2018: Year in Review

As we’re coming to the end of another year, I thought I would look back at what, at least for my writing, has been a pretty memorable twelve months.

I started 2018 with the goal of self-publishing my first novel as an e-book. I’d never published a book before; the most productive thing I had done with my writing was sharing short stories on erotic fiction sites. Sharing stories on these sites is pretty straightforward; you write your story, think of a title and blurb, post it all into a web form and the site does the rest.

Putting together and publishing a book was very different to that and required a lot more work. I went into 2018 very excited because towards the end of 2017 I had finished writing my first erotic novel, Best Friends With a Naked Girl, and I had a target to publish it in the first few weeks of 2018.

Well, I managed to meet my target but the book was far from perfect, with a poor quality cover that had to have some very clumsy edits in order to be accepted by the platform Smashwords, which I was using at the time, so they could distribute it to other e-book retailers who might be a bit squeamish about having so much nudity on the cover.

So I published it, but it still needed some work.

As 2018 went on I began to think about how I actually wanted my book to appear, the image I wanted it to have, and I went back to one of my influences, Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise comic. I decided I wanted to have an illustrated cover rather than one which used photographs. I can draw a little myself but not well enough to put on the cover of a book I was expecting people to pay money for. After a lot of searching I found an illustrator (Danielle Fenner) through the site DeviantArt who took commissions and was happy doing mildly erotic work with some nudity, and whose style looked like what I had imagined in my head for the book.

I republished the book with its fantastic new cover showing the two main characters; Becky (the titular ‘naked girl’) and Lisa (the ‘best friend’).

I had few expectations of how the book would sell and indeed, in the first couple of months it was in publication, it sold about what I imagined it would. I was happy with any sales at all; I didn’t get into writing to make money (if I had I wouldn’t have chosen nudist/exhibitionist erotica as my genre, I’d have gone for something more profitable!) and it was nice that even a few people had bothered to check out my work and seemed to like it.

This was encouraging to me and it caused me to go back to a book I had begun working on earlier in 2017. This was a slightly different novel – an alternative universe version of our world in which public nudity has become legal in the USA, I called it Brave Nude World because I can’t resist a pun!

Although I had not expected to finish Brave Nude World any time soon, I was now inspired and I ended up publishing the book as my second novel only a few months after the first, in April. I learned a lot from my first experience of self-publishing and this time I made sure that the book was perfect exactly as I wanted from the start, including commissioning a new cover from Danielle.

Although Brave Nude World was not a smash hit, it seems to have boosted my profile a little on Amazon and Best Friends…, which had begun to lose attention, really picked up following the publication of Brave Nude World. Both novels continued to well exceed my expectations for sales throughout the rest of the year, and as the year ends I have sold a few hundred and a lot of borrows through Kindle Unlimited too. I’m not sure if it is a lot or not, but I had told myself at the start of 2018 that if I sold 30 copies I would be happy, so I’m delighted that so many people are responding to and enjoying my fiction.

I only published one short story in 2018, much of the rest of my writing time has been given over to novels. It isn’t that I prefer one over the other, but I confess I’ve been a little short of ideas for shorter stories lately. The story, (NIP) Nina In Public, was written for a competition and although it didn’t place highly, it was fun to write.

Much of the rest of this year has been spent working on my next novel, Love Life of a Naked Girl, the sequel to Best Friends… I was fairly certain when I published Best Friends… that I would like to do a sequel, there seemed more of the girls’ story to tell. In particular, Best Friends… is mostly told from Lisa’s perspective; Love Life… goes into Becky’s character a lot more, as well as introducing some other characters to be more of an ensemble piece.

The other thing I have been doing throughout 2018 is working to promote my writing through social media (mostly Twitter and this blog). I’m not sure how effective my advertising is, but I quite enjoy doing it and I think if you are a self-published author, being active on social media is quite important. That said I am perhaps not as prolific a tweeter as others, my Twitter largely ignores both things happening in my life away from writing, and also politics, which are two big and popular things to tweet about. I just feel, as a thirtysomething male author, that the sort of people who read my books (which are usually about pretty young naked women) aren’t really going to be that interested in my life!

I do browse Twitter a lot though and one person I am a big fan of is the model, artist and self-described “Naked Person” LucyMuse. It is Lucy’s thoughts on the intersection between creative nudity, erotic nudity and non-sexual naturism, and where she places herself in that, that have inspired me to label my writing Naked Fiction this year. I feel that while my writing is undeniably erotic and therefore sex-positive, I try also to promote naturist values in terms of the enjoyment and empowering qualities of non-sexual nudity. While many naturists would probably be angry that I use naturism or a version of it in my fiction, I hope to be seen as a little different to many erotic writers in that I’m not seeking to sexualise naturism; instead I’m writing about naturists who also happen to have good, fun, interesting sex lives. So I would not call my writing “naturist fiction” but also I would not consider it purely “erotic fiction” either – hence, naked fiction.

