Amazon Restricts Promotion of Books with "Religious or Spiritual Content"

I promised in my previous post to share the results of my experiment with various marketing tools that Amazon and its subsidiaries offer to self-published authors. The newest edition of my book, Setting Goals That Count: A Christian Perspective, went "live" with Amazon and Kindle in mid-March. With recent advances in print-on-demand and e-book technology, as well as Amazon's commitment to make its publishing platform as user-friendly as possible, production is now the easiest aspect of the whole process. It's possible to produce a steady stream of new books in print and electronic formats with minimal distraction from my writing routine.

Marketing and promotion are also easy with the tools available from Amazon and Google. However, I encountered a snag with Amazon's marketing platform that was quite unexpected: They reserve the right to restrict the advertising of religious or spiritual books, so they rejected the ad I submitted for my book. Here's the beginning of the e-mail I received from Amazon Marketing Services:

Thank you for submitting your ad campaign "________" for review. To help provide a welcoming experience for customers of all faiths and beliefs, we restrict religious advertising at Amazon. Our creative acceptance policies for books available at https://advertising.amazon.com/ad-specs/en/policy/KDP-acceptance/, notes that we are unable to approve your ad if it contains overtly religious or spiritual ad copy, images, or symbols (for example, the Star of David, a crucifix, the Star and Crescent).

Please re-submit your ad after bringing it into compliance with our creative acceptance policies. 

I thought my ad copy was fairly innocuous. It simply said, "What Is Your Calling? Use simple worksheets and questionnaires to find your way. For Christians of all ages." Perhaps I just needed to reword the ad to "bring it into compliance" with Amazon's policies, so I followed their link and found this:

3. Restricted Ad Content and Books
There are several customer experience sensitive categories that are not appropriate for a general audience. The following categories may be restricted from the homepage and Kindle E-reader placements: 

• Non-fiction self-help books relating to dating and relationships

• Non-fiction books that allude to sensitive financial topics (e.g. bad credit or bankruptcy)

• Non-fiction self-help books that refer to topics of grief, mourning, and loss

• Books for weight loss

• Religious or spiritual content

• Books about political parties, issues and related content

Apparently, my book's overt Christian message excludes it from the usual Amazon promotions. I wonder, have any other ACFW members stumbled across this problem with their Christian fiction?

The Art of Interruptions

In an ironic twist, Blogger wasn't playing nice when I was writing this post. So I wrote it on my own blog, which uses WordPress.

You can find the post here.

Thanks for reading!

Karla Akins is the author of The Pastor's Wife Wears Biker Boots and countless short stories, biographies and other books for middle grades. She currently serves as President of ACFW-Indiana Chapter and resides in North Manchester with her pastor-husband, twin adult sons with autism, and her mother-in-law with Alzheimer's. Her three dogs and two cats are attentive editors.

Writing Outside Your Culture: Native American or Indian, Ojibwe or Chippewa?

 

When writing outside your race or culture, it is particularly important to avoid labels that unintentionally disparage the race or cultural group.

My second middle-grade historical novel, Creating Esther, is about an Ojibwe girl who goes to an Indian boarding school at the end of the 19^th Century. My first dilemma was whether to use “Indian” or “Native American.” I didn’t want to offend anyone by using the word “Indian,” but that was what Native Americans were called at the time of my story, and every boarding school had “Indian” in its name. For historical purposes, that was the best choice. But was it acceptable?

In September I’ll write about my research trip through Ojibwe country in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. For now, it’s enough to say that one of the stops in Minnesota was at the Grand Portage National Monument, where the museum answered my question about using the term “Indian.” I’ll let you read the answer for yourself in the first photo, which I took at the exhibit.

My second question was what to call the tribe itself. The legal name is Chippewa, and that is the name I was familiar with when growing up in Chippewa County, Michigan. But most tribes call themselves Ojibwe (or Ojibwa or Ojibway). Then there is Anishinaabe, which is the older version. Again, I’ll let the exhibit at Grand Portage provide the answer.

 

Based on those exhibits, I ended up using “Indian” and “Ojibwe.”

When writing historical fiction outside your culture, it is important to balance historical accuracy with sensitivity to the feelings of the culture’s members. Sometimes history has to win out, but think carefully about your choice.

