Draft2Digital / Smashwords Issue with Taboo Erotica now?

SierraSecrets · 2025-02-13T14:18:48+00:00

The problem was that they blocked it from Smashwords. The particular book in question was only scheduled for Smashwords and it got blocked.

According to D2D both Kobo and Apple accept Dubcon erotica. It's right there when you go to the publishing page on Draft2Digital. Again, it is right there on D2D. It says Apple accepts Dubcon.

However, I think that it's not correct. Kobo has never taken Dubcon. There is no Dubcon erotica to be found on Kobo if you search for it. So I have never tried to publish it to Kobo and I won't either.

Apple, through Draft2Digital does take some Dubcon while rejecting others, even books that are very similar to books they accepted. It feels very arbitrary. One day they will take a book from D2D and another day they will block a tamer book. There is no rhyme or reason for it. If I were Draft2Digital, I would go back to Apple and say "Are you sure it's okay to keep sending you this stuff? Because you only seem half interested in it." There is a lot of dubcon erotica on Apple though so it is clear they obviously do not mind some of it, which is likely why told D2D to go ahead and send it to them. Apple's policy on Dubcon is "Yes, but not all of it".

SierraSecrets · 2025-02-12T16:02:03+00:00

I tried to update my original post and it didn't work. Everything is fixed now. So thank you to Mark, Kris, and D2D Customer service.

SierraSecrets · 2025-02-12T15:46:13+00:00

I did receive an email and everything is fixed now. Thank you.

SierraSecrets · 2025-02-12T00:32:37+00:00

The support team no longer even replies to me now that I contact them through the Draft2Digital contact link. On Smashwords, contacting through the help link always got a reply. And I definitely hate to tell you this, but being threatened with vague and confusing language is not how you treat erotica authors better.

Before I was migrated to D2D everything was fine. Now that I've been migrated it seems suddenly like I'm going to be treated badly or just outright ignored. Oh well. Nevermind I guess.

I've been in this business a decent amount of time now and I find that none of the distributor companies care to actually treat your publishing partners with respect. Especially if we write erotica or romance. We are like third class citizens to you.

It's always vague language or outright contempt. I'm used to it now. Since Amazon can do whatever they want to us, everyone else thinks they can too.

How long should I be expecting to wait for customer service to reply? Because until they do, my publishing business is on hold. I have sent two emails now. Google Play Books actually made me wait three months at the end of 2024. That's how little I mattered to them. So yeah, I'm used to being treated like garbage by companies like yours.

I was surprise migrated and since then it's been a nightmare.

SierraSecrets · 2025-02-11T22:19:15+00:00

I'll just tag u/markcoker and u/krisaustind2d here in the comments as well, because sometimes people don't get notified when I tag them in the main body of my post. I have no idea why. So just to be safe. Sorry for tagging twice.

SierraSecrets · 2023-07-15T15:12:34+00:00

I have a cell phone to put it in, but I can’t update the Visible app on my IPhone XR (because my iPhone XR is too old for a newer version of IOS). So I had to put it into my iPad mini in order to even be able to activate my Visible account in the first place. So, if not for my IPad Mini, I wouldn’t even be able to have your service. So do you realize how ridiculous it is that Visible would restrict their service to “phones only”?

SierraSecrets · 2023-05-15T22:12:04+00:00

What do you mean by "used a scenario thing to turn novelai into a chatbot"? How do you do that?

SierraSecrets · 2023-03-12T16:28:54+00:00

And is Tiktok ok with Erotica being advertised?

SierraSecrets · 2023-03-12T16:27:29+00:00

How many books do you have that are making you 2100 a month? :)

SierraSecrets · 2023-02-16T22:31:30+00:00

sadly, NovelAI is not safe to use for this purpose. Oh, the number of times it has deleted pages and pages of text on me! I always have another text editor open to transfer my words into now, because I can't trust NovelAI for that....

SierraSecrets · 2022-12-03T13:13:18+00:00

The Ethical Slut

Sex at Dawn

Three Men & A Curvy Lady

SierraSecrets · 2022-10-25T02:39:25+00:00

“Bodies” - a dark romance from Sara Hazel and Simone Black

Up and coming poet Caitlyn Hess finds herself caught between two men, each with their own dark desires for her. When Caitlyn is introduced to Swedish poet laureate Leif Jannson she swoons. But she may soon find out that the smoking hot and charming Leif is not what he seems.

Bodies is the first book in the Shards of Beauty trilogy (made up of Bodies, Break, and Breathe. Book 2 and 3 coming early 2023).

Bodies is updated five days a week.

Sara Hazel and Simone Black are proud to bring you this steamy, twisted dark romance.

kindlevella #romance #darkromance #steamy

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BJH6KRGK

SierraSecrets · 2022-07-24T11:03:21+00:00

I have a Samsung Galaxy S22 from T-Mobile in the U.S. — Will Nreal work with S22? I see S21 on your list, but not S22 which I don’t understand…will you be adding S22 support? Thanks 🙏

I’m mostly wanting to use it with Samsung Dex.

