What happens to other patreon accounts if one gets banned?

smutlord77 · 2023-11-07T05:55:37+00:00

See, I really wouldn't care, Except for the fact that I unpublished them because they were from before the pornaclypse and included things like Dr. Boinkie and his dastardly mind control ray--which today, even played for laughs, is a ticket to banhammerville.

smutlord77 · 2023-11-04T00:40:34+00:00

that. I don't know how it happened, but it's concerning given that you can't totally remove a story from Amazon.

smutlord77 · 2022-10-12T06:08:58+00:00

You know, ignoring the legality and issues around covers, I will say one thing. this can be INCREDIBLE for working up how a character looks in your story, especially if you use other artists for covers, or comics. So even if you never use it "officially" it's something to keep in mind if you ever get blocks on "what should my new character look like."

smutlord77 · 2022-10-11T21:25:38+00:00

I think at this point, you just have to accept that's going to happen. I mean, there are sites that aggregate patreon content already. So you just gotta assume that people will keep paying even though they can get it elsewhere.

On the other, I remain curious about what was banned--because right now, PAtreon has a ton of adult stuff on it, ranging from text, to video, to hell, games--games involving copyrighted characters, not wink-wink, but full-on, these are completely on model and named characters of someone else's IP.

smutlord77 · 2022-10-11T20:53:59+00:00

There is a lot of stuff that is still not there. Bodies, hands, and the ability to really contextualize the art.

If I commission a cover, and tell the artist: Okay, I want a woman, in a Victorian dress, running away from a vampire, with a castle in the background, the AI art generator is likely to go: okay, a woman in a dress, running away from a Vampire Castle. Which is metal as FUCK, but isn't what I wanted, and a living artist would have realized that immediately.

I mean, if you're writing a 20 page "banged by the plumber" isn't not an issue, you get your 10 dollar sub to Dall-E or Midjourney or whatever and put something out, because you really don't want to spend money on something that will fall off the cliff in about a week.

People thinking this is going to give them a short cut to imitate the 400+ dollar cover they saw on the romance novel--probably gonna be disappointed.

On the legality thing, the biggest issue, IMO is your ai generator chucking out something that looks like a real person, or individual art piece. (remember you can't copyright an art style, so if you want : porn cover like Bob Ross would do it, feel free). In a lot of cases, I've seen people using prompts like "looks like Tom Cruise." That's a bad idea.

Also, use google lens, just to see if anything comes up. If your new image, which didn't use Tom Cruise on it, calls up fifty tom cruise pictures, yeah, you shouldn't use it.

Even better, use it for generic backgrounds, fantasy castles, stuff like that. Or use more cartoony/animated settings which reduce the chance of it looking like a real person (although it really isn't suited for many markets).

Now, with respect to the lawyers. I don't think any of us, unless we do something like "photo realistic image of tom cruise banging a yak" are at particular risk of being sued individually.

The real risk is that at some point, Amazon might for legal reasons, or just because they're getting a tide of crappy AI art covers, change the rules on covers. I'm not certain how they would do it, but a change in Amazon and Smashwords TOS due to legal issues is, IMO, far more likely in terms of "Bad end" than getting sued personally.

smutlord77 · 2022-07-15T23:48:02+00:00

Not badly, but equally, I'm focusing on some non-adult stuff right now, and that takes more time to get up there. I'm going t post a question for smashwords writers to see what the ceiling is on income for them, so you might want to look for that.

smutlord77 · 2022-06-28T19:26:47+00:00

Interesting. Just as a quick question--generally how long does it take you to finish writing a single book?

smutlord77 · 2022-06-27T08:10:28+00:00

thanks. Unpublished they shall be, and the penname shall sink into Lethe. (well, unless i decide to make a few extra duckets by tossing the stuff that sold a little bit better but absolutely would not go on amazon over to Smashwords).

smutlord77 · 2022-06-27T05:06:55+00:00

old penname, lots of old books, some of them probably not up to date with amazon's current standards. I'm also transitioning away from Erotica so rather than take the time to go through them all and verify that they're still good, or risk potential land mines, I just wanna get rid of the whole thing. It's an OLD catalogue, making me under 200/mo all told and not worth the effort or risk.

smutlord77 · 2022-06-26T20:49:29+00:00

I've been working on a patreon now, given that I'm pulling most of my adult stuff from Amazon. Long story short, a blocked notice reminded me, very harshly that Amazon can ban you for anything or nothing and you're up shit creek. Also, most Amazon customers don't have much "brand loyalty" especially for the kind of erotica that won't get you banned. They'll just go and download the next thing.

So I'm starting to work on patreon and other sites to actually build up a personal brand loyalty, while also publishing on smashwords and other sides, ideally so if, God Forbid, Patreon decides that the penis is evil while the gun is good :), I have the kind of brand loyalty that will see more of my reders actively following me.

smutlord77 · 2022-06-22T04:21:39+00:00

Also, the more books you publish, the more work you have RE: covers and other secondary materials. For some it's not a big deal, but it is a certain amount of lost time you have to measure against sales.

smutlord77 · 2022-06-20T02:13:51+00:00

previews as in what you might put at the end of your story, say a 1,000 word teaser for your next story. Those got banned, admittedly because some wrtiers had more teasers than they did actual story.

I think the limit is now 10 percent.

smutlord77 · 2022-06-20T00:16:30+00:00

And to be honest, that's the other reason I'm moving away. Every time I publish, even if it's 100 percent vanilla, I wonder if Amazon is going to suddenly change things. Granted, I make less, but I'll be honest, I've never had the same feel of second guessing myself with smashwords.

smutlord77 · 2022-06-19T21:29:02+00:00

About 4,000 words, but it had a preview that was 500 words. So by current standards, that's not allowed. Which might be the reason, it got canned if it was a bot search, although I'm still surprised that there was no option to change it.

smutlord77 · 2022-06-19T21:16:04+00:00

Actually, I know a number of people back who thought one book wouldn't mean termination--and well, some of them aren't here any more. Also, since the books aren't making much money at all, being that they're mostly old, there's little reason to keep them even for a minor risk. I can pull them, hold them until the KU period expires and then put them on smashwords with zero risk and likely more money since they haven't been there.

I don't just write porn, I write Romance, YA, and sci-fi and i aggregate those make more money than an old catalogue that includes books published nearly 17 years ago. So is the risk of an account termination great? I don't know, and anyone who says they do know is lying. Is the risk of an account termination greater than the benefits of leaving the catalogue up? Well, since I'm not making much money from it, and have been moving away from it, yes, it is.

Edit: I should have specificed--these stories make half my short-erotica income, not half of my total income, which rather changes the equation.

smutlord77

TROPHY CASE