I have wondered how easy (or hard) it is to find my artsy erotica fiction ebook at the Amazon bookstore. The title of my ebook ebook is Existential Smut 2. I tried typing the phrase “Existential Smut” or “Existential Smut 2” in the Amazon search box. Here are the results:
Comment: Let’s see. I get ladies’ perfume, flip flops, ladies’ mini-shorts and a book from the Hearts & Chaos series). Well, at least that’s a book. And at the bottom there is a “Fated Mates MM Paranormal Romance,” At least love is in the air! You may notice that that these results are “sponsored” which means that some individual or company paid to advertise on this keyword search term.
Comment: The next time I typed the phrase into the Amazon search box a few hours later, I got this. Amazon is suggesting a Fitbit Smartwatch for kids and some fancy & overpriced baggy pants for women. But look — there’s a sexy mini-dress for $22 and a “forced proximity western romance” ebook (I didn’t even know that this genre was a thing).
Comment: I did this on another afternoon when Amazon was a little flakey (Maybe it was under cyberattack). It didn’t show any search results. I actually think I had purchased a logitech keyboard and a stopwatch 15 years ago, so it’s conceivable that Amazon just decided to serve me something random from my list of previous purchases instead of what I was actually searching for.
Comment: Here I did a general search without selecting Books. Sometimes when Amazon runs out of sponsored search results, it suggests novelty Jesus bookmarks containing the word “Smut.” Cute idea (I guess), but it’s definitely a bait-and-switch. Instead of showing a moderately smutty story collection, it shows bookmarks with pictures of Jesus. Go figure.
Comment: At this point, I gave up on just searching throughout the entire store, so I choose Books under the left dropdown for the search box. The results from this point at least contain mostly books or ebooks (and a Tylenol ad!) even though I have still not found my ebook in any of the search results which –I remind you — typed verbatim into the search box. I think I’m getting a headache; maybe Amazon’s AI sensed that I was ready for a pain reliever?
Comment: Here I did the same search in a different browser where I wasn’t logged in to my Amazon account. I don’t get any Existential Smut, but I did get a true romance story by someone with the last name Smuts. I also get a psychological exploration of the nature of terrorism and a metaphysical thriller about survival and a meditation on human existence. Close but no cigar.
Comment. This time we get a Smut Up and Listen! podcast (sounds fun!?) and a novel containing the word “Existential.” It’s important to note that all the screenshots for this post contain ALL the search results for the search term Existential Smut /Existential Smut 2. Contrary to what you might think, Amazon doesn’t show dozens of search results extending over several pages. It shows just these products — which presumably paid Amazon for the privilege to have mentioned in search results. Even if I change the Sort option away from “Featured” to “Avg Customer Review” or “Price: Low to High,” Amazon will still show this limited list of sponsored products.
Comment: I don’t really know what’s going on here. The word “smut” seems to have triggered “Gay Taboo Household Romance” or “M/M Second Chance Romance” while the word “existential” seems to trigger not Sartre or Camus but a bestselling mystery series from Ireland. So Amazon seems already to know that the site visitor wants dungeoned fiction content with the word “smut,” but in the end would eventually settle for an Irish mystery instead.
Comment. Even though this time the search results still do not list my ebook, at least they seem semi-relevant. None appear to be sponsored results. The first result is an academic investigation of sexuality in society which was originally published in 1983. The second title is part of a new spicy romance series where the character’s full name is (I am not kidding) “Read Smut.” Smut Bucket is one of several unapologetically erotic short fiction titles with an African-American theme which were published in 2020. Strangely, Smut Therapy is a 17 page realistic short story about a married couple trying having a baby. (Despite the fancy cover, the story description sounds a little bland). Other than the fact that they’re missing an ebook whose title is identical to the search term, these search results seem pretty normal and relevant. (It occurs to me that because I already “bought” my own ebook, perhaps Amazon is removing this ebook from search results. But no. Even if I log in anonymously, Existential Smut 2 still does not show up.)
Another Idea — Title and Author’s Name
Comment: Then I had a brainstorm: Maybe I should type the ebook title (Existential Smut) AND the author’s name (Hapax Legomenon) into the Amazon search box. Both title and name are fairly unique.1I was genuinely curious what Amazon would bring me.
Shucks. Amazon decided that I really did not want to see an item with these words. So it rewrote my search query and showed me Existential Smut Hapax Lego Menon instead. Fortunately Amazon has a lot of sponsored ads for legos. It showed me two sponsored results for Botanical Lego sets (!) in case my real desire was building cute things for my garden. Or perhaps I wanted something truly existential — so Amazon decides to suggest an Irish mystery (again!)
Comment: When I clicked the link to revert back to my original title + author phrase and selected Books from the dropdown, I got an odd assortment of books — including a comic novel about visiting hell (which actually sounds pretty good) and two paranormal romances involving a man who regularly turns into a bear and a dragon who stalks pretty women. If the story is about bears and dragons having sex with humans, Camus and Sartre would undoubtedly approve.
Final Thoughts: Invisibility
It was no surprise to me that a sexually explicit ebook title would be filtered out of some search results on Amazon.com. That is the price of producing ebooks for the 18+ crowd. But several other things are going on:
First, Amazon has probably placed my ebook title in a “dungeon” (which basically prevents ebooks from appearing in search results). I’ve been told that this does not occur for all erotic fiction. But in KDP, you have to answer questions about whether the ebook features sexually explicit images or language. I clicked yes to that. On the other hand, Amazon already knows if the customer is over 18 years old and if the search term specifically mentions a title or author, you would think Amazon would know enough to show this product in search results. After all, Amazon makes money by giving the customer what he or she asks for.
Second, Amazon seems more focused on presenting sponsored ads in search results than relevant products. Leave aside for a moment whether my ebook appears in search results, the search box isn’t even good at delivering results that are remotely relevant to the search term. Instead it will reword the search phrase to maximum the delivery of ads. This is mind control.
Third, this book and the previous volume encountered substantial problems in getting approved (more here). Frankly, the only reason I tolerate these Amazon antics is that many ebook customers go to Amazon first for ebooks. They shouldn’t, and they don’t need to. Existential Smut 2 was approved without problems on Kobo or Google Play Books or Draft2Digital.
I wouldn’t expect my ebook to receive special treatment, and also, there is no “right” for a sexually explicit ebook title to appear alongside mainstream ebook titles. On the other hand, visitors typing into the Amazon search box the name of a Marquis de Sade novel immediately brings up the desired title.2
The only conclusion I reach from all this is that 1)Amazon is unpredictable and 2)Amazon’s algorithms are focused more on increasing company profitability than providing accurate search results. Come to think of it, maybe those Jesus “Is this Smut” bookmarks might make good Christmas gifts?
- Perspicacious readers will realize that the name “hapax legomenon” is a linguistic term referring to a written word or phrase which appears exactly once for a given language. In other words, the name itself refers to uniqueness. Should we really be surprised that money-hungry Amazon would rewrite the search term so that it refers to a common toy brand and delivers almost a hundred results? (screenshot) ↩︎
- When I was conducting this experiment, the price of the ebook was free. So perhaps Amazon was burying the result because it wanted to push items which actually cost money? When the ebook price reverts to normal price, I shall verify. ↩︎
Hapax Legomenon is the editor behind the Existential Smut story collections.
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