So at the end of a busy 2018, what does the year ahead hold for me?

Well, in January 2019, probably around the anniversary of the publication of Best Friends… I will be publishing Love Life of a Naked Girl, which as I have said is the sequel to Best Friends… and follows the further adventures of Becky and Lisa.

I have already begun work on my next novel. I had planned to take a break from writing for a while in 2019, I have many other things in my personal life I would like to do that don’t involve sitting at a computer. But inspiration struck me and I found myself revisiting some story fragments and plotting a novel around them, which is already progressing well. So without wishing to set myself up for a fall, you can expect a fourth full-length A D Rowen novel at some point in 2019.

Beyond that, I would like to finally attempt to write a non-erotic work, one which explores naturism and nudity for the main character but without the sexualised element in my other books. I’m not sure this would find its target audience (I’d like to write it for Young Adults) but it could be a fun experiment.

I’d like to end by (once more) thanking everyone who has read one of my novels, checked out my short stories, followed and interacted with me on Twitter, read my blog, and especially those who have offered advice and encouragement and indulged my weird humour and tendency to over-philosophise.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a great and prosperous New Year.

The 'death' of Tumblr

 Over the last few days, the social media and blogging platform Tumblr has announced that from 17 December 2018 they will no longer be allowing any 'NSFW' images to be posted by users.

This move is thought to have come about after Apple suspended the Tumblr app from availability in their App Store, because a large amount of child pornography had gotten through Tumblr's filter software and ended up on the platform.

However, others in the industry have posited that in fact this move has been a long time in the planning, and is more to do with Tumblr no longer wanting to dedicate time, money and staff to policing the individual pieces of content uploaded to the 'NSFW' segment of the platform or improve their filter software, when it is more cost-effective for them to simply blanket-ban all images of sex and nudity. It's also speculated that making themselves more attractive to advertisers is another consideration that has led to them deciding that from 17 December onwards, Tumblr will be free of adult content.

This has understandably been a controversial decision, in part because Tumblr has spent the past 11 years as a platform which was known by many to permit users to share nude images and pornography, erotic art and writing, and more. That they would decide now, after more than a decade of giving a home to many people who saw Tumblr as an outlet for expressing their sexuality, or as a supportive community for non-sexual nudity in the name of body positivity, to ban all that content (even in the name of cleaning up their image) has taken a lot of people by unpleasant surprise.

The decision has also been controversial because it is seen by many as a "sledgehammer to crack a walnut" scenario (if the explanation that it relates to Apple pulling the app from their store is the correct one) - Apple's issue was that the filtering software used by Tumblr (software Apple requires all apps in its store to have to prevent any app from being used to share child pornography) was ineffective and not up to industry standard. Apple weren't being squeamish about consenting adult porn on the platform, and there has never been any suggestion from Apple that they see Tumblr banning all adult content as necessary to prevent the app being withdrawn again in future.

Almost all users of Tumblr would concur that child pornography should have no place on that platform or any other part of the internet, and would have welcomed any measures taken by Tumblr to shore up their defenses against users being able to upload child porn in future, but few would agree that blanket-banning all pornography and non-pornographic adult nudity is the only or best way to achieve this.

Perhaps the biggest aspect of this controversy is the way that it will affect the many users of the platform who openly value it for the way it enables them to find, share and generate adult-oriented content where other platforms (such as Instagram and Facebook) have already banned this.

Much of the outcry has come from the following groups: sex workers, who use Tumblr to advertise and promote their paid work and to network and establish communities (especially sex workers from marginalised groups such as the LGBTQ+ community, those who have physical disabilities or mental health concerns, and those who are involved in more unconventional kink and fetish scenes, all of whom have found support and safer generation of revenue through using Tumblr); creators of adult visual content (especially artists, both those in fandoms and in the general user population); and also promoters of non-sexual or sex-positive body-positive movements, for whom the sharing of male and female nude self-portraits is a communal act of empowerment and rebellion against traditional one-dimensional standards of beauty and gender conformity.

There is also a small naturist community on Tumblr who, I imagine, are once more aggrieved that images of non-sexual nudity are again being considered ban-worthy alongside sex-based content.