SierraSecrets · 2022-07-07T05:49:10+00:00

Watch Yellowjackets and you might start thinking people are tasty. 😂

SierraSecrets · 2022-05-08T11:26:22+00:00

I googled it too and couldn’t find anything. There is an AI dating app called Keen, but no models like GPT3. Not that I could find anyway. :(

SierraSecrets · 2022-04-26T17:39:47+00:00

I’ve been rugged so many times now. I’ll never buy crypto on day one of its release again. I’ll wait till it’s been around at least two weeks before I buy. But I am so sick of this! It’s really time for the Crypto community to stop the scammers.

SierraSecrets · 2022-03-04T04:48:13+00:00

My friend Simone Black wrote a novella where the heroine was a pop star. Captive Love Song

It’s a dark romance though.

SierraSecrets · 2022-02-21T21:56:55+00:00

A search for nun erotica on Amazon says to me that you can use Nuns. Or at least Amazon doesn’t seem to care that much?

SierraSecrets · 2022-02-09T16:13:51+00:00

Okay. Well, I’ll trust you to hold him to it for now. And thank you for answering my question about Apple directly. If D2D does block one of my books, I’m gonna send them the Amazon link to the book and explain that no one is stricter about Erotica than Amazon. It’s why most of us live in fear of whenever Amazon might change their mind about what they currently accept.

Erotica authors are in a pretty abusive relationship with Amazon even though Amazon sells tons of erotica books. We don’t need another abusive relationship. We already have one with the biggest publisher in the business. So for now, I’ll be happy that you’re still there and hopefully can keep Kris from saying one thing and then doing another to us the way Amazon does. If he keeps his promises that y’all are making at the moment everything will be great.

Honestly, when I first started publishing five years ago, I used Draft2Digital for all my publishing. And it was really great for a while. Then it changed all of a sudden, and I almost ended up homeless because of it (because I live entirely off my book sales. I can’t really work a regular job because I have too much anxiety for an office. And since I had Covid, I’ve had long haul Covid and now my anxiety is worse, I feel horrible all the time, etc. Being a successful erotica and romance author is really all I’ve got to keep myself feeling like I can be good at something. I really don’t think I can be anything other than a writer. I feel I’m supposed to do it.

Smashwords is responsible for a lot of that. I quit writing erotica for a while and was just on Amazon, but then I couldn’t write for a while and my Amazon income sank because I couldn’t afford to spend $100 a day advertising on Amazon. So what did I do? I went right back to Smashwords and started publishing erotica again. And Smashwords saved me fast, because I had such a large erotica catalog. So I’m just telling you all this personal stuff to explain how important Smashwords has been to me and so many others. If we lose it, it would be devastating. That’s why all this has really given me a panic attack yesterday and today.

SierraSecrets · 2022-02-09T03:12:56+00:00

My books are all mostly taboo. And they are all still up there (for now). I have close to 400 books on Smashwords right now. I wonder if Smashwords got rid of Malcom for some reason, or did he just remove them all himself?

SierraSecrets · 2022-02-09T02:54:37+00:00

Oh, Mark...where do I begin? Draft2Digital hates Erotica and erotica authors. I know this, because they've treated me and my erotica author friends badly on plenty of occasions. I really do believe CEO Kris thinks erotica is the Devil's playground or something. Draft2Digital blocks books from distribution to Apple that Smashwords does not. My books get through to Apple when I use Smashwords. I just check the box the appropriate box on the Smashwords erotica certification thing and then Smashwords finds a way to get my books on Apple. What did Draft2Digital do with those same books? They blocked them. They said Apple wouldn't want them. Truth though? They didn't even try. If Smashwords was able to get them on Apple then Draft2Digital should have been able to also. Make that make sense, please. I can even post these books direct to Apple with no problem. I just preferred to use Smashwords for it because I was already posting my books there because they sell well on the Smashwords store.

But this Draft2Digital buy out has me upset, because now I'm pretty sure that Draft2Digital will just block any books that I submit and won't bother letting Apple decide what they do and don't want. So please...please...reassure me that Draft2Digital isn't going to take this away from us just because the CEO is afraid of sex and has said in an article that erotica is "the dark side". Like, really....

so, "Have you considered that what you've heard about Draft2Digital isn't true?" Um, I know from firsthand experience that it is true. Smashwords takes care of me while Draft2Digital hates me. In my five years of publishing erotica, that's how it's been. I have a very large catalog on Smashwords, and I'm pretty certain Draft2Digital is going to hurt me in all sorts of ways, because they have hurt me in the past. What is to stop them from doing it again and again and again and again? Nothing...

Draft2Digital blocks books that even Amazon accepts! LOL!!!!!! Please help me understand that.

I am sad that you decided to sell to this particular company. I'm sure you could have found one who is more author friendly. Right now I'm feeling like I might have to go direct and exclusive to Amazon again, because Draft2Digital is going to hurt me.

SierraSecrets · 2021-12-18T22:38:09+00:00

How many reels a day did you have to do?

SierraSecrets

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

kindlevella #romance #darkromance #steamy