The Confusing World of Amazon's Content Guidelines

Last Tuesday I was supposed to release Transformed Into a Cougar Too (Transformed #20) on Amazon.  But they rejected it for "offensive content."  What is offensive content?  Only Amazon knows and they ain't saying.

On December 7, 2014, at 4:03 PM, Kindle Direct Publishing  wrote:

Hello,

We’re contacting you regarding the following book:

Transformed Into a Cougar Too (Transformed #20) by Filler, Eric (AUTHOR)

(ID:5539262)

During our review process, we found that this content is in violation of our

content guidelines. As a result, we cannot offer this book for sale. If we

identify additional submissions with similar content that violates our

guidelines, we may terminate your account or you may lose access to optional KDP services.

To learn more about our content guidelines, please visit our Kindle Direct

Publishing Help page at:

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2TOZW0SV7IR1U

Best regards,

Kindle Direct Publishing

kdp.amazon.com

Here's how the page it links to describes offensive content:

Offensive Content
What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect. 

Gee, that's really helpful.  So basically it could be anything.

I asked what specifically the problem was and got this long-winded yet unhelpful reply:

On December 8, 2014, at 1:03 PM, Kindle Direct Publishing  wrote:

Hello,

We're contacting you regarding the following title:

Transformed Into a Cougar Too (Transformed #20), ID: 5539262

We’ve confirmed that your book(s) contains content that is in violation of our content guidelines and we will not be offering this title for sale in the Kindle Store. As stated in our guidelines, we reserve the right to determine what we consider to be appropriate, which includes cover images and content within the book.

If you wish to re-publish your book(s) with content that meets our guidelines, it will need to be submitted as an entirely new ASIN and go through our standard review process. Previous customer reviews, tags, and sales rank information are not transferable because the title will essentially be a different product.

Our content guidelines are published on the Kindle Direct Publishing website.

To learn more, please see: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2TOZW0SV7IR1U

We appreciate your understanding.

Best Regards,

Dakota K.

Amazon.com

Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company.

http://www.amazon.com/your-account

______________________________

Connect with KDP and other Authors and Publishers:

Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/KindleDirectPublishing

Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AmazonKDP

Earth's most customer-centric company?  LOL.  We've confirmed there's offensive content and you can resubmit it...but we won't say what the offensive content was.  So how do I know what to change to resubmit?

I'm pretty sure when directors send movies to the MPAA, they actually tell you what content causes it to get the rating it gets.  I don't think they say, "There was offensive content that's probably what you think it was."  Because really that's not very useful to anyone.

So I tried twice more to get someone to explain to me what was wrong and got these useless responses:

On December 9, 2014, at 3:32 PM, Kindle Direct Publishing  wrote:

Hello,

Publisher feedback is important to us as we strive to improve our services and programs for our publishers.  However, as we have previously stated, your book will not be made available in the Kindle Store at this time.

Best Regards,

Sophie L.

Amazon.com

Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company.

http://www.amazon.com/your-account

______________________________

Connect with KDP and other Authors and Publishers:

Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/KindleDirectPublishing

Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AmazonKDP

Hello,

As stated in our content guidelines, we reserve the right to determine what

content we consider to be appropriate. This content includes both the cover art image and the content within the book.

We’re unable to elaborate further on specific details regarding our content

guidelines.

Sincerely,

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing

Amazon.com

Best Regards,

Frederik M

Amazon.com

Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company.

http://www.amazon.com/your-account

______________________________

Connect with KDP and other Authors and Publishers:

Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/KindleDirectPublishing

Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AmazonKDP

Wow, that's really Customer-Centric of you.  Basically I don't think anyone there knows, at least after the first drone who flags the book.  So after that all they do is shield themselves with bureaucratic double-talk and form responses.  At the very least they could better define what offensive content is.  Their definition is so vague that it's useless.

I did resubmit the book.  I think some drone had a problem with a cigarette on the cover, sort of like how the MPAA gives movies an R-rating now if they have a cigarette.  I mean when I submitted it with a new cover they accepted it.  It just would have been nice if they'd said that at the start.  That and didn't lock the book down so I couldn't just replace the cover.

Before

After

Anyway, the gist of this is that if some Amazon drone flags your book, you're pretty much on your own to figure out how to fix it.  For such a "Customer-Centric Company" they really need to be more helpful to authors.