At What Stage is it 'Too Taboo'

Fallen

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I've been watching one author's work. He's very dark and taboo, and he wrote one called Better the Devil you Know ('ll not tag it as it's an open forum). He's perfectly open with the content if you read the blurb. When he first started, he felt forced to tag as it erotica because he knew the high sexual content was the main driving factor. He was in contact with Amazon over how it wasn't consent; it was rape, and that he felt very uncomfortable with it having to be marked as erotica. The book was banned originally, then when he spoke to Amazon again, and he went through the explanation again, they told him to remove the erotica tag, and put it under horror. It's not been reported since.

I think it is very much the tagging rape into the erotica category that makes it uncomfortable with Amazon, but also how the rape is handled. Bey uses rape in Better the Devil You Know as a main part of the story: it's repeated as a main plot. I have rape in one of mine that's very graphic but didn't get banned. Difference being, I think, my rape was only a small part of the story, where the main drive of the plot was the recovery and rehabilitation combined with the main romance plot, so mine's tagged as gay Erotic Romance. Bey's is very much horror. :)
 

Underdawg47

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I think the point writers must keep in mind is that while we can and do write about underage sex, incest, and rape, publishers and book retailers don't want those topics framed as erotic material. Neither Flowers in the Attic nor Sybil was presented as erotica of any kind.

Maryn, who read them both, as did everybody else she knew

That is good to know, because I've wondered how far is too far when writing scenes that fall into the taboo category. I have characters in my book that describe taboo things that have happened to them and sexually explicit scenes in places, but I would never consider my book to be erotica or porn.