All of these people will be deprived of their primary reason for using Tumblr after December 17, and many will therefore be left with either no outlet at all for both creative expression and safe networking, or be forced onto other, less safe and user-friendly platforms. Additionally, content creators and sex workers who benefit from using Tumblr as a safe promotional tool will likely lose revenue as a result.

To add insult to injury, there is no suggestion that Tumblr will be cutting down on other problematic content, such as violence or hate speech. While I am sure the platform would not wish to be seen to be endorsing either, they appear disproportionately more concerned with sex and nudity than with violence or hate. It's an old story, of course.

My book cover was apparently good enough
for Amazon but not for Tumblr...

Finally, users have been taking to Twitter to share examples of where Tumblr's automated content-review software (which was making red warning bars appear at the top of posts considered to be 'explicit' so that creators could appeal them if they were wrong) has flagged often laughably non-explicit images as explicit (as of today Wednesday 5 December, a lot of these warnings appear to have disappeared).

Ultimately, of course, Tumblr are free to choose what sort of content they do and don't allow on their platform. They are a private enterprise, they aren't obligated to allow adult content just to satisfy freedom of speech in the US (where they are based) or any other country. While there have been a number of users advocating for petitions or various other rebellious tactics, I doubt they will have impact on the company's decision or the way it will be implemented. Statistically, adult content accounts for approximately 1% of all user content on Tumblr (that's not to say there isn't still a lot, but it is vastly, enormously outnumbered by general content), an acceptable amount to lose. The only reason Tumblr is doing this is because it can make more money than if it doesn't.

On the other hand...

I suspect most content-creators know this: those I have seen are already packing up shop, upping sticks for other platforms ahead of the ban, for fear that if they wait too long, they will be simply obliterated from the site like the poor souls in Marvel's Infinity War film, their accumulated audience not knowing what has happened to them.

My history with Tumblr goes back many years. I have used Tumblr as a platform as both a general user and as a creator of erotic content, and I've had several Tumblrs over the years. I have a number of friends I have made through Tumblr who have either been or gone on to sex work, or who have been body-positivity and sex-positivity advocates, or promoters of a naturist lifestyle. None of those people would have been there if Tumblr didn't allow the content they were posting, content which will now be forbidden from 17 December.

I don't deny there were issues with adult content on Tumblr. A great many adult accounts were porn-sharing bots, usually aimed at promoting pay sites by randomly reposting images with links underneath. There was also a grey area of consent, whereby body-positive activists and naturist-types might share nude images without a sexual context, only for those images to be reblogged in a different context on porn blogs. A plus-size friend who shared nudes of herself to promote positive female body image described playing almost a game of whack-a-mole with all the chubby-fetish blogs who would keep sharing her pictures; for every one she asked to take her photo off their blog, another would pop up. Even when she captioned her photos warning porn blogs against reblogging her, they would simply delete the caption as they reposted.

But while these issues needed to be addressed, I don't think anyone experienced with the adult side of Tumblr would have advocated banning all images of sex and nudity altogether as the only or best solution.

It's perhaps unsurprising that these promotional
images for Brave Nude World have been flagged

As a writer, I find that Tumblr is perhaps my least-used platform to promote my work, but starting out it was the source of most of my inspiration. I browsed adult-oriented Tumblrs and when I saw images that appealed to or inspired me, I would reblog them with a short story attached (usually one or two paragraphs, a snapshot of a moment). Invariably, given the type of fiction I write, these were pictures of naked women and stories about how and why they came to be naked. I soon graduated to longer prose and then novels, but most of my old stories were still on Tumblr. I imagine they will disappear too come December 17, along with the graphics I created to promote my book Brave Nude World when that was published earlier this year. All feature nudity; all are deemed no longer acceptable.

Whether explicit text is to be banned along with explicit images remains to be seen; presumably it is a question of cost and man-hours setting up and maintaining software which can read text posts and flag them as objectionable, and at the moment Tumblr is concentrating on the image and video posts and not the written ones. But I am sure it is only a matter of time.

So I'll be saying goodbye to Tumblr. As a producer of adult content I am no longer welcome there, even if that content itself still flies under their radar (and as I have said, much of it will not). They have made that perfectly clear. I shall survive and thrive, I am not concerned for myself. I have Amazon and Literotica and Twitter and this blog, they are more than enough in terms of outlets. But there are a great many people who will be hurt, massively hurt, by Tumblr's decision, not least because many have spent years, perhaps even a decade, amassing followers and building and participating in a safe and welcoming community which will be soon to disappear.