Book Covers and the Beaded Doorway

There was a musty old book store where I lived while growing up. My mom used to go in there to buy and sell her romance novels. In the back corner of the store was a beaded-doorway with an Adults Only sign over it. I can't see door-beads without thinking of that sign and all the naughty possibilities that lie beyond.

The few covers I saw, as a sneaky kid, were plain with text across the front. All except one that depicted a couple, clearly from the seventies, with long hair and full bushes. These people were not the pretty artistic cover models of today.

picture these two, but full frontal

Now those racy covers that get our blood pumping may be a thing of the past. As rare as beaded-doorways. Perhaps Amazon could put a beaded doorway on their adult section steering us all in that direction, instead of putting tags on covers they deem too pornagraphic or showing too much skin with a provingly failing system.

I hate to say they're at it again, because that would indicate they stopped. Their ever changing rules and regulations on book submissions is an ever present entity. Amazon is a pain in the behind, but as the biggest seller of e-books, authors need to grab the lube and hope against hope that Amazon will be gentle.

I was going through naughty book covers and I found a stack from the beaded-doorway days. I just had to share. These would have definitely gotten tagged by Amazon   or so I thought. Four of these came up on Amazon with their original covers, in a regular search.

sounds hot

wowzer

I bet someone's going to get spanked

retro NA Rock Band erotica!!!

Ooh My

I'm intrigued 

they're about as high school aged as Luke Perry on 90210

The 1970's were a special time. Going through many titles I realized incest was super hot in the 70's. It really shed some light on works by many authors. Had incest not been as big in the 70's would we have gotten The House of Yes? Would George R.R. Martin not been mad for matching up siblings? Would John Warren Wells have skipped out on the incest interviews for his book Taboo Breakers? 

I'd like to think we still would have. We already had works like Lolita, and Juliette. Readers love to be titillated. No matter the cover.

*Without looking them up; can you guess which beaded-doorway covers made it on Amazon?