And to make it easier, it was practically made for me. As you may have known, I was toying with the notion of removing all my books from Amazon’s KindleUnlimited service and placing the books on multiple online platforms to offer them to more readers. While they would still be able to be purchased on Amazon’s storefront, they wouldn’t be in the KDP Select program anymore. This is a choice many authors need to make at some point or another: either expand to more platforms or focus with a single one. Some have better luck with one option while others have more success with the other, it’s just something that needs to be tested to find out what works best.

A recent poll I hosted showed many people wanted the books to remain in KDP Select rather than go multiplatform. This is understandable, many people use KDP and it certainly attracts a large audience all by itself. It was clear more people wanted it to remain in the program than see it go. This was something I could understand and empathize with. So I did further digging into all the aspects of both staying in KDP and removing my books from it, and came to solution, though not for the obvious reasons you may have guessed.

I had originally planned to do a trial run with going multiplatform. While I would always be able to return to KDP if I chose, I was curious to see if going multiplatform would even gain anything for sales and readers. However, that trial came to a swift end over the weekend. And it boiled down to a simple word that I couldn’t abide by: Censorship.

It wasn’t because the stories themselves told of humans and monstergirls doing the vertical tango or the horizontal cha-cha-cha in bed, or that there was killing, raping, and violence in the books that caused an issue (oddly enough). No, in fact it was the art. And not just the exposed breasts or scantily clad women, but some were just flagged for being “inappropriate” for no further reason (Aeon’s artwork for example was deemed this, which is odd seeing as she has the most clothes on!). In order to have the books posted, I would have needed to remove and censor many of the illustrations. And that was a no-go for me.

And not just because I like the art and wanted to keep them in the books. It was clear this was going to be a slippery slope, and these other retailers would very likely flag my books for more in the future. I’m telling a story of monstergirls and magic, of sex and sorcery, and love and lust. I’m not going to censor anything in my books, ever. As weird as it sounds, Amazon was the only retailer that was accommodating of my series.

So, faced with either censorship of my story or keeping it only on Amazon, I have chosen the only real option. The series will remain only on Amazon, in its entirety, as it has always been intended. That said, it will return to being in KDP Select once again as well. Hopefully the series can continue to grow and thrive on one platform alone, and here’s hoping readers will continue to give the series a chance.