And sometimes it’s as easy as asking.

__________

Kathryn Page Camp is a licensed attorney and full-time writer. Writers in Wonderland: Keeping Your Words Legal was a Kirkus’ Indie Books of the Month Selection for April 2014. The second edition of Kathryn’s first book, In God We Trust: How the Supreme Court’s First Amendment Decisions Affect Organized Religion, was released on September 30, 2015. Desert Jewels is searching for a home, and Creating Esther has just begun circulating to publishers. You can learn more about Kathryn at www.kathrynpagecamp.com.



Plot and Structure

By Kelly Bridgewater

If you have been around the writing community for any length of time, all published and unpublished writers referenced James Scott Bells’s widely popular craft book, Plot and Structure. Although I haven’t completed the whole book, I have gotten through about 2/3s of it; it does contain a lot of helpful information.

From Amazon

 Plot and Structure uses tons of examples from many different contemporary pieces to draw the writer in. Bell will explain an idea to you like using Raw Emotion to start the novel, but then he will show you an example of raw emotion from The Quiet Game by Greg Iles. Even though I haven’t read the book or even heard of the author, it doesn’t stop me from understanding Bell’s example.

Another great part of the book is the number of exercises that Bell includes in the book. It isn’t about you, as the reader, just skimming through the book, gaining insight. You actually get to jump right in alongside Bell and practice your own hand at improving your writing. If you forget how to do something that he asks you to do in the exercises, then just flip right back to the place in the book and review how he explained it.

Toward the end of the book, Bell also shows how to revise and polish your book. If that isn’t enough, then he has written another book entitled Revision and Self-Editing to focus on more ways to make the book even better.

I know this isn’t a long post, but this book does have a number of highlights and notes in the margin for me. I’m still working on studying it and trying to pull all the help I can get from the pages.

If you have read Plot and Structure, what is the item that has stood out for you?

A Kiss, an Arrow, and a Past Too Perfect

by Jean Kavich Bloom

The phrase “past perfect tense” can make your head spin unless you’re a grammar nerd. (I confess, sometimes I have to look up grammar rules if anyone asks. But it’s all in my brain somewhere because of a strict tenth grade English teacher we called Bertha behind her back. I’m talking about diagramming sentences here. If you'd like to know more, see what I wrote about her on my blog, with thanks!)

Past perfect tense comes in handy in a "telling" flashback, a character's thoughts or dialogue about a past event, or when you want to ensure your reader knows an action took place before another action (“He had taken his meds before bedtime”). But knowing when to halt using past perfect tense can get, well, tense, and overusing it is an issue I sometimes see when editing, or even reading, novels. 

A sentence telling what happened in the past starts out without a problem: “I had loved him” or “The arrow had nearly found its target,” but then continues with “I had loved him from the first time we had kissed” or “The arrow had nearly found its target but had bounced off a wall.”

Not only is that a mouthful, but that second "had" makes for awkward, right? Trust me, these read better: “I had loved him from the first time we kissed” and “The arrow had nearly found its target but bounced off a wall.” Finishing with simple past tense makes for an easier read, and not only in the same sentence, but as the passage continues.

Not “I had loved him from the first time we kissed. He had been everything I had wanted in a man,” but “I had loved him from the first time we kissed. He was everything I wanted in a man.”

Not “The arrow had nearly found its target but had bounced off a wall. Instead, it had wounded a bystander,” but “The arrow had nearly found its target but bounced off a wall. Instead, it wounded a bystander.”

These examples might seem extreme, but not only have I seen writing like this (unfortunately in published works), but I know how easy it is for a writer “in the zone” to get wordy and glide over best tense construction. We all do it! So when editing your own work, looking for too much perfect in your past tense is a good idea, kisses and arrows aside. Your editors and readers will thank you for your diligence!

Jean Kavich Bloom is a freelance editor and writer (Bloom in Words Editorial Services). Her personal blog is Bloom in Words too, where she sometimes posts articles about the writing life. She is also one of many contributors to a new blog for women, The Glorious Table. Her published books are Bible Promises for God's Precious Princess and Bible Promises for God's Treasured Boy. She and her husband, Cal, have three children and five grandchildren.  

photo credits:
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=151673&picture=young-couple-honeymoon; 
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=130421&picture=archers-arrow