Nuked by Amazon

or why 'Hell for Leather' was the last straw!

I have previously noted how I had my publishing account 'nuked' by Amazon. This did not affect the books I published under Virgin publishing's Nexus imprint, 'Disciples of Shame' and the young wife.
My editor for those was James Merriott, who is sadly no longer with us, having died at the age of 47, which was quite a shock to me at the time, as we were becoming fast friends via our shared love of the comic format.
At the time, I disliked the cover he had chosen for the Young Wife, and this was my first realisation that one is never in control of their art when involved with other parties. Some one with a strong vison such as myself is always going to have difficulties compromising on their output, and this was a mild sign of what was to come.
Fast forward to 2012 and I realised that I could 'self publish' a comic called Hell for Leather starring a character called Pamela Poshe, AKA 'Pervy Pam.. It was not the first adventure I had drawn. That honour goes to 'Dirty Rat', which I am now also revisiting using AI to repopulate and freshen my artwork. Many people misunderstand the correct creative use of AI, which is to use it as an animation software for your own drawings. In this way there is no question of copyright, or actual skill, because I can draw far more effectively than the 'AI' which is actually not intelligent at all, but is actually quite stupid and cannot conversationally produce what you want in the way you can yourself. Believe the AI evangelists at your peril.
So, I reconstituted the panels on a format that fitted Kindle's requirements, submitted HFL (Hell for Leather) as an erotic comic, though I had substantially culled the explicit nature of what I intended in order not to fall afoul of any platform regulations or the laws at the time.

Then promptly forgot about it, as I was busy with other things, such as child rearing. I noticed, in one of the unusual moment that hardly ever happen, that I was a couple of hundred quid up in my bank account, and noticed that I had received several payments from KDP. This prompted me to look up HFL on amazon, and sure enough, it was top of its chart. An actual bestseller in its niche. Number 1 no less.
Shortly after, Voyeur Maybe, crept up to a similar position. The money was never going to be life changing, but there was a lot of personal satisfaction from having made money on self publishing a comic. Something that only 1% of people who try achieve.

Anyway, lets move on another few years ago when I attempted to push the boundaries with 'Boner Drone', a distinctly more aggressively sexually titillating comic which did have a lot of satirical humour, but was intended to arouse as well. This proved too much for KDP, and they announced that if I didn't withdraw it, account consequences would follow. I withdrew all titles in a panic thinking, naively, that this meant my Prime membership etc would be part of the purge. Sill me.
Of course they weren't going to turn off me paying them. They were going to turn off paying me. Obviously.
Anyway, my family suggested recently that I republish HFL and Voyeur Maybe. Which I did.
Consequences followed. The 'AI', i.e. the Automatic Idiot, to coin a phrase, or the Algorithm as the intellectual peasants call it, had detected my comic was intended to induce erections, and promptly put me on the liquidation list. I could appeal, but I have always been more Dom than Sub, so I thought, 'Nah!'
Rational assessment of my situation, principles and the practical realities of the current publishing environment made me realise that I had what the techy bros need and can't actually produce. Viable content that people would pay for. How do I know this? History.
My books and comics made money because people wanted to read them. Because I am actually very good at creation. Erotic dreams are my thing, and I can knit them into the real world in a way that other people didn't just like. They loved them.
Knowing this, and putting away imposter syndrome, and that old fraud, self doubt, I decided to relaunch myself in the way I always wanted to.
At the same time, I am determined not to become too dependent on any single platform. Nor will I accept any form of censorship. That which is deemed too damn sexy for a platform will be made available elsewhere, and merely promoted on the socials. For example, X prides itself on being less censored than other platforms, but it still has rules which can change at any time. Trust me people. Those rules will change.
And Substack. They have already been obliged to bring in age verification. Legal pressure is not ignorable. Free speech is protected on American platforms for now. For now.
So. where is this going? Well, for paid subscribers, the full HFL, 45 pages of latex mayhem is available alongside the first chapter of Voyeur maybe. I do it this way. My musings are free and my product is paid. Does that work for you? Good. So, subscribe as a paid tier and you can access the comics and any other product I put in there. I put the links to the drive where content is held and you copy and paste it into your browser to download. Nothing could be simpler.
So, what are you waiting for. Get in there and grab this introductory offer while it lasts!
Two comics for the price of one. Going..going...

Until next time, take care.