In February 2026, a dark romance novel, a genre of narratives depicting violent or transgressive love affairs, sparked outrage in a segment of the literary world. The novel, Corps à cœurs (Body to Heart ), written by French author Jessie Auryann and self-published in 2023 and 2024 on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform, was suddenly and belatedly accused of romanticizing scenes of pedophilia. This plunged the book into a heated media controversy. However, such incidents are not uncommon among self-publishing platforms, for which this type of scandal generates a form of unintentional marketing.
Since its creation, Amazon’s self-publishing platform has regularly been at the center of literary controversies based on content that appears shocking, transgressive and immoral to some minds – as was the case with the publication of Corps à cœurs , which was labeled a “serious matter of an immoral nature” .
Scandals are a constant in the history of art, and literature in particular. Works now considered classics once provoked outrage, but these controversies generally unfolded over a long period, involving both the artist and their publisher. The resulting scandal took on a literary as well as an editorial dimension. Such was the case with the famous novel * Histoire d’O* by Anne Desclos (published under the pseudonym Pauline Réage), published in 1954 by the notorious Jean-Jacques Pauvert, the publisher who was involved in some twenty literary lawsuits .
With the rise of digital self-publishing and its immediacy, the pace of literary events is accelerating. Literary controversies generally originate online, circulate rapidly on social media, and can spread quickly and widely. Does self-publishing on KDP contribute to accelerating the cycles of literary scandals? In other words, are digital platforms like Amazon reshaping the traditional mechanisms of literary scandals?
The recurring pitfalls of self-publishing on Amazon
Since its creation in 2007 in the United States and in 2011 in France, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform has attracted a growing number of authors, both amateur and established. By allowing anyone to publish a book without going through a traditional publishing house, it has profoundly transformed access to publishing. Over the years, a huge influx of books has flooded this publishing space: a simple search on the Amazon.fr website reveals that more than 100,000 titles are listed in the Dark Romance category, across all genres. However, this publishing openness has also generated considerable criticism .
It was only a few years after the platform’s launch that several books had to be withdrawn from sale due to their controversial content. For example, in 2010, the ebook * The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: The Code of Conduct for Child Lovers* was removed from the Kindle store about two weeks after its release, following a wave of outrage among readers and complaints from numerous child protection organizations. Three years later, a journalistic investigation revealed the presence on the Kindle store of several self-published books describing scenes of rape, incest, and bestiality. Faced with criticism, Amazon again removed several of these titles .
However, the controversies are not limited to pornographic content. Over the years, books written by self-proclaimed health experts have also appeared on the platform. In 2019, several self-published titles promoting purported cures for serious illnesses through the ingestion of toxic substances were identified and quickly removed from the market .
A year later, in the midst of the pandemic, books spreading conspiracy theories about the coronavirus were also removed by Amazon, sometimes discreetly. More recently, in 2023, the platform faced a new phenomenon: the massive influx of books generated by artificial intelligence. Overwhelmed by this wave of automated publications, Amazon began selling books containing erroneous information, including guides on mushrooms that could mislead readers and cause poisoning . Finally, several racist and anti-Semitic books, banned in France, were recently removed from sale on Amazon’s website, as well as on those of Fnac and Cultura .
#KDP, the scandal economy
These few examples of literary scandals reveal that self-publishing on KDP is caught in a cycle of recurring controversies, which can erupt at any moment. Beyond literary scandals, the self-publishing ecosystem on Amazon is also rife with other types of book-related controversies, such as the plagiarism cases regularly reported on KDP, as was the case with the American novelist Nora Roberts , or Amazon’s numerous attempts to circumvent the fixed book price law .
Unlike literary scandals associated with traditional publishing, which often stem from a publisher’s stance—convinced of a manuscript’s power and seeking to defend their favorite author, as with Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita , a work rejected by several publishers before being accepted in 1955 by Maurice Girondas at his Olympia Press—the controversies surrounding Amazon’s KDP seem to follow a completely different logic. In the digital self-publishing ecosystem, scandal doesn’t arise from an editorial decision driven by literary motivation but very often results from a series of factors that promote virality. This raises the question: aren’t literary scandals actually drivers of visibility for a global platform whose model relies on attention, traffic, and buzz ?
Lack of filtering and powerful algorithms
In theory, self-published works on KDP are governed by a license agreement and publishing rules. Amazon can indeed remove content at any time if it is subsequently identified as inappropriate or contrary to the rules; however, in practice, the platform is regularly at the center of controversy. One explanation lies in the very nature of self-publishing. Where traditional publishing relies on several levels of filtering (reading committee, legal or marketing department), KDP prioritizes above all speed and volume of publication. Consider the appealing slogan promoted by Amazon on KDP: “Publish your books independently in print and digital formats, and reach millions of readers worldwide with Amazon.” This unlimited openness allows marginal, provocative, or transgressive works to appear on screens without having undergone the traditional scrutiny of publishing.
However, the mechanics of the scandal don’t end there. On Amazon, the visibility of books largely depends on algorithms that reward engagement: clicks, downloads, comments, ratings, and online discussions. Controversial works precisely fuel and encourage these anticipated reactions; they attract attention, feed debates, and circulate on social media. In this digital environment dominated by the attention economy, controversy becomes a powerful driver of visibility. Contagion becomes a value.
Unintentional marketing
In this mechanism of scandal, virality plays a central role. Many literary scandals that originate on KDP actually erupt outside the platform, notably on TikTok, Reddit, or X (formerly Twitter). A shocking excerpt, a controversial plot, or a provocative cover can quickly go viral. In a matter of hours, an otherwise unknown book can be instantly propelled to the heart of a public debate, transforming a personal post into a media phenomenon.
In this context, controversy sometimes acts as a form of unintentional marketing. Every discussion, criticism, or expression of outrage helps to raise awareness of the work and attract new readers, curious to discover what is generating so much reaction. It is worth noting that those who initiate the controversy are generally not regular readers of the genre, but rather outsiders who, by chance or serendipity, discover the work and contribute to triggering the debate.
Thus, self-publishing on KDP creates a paradoxical publishing space. It is a place of unprecedented creative freedom for authors, but also fertile ground for controversies that benefit Amazon. Between algorithms, virality, and the attention economy, literary scandals on this online sales platform are not simply editorial accidents acknowledged by authors and publishers, but rather structural elements of the self-published book ecosystem. The recent controversies surrounding self-published dark romance novels are therefore not an exceptional occurrence within Amazon’s dynamics, but rather seem inherent to its very operation.
In this turbulent context, it’s worth recalling that just days after the dark romance controversy, Amazon once again found itself at the center of a debate when it announced its partnership with the 2026 Paris Book Festival . This increased visibility for the digital publisher provoked outrage among booksellers, who quickly demanded its withdrawal and were successful.
Author Bio: Stéphanie Parmentier is a Lecturer at Aix-Marseille University (amU), qualified PhD in French literature and Information and Communication Sciences, and teacher-librarian. Researcher affiliated with IMSIC and CIELAM at Aix-Marseille University (AMU).
