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I'm concerned about what Amazon will allow since their guidelines are so vague, or in the case of what I am writing, a gray area.
In the stories I'm writing, human beings are transformed into sentient animals, half-animals, or objects. In several instances normal human beings have sexual relations with these transformed people and I don't leave it vague at all. In addition to that there are mythical creatures like Sphinxes, centaurs, werewolves, and such that have sexual relationships with normal humans.
I have seen works for sale on Amazon that seem to have these kinds of elements, but there is a difference between what is allowed, and what people have managed to sneak through. I have other works for sale and I don't want to be banned.
I know this is a weird question. I'm currently writing an anthology of twisted versions of well-known fairytales, myths, and fantasy stories. I'm exploring all the bizarre elements of how their worlds work and what would happen if we followed those bizarre elements logically to such a far degree that the situation is utterly insane, particularly how the romantic relationships and sex lives of the characters are changed.
In Greek mythology Zeus appeared as a swan and seduced a woman, for example. In a graphic retelling of that myth is a sentient god-being who becomes an animal for seduction considered bestiality?
I really don't want to tone those parts down too much because they set up great sequences with couples counseling later, and making them too vague ruins what I explore in those parts.
Are there any concrete and clear do's and don'ts to approaching these situations? What can I do to comply best without destroying the experience and intent of the stories?
My thanks in advance for any help.
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Amazon isn't going to clarify their policy anytime soon -- nor make it consistent -- unless a Court or their customers force them to.
Here's an example of something they carry with a cat-derived 'underperson' who is essentially a programmed-by-genetics sex worker, Cordwainer Smith's celebrated story, 'The Ballad of Lost C'Mell': www.amazon.com/Norstrilia-prequel-Ballad-Lost-CMell-ebook/dp/B00NBAVZOG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484924790&sr=1-1&keywords=the+ballad+of+lost+C%27mell
However, your mileage may vary greatly! And/or Amazon might suddenly decide to ban all works by this writer. We won't know until they do -- or don't -- or change their minds yet again.
IMHO, what Amazon is really doing is deciding (perhaps entirely automatically/algorithmically) to carry your book based on what they think it will do to their bottom line, including brand/reputational/traffic damage. What they're doing is estimating whether publishing your story (including its elements that may hurt sales, customer traffic or their perceived value of their own brand, rightly or wrongly, now or in the future) worth the risk of selling it.
If -- for any reason (including changing tastes) -- Amazon thinks publishing your book will hurt their eventual/overall bottom line, they will likely find a reason to decline. Their stated reason (if any) may well be more dictated by what's legally allowable than by their actual decision-making process.
Amazon's content guidelines are notoriously nonspecific.
Offensive Content
What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.
I assume there are multiple reasons for this:
Offensive material is hard to narrow down to a set of well-defined guidelines (your question demonstrates an edge case for a seemingly-simple "no bestiality" rule).
They probably do most/all of their removal/banning by algorithm, so they might not even have a good, human-understandable definition to give you.
They have legal obligations and concerns, which means that being able to remove whatever might cause problems can take precedence over being transparent to authors.
There have been multiple cases of Amazon suddenly "cracking down" on erotica, or changing the guidelines - the ones I recall were in 2011 and 2013.
So, any answer here is going to be guesswork, and might be subject to change with no warning.
All that being said:
Fantastical creatures seem to be accepted as not treading on bestiality. There's certainly no dearth of werewolf erotica titles, and other shapeshifters as well.
As far as I can tell (though I am no expert), Amazon is unlikely to ban you -- if they do anything, it will be to remove your book. At which point you can make modifications (e.g. remove the chapter with the swan...), and re-upload.
My own very quick skim of the internet has uncovered a 2013 guide to Amazon's content guidelines for erotica authors, as well as recommendations to seek and join a good erotica-writer forum, which will have the expertise you're looking for.
If you find better, fuller, answers then this, it'd be great if you came back and filled us in :)
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