For Authors:

What is considered “Clean”?

A lot of people take issue with the word “clean” when describing romance without sex on the page. I get it. Sex isn’t dirty. However, there are not a lot of great options for labels we can use to portray what genre we’re selling. “Sweet” has been used in the past, but many steamy romance authors are using “sweet” now to describe their light-hearted steamy romances. It can be confusing. So, we are using the word “clean” on this website. Let me try to define what this means for our books.

A clean romance is more than simply taking all the sex scenes out of a book. A clean romance focuses more on the emotional part of a relationship than the physical. You won’t see a lot of lust or sexual innuendo in a clean romance. The focus will always be on the emotional aspects of the relationship. This doesn’t mean there isn’t any desire or longing in a clean romance. You’ll see both of those in many clean romances. You just won’t see that turn into lust or sex on the page.

Here’s a list of what isn’t allowed in the books on this website:

  • Sex Scenes on the Page
  • Heavy Swearing and F-bombs
  • Graphic Violence
  • Nudity in a Sexual Scene
  • Sexual Innuendos

Here’s what we do allow:

  • Fade to Black
  • Mild Swear Words
  • Nudity (Non-Sexual)
  • Desire (Non-Graphic)
  • Mild Violence

If you happen to discover a book that does NOT meet this criteria, please report it to us using our contact form OR you can also report an error with the book. We appreciate your help in keeping our strict guidelines in place.