic. I knew someone would eventually get confused over at Amazon. Regardless, suffice it to say I am not at all pleased with the novel being tossed into the erotica genre, especially without knowing about it, and I am in the midst of trying to extract the book from that risque genre and place it back in the fiction and literature section where it truly belongs.
I asked Amazon what had prompted the re-categorization of the novel from literature to erotica. Their response? The book contains mature content and adult situations. I argued that many novels that contain mature content and adult situations exist on Amazon without being classified as erotica. My main point regarding my novel was this - as a genre, erotica has one goal and one goal only: to ignite sexual arousal and titillation in the reader. Anyone who has read The City of Earthly Desire knows that the novel's focus is not to ignite sexual arousal. On the contrary, the novel is deeply critical of lust and the forces that arouse the sexual passions. Is there mature content? Are there adult situations? Of course. How can there not be? After all, the second half of the novel deals with strip clubs and the production of pornography; however, despite the risque subject matter, the novel itself is not pornographic in nature.
My other concern about the novel's erotica classification was more business-minded. Readers searching for erotica might stumble across The City of Earthly Desire and purchase it thinking they were going to get a steamy little tale of sweaty bodies and leather-domination; they would be sadly disappointed to discover the novel did not contain all the explicit sex they craved. On the flip side, potential readers interested in reading plain-old fiction might bypass the novel simply because they would think it was another panty-moistening epic penned by some sexually frustrated hack who lives in a dingy one-bedroom apartment above an adult novelty shop.
Amazon acknowledged my concerns and admitted that their chief objection has less to do the text and had everything to do with the mature content on the book's cover. What's the mature content? Well, have a look at Egon Schiele's Mutter and Kind which graces the cover of my novel:
I asked Amazon what had prompted the re-categorization of the novel from literature to erotica. Their response? The book contains mature content and adult situations. I argued that many novels that contain mature content and adult situations exist on Amazon without being classified as erotica. My main point regarding my novel was this - as a genre, erotica has one goal and one goal only: to ignite sexual arousal and titillation in the reader. Anyone who has read The City of Earthly Desire knows that the novel's focus is not to ignite sexual arousal. On the contrary, the novel is deeply critical of lust and the forces that arouse the sexual passions. Is there mature content? Are there adult situations? Of course. How can there not be? After all, the second half of the novel deals with strip clubs and the production of pornography; however, despite the risque subject matter, the novel itself is not pornographic in nature.
My other concern about the novel's erotica classification was more business-minded. Readers searching for erotica might stumble across The City of Earthly Desire and purchase it thinking they were going to get a steamy little tale of sweaty bodies and leather-domination; they would be sadly disappointed to discover the novel did not contain all the explicit sex they craved. On the flip side, potential readers interested in reading plain-old fiction might bypass the novel simply because they would think it was another panty-moistening epic penned by some sexually frustrated hack who lives in a dingy one-bedroom apartment above an adult novelty shop.
Amazon acknowledged my concerns and admitted that their chief objection has less to do the text and had everything to do with the mature content on the book's cover. What's the mature content? Well, have a look at Egon Schiele's Mutter and Kind which graces the cover of my novel:
Do you see that nipple peaking out from the woman's left side? That, my friends, is what I assume to be the mature content Amazon is so concerned about. (Okay, the suggestive title doesn't help, but they didn't say anything about that!)
So, what's a writer to do? The answer is simple. Become a surgeon and perform a mastectomy. Eradicate the offensive mammary gland and maybe the mature content will go away. Well, here is the post-surgery result:
So, what's a writer to do? The answer is simple. Become a surgeon and perform a mastectomy. Eradicate the offensive mammary gland and maybe the mature content will go away. Well, here is the post-surgery result:
This is the image I hope will grace the cover of the novel and appear in thumbnails online from now on. Did you spot the difference? I hope Amazon does. And I hope it's also enough to get The City of Earthly Desire off the erotica shelf and back in fiction where it belongs. I'll post an update when I know the outcome.
Until then, I have to admit I've been thinking about creating another cover for the book or, ideally, having someone else create a more professional cover for me. I like Egon's image and I think it captures the essence of the book overall, but I have never been entirely satisfied with the cover I created. That, however, is a tale for another day.
Until then, I have to admit I've been thinking about creating another cover for the book or, ideally, having someone else create a more professional cover for me. I like Egon's image and I think it captures the essence of the book overall, but I have never been entirely satisfied with the cover I created. That, however, is a tale for another day.
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