Amazon's Explicit Title/Cover Declaration

I have so far published four collections of short stories and one novel, all under the adult bromantic/heteroflexible/softcore-ish themes.

When adding them I get to this:

"Does the book’s cover or interior contain sexually explicit images, or does the book's title contain sexually explicit language?"

Being adult books I automatically selected "yes", but I read it again today when updating one of the books and I found myself pausing over the specification of images and titles.

There is no sexually explicit imagery within any of my books.

The definition of "sexually explicit" is also down to personal preference, isn't it? Who's to say what someone else might consider explicit? How are we supposed to know what an Amazon reviewer will consider to be such?

I can find no clear terms to be able to understand what this means and whether my titles or covers would fall under this categorisation. I don't want to change them all only to be banned in 72 hours.

Looking around at other titles I regularly see covers which are far more adult than mine. Even the average romance novel from the 80s would probably be considered more explicit than anything I have designed for my books - although several of mine are very "suggestive" of certain things.

Anyone have any advice?

 

I would assume by explicit, referring to a cover image, it means nudity or sex acts. Not kissing or hugging I think, but anything beyond that. This is generally what explicit means.

I can't say I've ever seen a romance cover from the 80's with anything explicit on it—usually no more than some cleavage and maybe kissing. The rest would just be suggested.

 

I probably could have been more specific with regard to that.
None of my covers include any humans at all, so even the shirtless hunks and busty windswept ladies of the 80s covers is more explicit than what I produce for my covers

I tend to design my covers to include an item related to one of the stories within, usually the story I imagine would get the most interest.

I think I've probably been over-cautious in selecting explicit. As a result I wonder if that's considerably restricted access to them.

Now I'm probably going to spend a day or two wondering whether I should risk changing that option.

 

It probably has.

A good idea I think.

 

I would say look in the romance section, specifically the Bodice ripper romances, and see how graphic those covers are. If yours is less than that you should be good.

 

I have done a little snooping around and I think my covers are really tame in comparison, so I bit the bullet and edited one of my books to change the explicit option. Now it's in review so I guess I'll know in a couple of days.

I would imagine KDP probably pays extra attention if someone deselects that after it's been live for 10 months so I doubt it will just be automated review.

Fingers crossed!

 

I have not a mere notion of a nipple on any of my covers so that's definitely not an issue.
As these books are collections of short stories (ten in each) I tend to pick what I imagine would be the most popular story inside, then I choose an inanimate object in relation to that story and create a graphic with that in mind.

When I look at the competition in the gay/bisexual erotica world almost every single cover is a rendition of another, almost always with a buff anonymous male torso. I made a conscious decision to avoid that cliché so my covers have large bold colors with a central object.

Thankfully, the first book I changed the explicit selection on has now passed the review, and the second is in progress. I should be able to go through one every few days until they're all out of the theoretical "dungeon" I've been warned about