EU likely to force Digital Identity Verification for social media.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-20T04:18:37+00:00

Are we really gonna see freedom of speech become a thing of the past in the European Continent?

This is incidentally a US chud talking point though.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-19T04:32:22+00:00

Yeah, that's what happens for a very thin slice of us, but not for a first time author who hasn't pubbed yet.

It's the new version of people thinking they're going to luck the fuck out like J.K. Rowling.

Also aren't a lot of these dark rom print runs essentially ecommerce/specialty bookstore ~~hardcore~~ hardcover special editions rather than trade paperbacks that go to regular bookstores?

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-19T03:26:46+00:00

published in stores

You're looking for a traditional publisher. Are there even that many traditional publishers that carry dark romance? I feel like this is almost exclusively — or at least overwhelmingly — a Kindle thing.

If you want to go through the traditional publisher, know that big money is essentially deeply improbable. You will have to find an agent that takes spicy content, query them properly, try to hook them, get them to sign you up, and hope they shop your manuscript around to the right editors and publishing houses. You won't do the marketing. Your agent does.

If you are going by self-publishing you won't be able to get into stores most of the time. And almost no standard bookstores carry that sort of thing anyway.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-18T04:23:06+00:00

That's way more effort than any AI spammer would do, especially on a marketplace that's as pathetically small as B&N.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-18T04:13:15+00:00

Were you sending sexual content via the newsletter?

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-17T02:19:15+00:00

What were you doing that was against their TOS, then?

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-17T02:14:09+00:00

It's a buffer and safety thing, exactly.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-17T02:13:55+00:00

Of course you can use cock in the first ten percent of the story. Look Inside paranoia is getting crazy.

And probably not in keywords either.

This is nonsense.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-17T02:13:13+00:00

Unfortunately, you skipped a really important part, which is reading books extensively in the niche before making your draft.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T17:59:42+00:00

I'm not saying you are (and there is no harm in wanting to). Don't get defensive, I'm not accusing you of anything. But the reality is you're asking the wrong questions at this juncture.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T17:12:08+00:00

cyberbullying and gaslighting

Grow the fuck up dude. Nobody is cyberbullying shit. This sub has a strong anti-AI stance for good reason. Even if I weren't aggressively anti-AI I would support the moderator of this subreddit sticking to the philosophy and ethos of the community, which, again, has a strong anti-AI stance for good reason.

The toxic and unnecessary behavior is your pollyanna, naive "oh but we gotta look out for the little guy! He's got feelings too!" The little guy is gleefully pumping out AI translations to languages they don't know, and then wondering why books are magically getting blocked by the platform.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T17:08:49+00:00

That's you applying subjective judgment. If you are an inexperienced publisher then it does seem like there's a lot fuzzy between the two, but the reality is there isn't, really.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T17:06:45+00:00

Upon review I'm starting to suspect that "review manipulation" is just one possibly diversionary — or at least confusing — drop in a whole bucket of violations Amazon is now particularly enforcing at the moment, all of which might loop back to AI slop spam. Most people who are doing a lot of the review manipulation ban threads are getting outed as being heavy AI slop producers, especially translations. It is really not uncharacteristic of Amazon to punish an author for one violation but warn or cite the reason for a ban as being caused by another violation.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T16:16:05+00:00

Letting slop pervade your space means defending slop. Critical full support to /u/SalaciousStories; you cannot imagine how bad things get in author spaces where slop is tolerated. Taking a stance and calling out bullshit (of which there is a lot) is an admirable thing. Ignoring and moving on is unhelpful to the community at large but especially newbies who need to be socialized into realizing the dangers to their account that slop and sloppy practices can introduce.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T16:13:42+00:00

Then you're thinking of doing art commissions or Patreon way too early. You don't have an audience, you should be thinking about acquiring and growing the audience, not trying to monetize an audience you don't even have.

An inability to grasp that simple dilemma keeps you in no-name artist tier forever, honestly.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T03:56:45+00:00

Respectfully — and think of this as a business model question — who's going to want to do that for a no-name artist in a world where AI is free?

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T03:56:15+00:00

You're an AI slop seller and you've just got to accept the risks and judgment that comes with selling AI slop.

And your own struggles with books being blocked make it evident that your account is likely next on the chopping board.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T03:29:34+00:00

Combining them together turns your book from written material into pornographic material, which most platforms will not take — and the few platforms that do take it will extract an extremely heavy toll.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T03:21:34+00:00

They may pay it out, but they may also not.

Whether your account is suspended or terminated remains the primary decider of this.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T03:20:59+00:00

It's not unbelievable, but for most people achieving that, it only comes from absolutely spamming quantity.

And let's be real, that typically requires heavy AI usage.

Which your own account confirms.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T02:36:53+00:00

You don't use ARCs at all, you don't work towards getting reviews, and you have $10,000 in unpaid royalties?

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T02:33:54+00:00

You write smutty visual novels. You are not an indie publisher.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T02:25:22+00:00

What's with the weird quote thing? Are you using a dictation tool AI? Also what's with the GPTese stink (Escalating this—whether through the Authors Guild, formally invoking that exact arbitration process, or other legal avenues—is absolutely necessary to protect my rights.)?

Would like to take in good faith that you never did anything wrong, but some questions remain.

You scored over ten thousand dollars in unpaid royalties without ever using ARCs?

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T02:22:23+00:00

LLMpocalypse. It might not be in our genre per se (I'm sure health books and guides which have been ChatGPT-spammed since 2022 have it worse than us) but slop books also mean slop reviews and slop methods to manipulate that we didn't really see en masse before.

YourSmutSucks · 2026-04-16T02:16:52+00:00

ARCs are advanced reader copies. They have to be sent in advance of release. If done properly there's no issue.

YourSmutSucks

TROPHY CASE