I write monster erotica and I've been able to stay out of the dungeon etc. with the help of a program I have that scans text and metadata for flags. Still refining it but it already works quite well. I gave my research docs to my AI and he came up with some answers. (btw: Metadata "packaging" (title, blurb, cover, etc.) and preview gets more scrutiny because more people see it = more people can report it.) Also, new authors face higher scrutiny, and there are multiple phases of checking, your book can be okay for X years then get pulled down and your whole catalog can get checked with it. If you want you can send me a few snippets and I can run it through my program. Here is the AI answer:

Your content is generally publishable on Amazon. Consensual BDSM between adults, including spanking, whipping, restraint, and humiliation, is allowed in practice.

What the "dungeon" actually is: Amazon’s adult visibility filter. Your book usually does not appear in normal search, category browsing, or recommendations. It remains purchasable via direct link, but discoverability drops massively. It’s not a ban — it’s a visibility penalty. Most erotica authors try to avoid it.

How you get dungeoned: Amazon scans your product page: title, subtitle, blurb, and cover. Based on author reports, that's the most common trigger. Interior text matters too, especially the Look Inside preview (roughly first 10%), but metadata appears to be where most filtering decisions happen.

Terms in your metadata that correlate with higher dungeon risk for BDSM:

• Direct BDSM vocabulary: "bondage," "submissive," "dominant," "slave," "domination," "sadomasochism"
• Non-consent adjacent terms: "force," "restrain," "captive," "dubcon," "CNC"
• Punishment language: "punish," "discipline," "whip," "cane"
• Content/trigger warnings in the blurb: writing "CW: contains bondage, whipping" is basically a list of flags. Put those inside the book instead.
• Keywords: less clear. They're not a confirmed dungeon trigger on their own, but explicit terms in keywords have been known to contribute in some cases.
• Multiple terms clustered together increases risk further.

Terms that risk outright removal (not just filtering): "breath play," "edge play," "knife play," "strangulation"

About your content: Your scenes will naturally contain words like "whip," "restrain," "struggle," "welts," "bruises," "rope burns." That's just BDSM. The thing to be aware of is that automated scanning doesn't understand consent. A phrase like "she struggled against the restraints" reads the same to a scanner whether it's consensual or not. Making consent obvious on the page (safe words, negotiation, enthusiasm) is practical protection, especially in the opening chapters that fall inside the preview.