Book Backlash and Celebration

AKA Lexi Frost – backlash and celebration (Free Book Promo 8/17-19)

Remember the trouble I had getting a simple book published? It wasn’t over when Amazon apparently published it. I say ‘apparently’ because it was only partially there.

AKA Lexi Frost was on Amazon – sort of. If you looked by title, it was there. If you looked up my name, you’d find two books. Otherwise, you couldn’t find it. You could sift through hundreds of new releases, thousands of romance novels, millions of eBooks, and never see it. You could do keyword searches: nada.

I didn’t know this at first. (I don’t have time to go page by page through hundreds of new releases or thousands of romances novels. Hundreds of thousands.) Then someone on a writing group I’m part of mentioned Amazon has an ‘Adult’ filter and they don't even tell the author when they filter a book from public view. There is a way, from another site some authors use to track Amazon sales, to tell if your book has been flagged. I was. On Amazon’s part, it’s part of the review process, and there isn’t any criteria anyone can point me to as to exactly why some books are flagged and others aren’t.

It isn’t content. That much I’m sure of because I did a general, sift-through-pages search for a certain series that includes near-bestiality, orgies, and sex acts that would make Lexi run naked down through Trafalgar Square to avoid, and they’re available to the general populace. So my suspicion that my cover has a naked woman on it was why my review process was so long initially (even though she’s facing away and barely showing a dime slot), may be on the money. There are still some colorful covers out there, there aren't as many as there were a couple months ago, it depends on the reviewer.

I also noticed a distinct lack of content warnings on books I knew had sex scenes. I used to see warnings all the time, sometimes even using ‘erotic romance’ as part of the title. Either these are now filtered, or authors – not self published either, I was looking at mainstream publishers – are taking them out to avoid the filter. This is very scary, but another time.

So I did a quick redesign of the cover, changed some keywords, and reloaded it to see what would happen.

AKA Lexi Frost is visible. Although it’s no longer a new release. And since it’s been out (officially) now for a couple of weeks, if you want to find it in contemporary romance, you have to sift through hundreds of thousands of books. So essentially anyone looking for it is still going to find it by typing the title in directly or by search for my name, meaning I haven’t changed anything.

To celebrate, I’m having a free weekend for AKA Lexi Frost Saturday, August 17 – Monday, August 19. It goes midnight to midnight (Pacific time) approximately, Amazon doesn’t guarantee anything.

So download it. Tell your friends, have them download it. And I wouldn’t mind reviews. Good ones preferably. The sequel should be out soon. No cover issues, I’m learning.