It’s up to parents to be involved enough with their kids to restrict their reading, because ratings and censorship (that’s what it is) is such an individual thing when you’re dealing with kids. Some kids are ready for a Romance as 14…some are NOT.

But I’m an adult. My books don’t need a rating.

OTOH: movies are rated, games are rated, TV shows are rated–maybe it just makes sense that books (as another form of media) are rated as well. I agree, though, that it’s the publishers that should provide the rating, but through a centralized board, with defined rating standards. And I’d prefer generalized standards:
General Audiences: little to no sexual content, little to no violence, few adult themes
Young Adult: some sexual content, some violence, some adult themes
Mature: sexual content, violence, adult themes
Xtreme: ANAL!!! OMG! BDSM!! Just Kidding! …but my point is that I don’t want ratings to be biased because the sexual content is not “vanilla”.

I would ‘hope’ if they were going to have a charge of complaints they would have already happened but that could be because I HATE the idea of ratings.

And it is the aphros that have WARNING HOT book or some such on the back (or did).

Not that I don’t like sex in my books, it’s just that I don’t remember the last book I read that did NOT have any. I received a book a couple of weeks back from a contest, some chick lit and the blurb sounded good and all and one page into the book BANG h/h have sex. Five pages later BANG h/h have sex again. And so on, and so forth. Or perhaps we just need a single sticker for sex-free books? Would that make is easier? At least I’d know what to expect.

“This books contains sex scenes.”
“This book is sex-scenes free.”

Just a thought.

I agree the editor would be the best person to rate each book, though I worry about that having consistency across publishers. I’m sure readers would catch on pretty quickly, though, to how publishers judged their own books. A content label, such as Samhain uses, would probably be the easiest system to implement for readers, but I’m not sure that would work for booksellers. (I seem to recall an early Aphrodisia title having a small warning as to the explicitness of the sex at the bottom of the back cover, but don’t quote me on that. I remember the warning, but I can’t swear it was an Aphrodisia.)

I’d like to deny ratings are inevitable, but I remember being a little surprised recently to see a mass market by a well-known erotic romance writer (whose sex scenes raise eyebrows) on the shelf at Walmart. I thought, at the time, that there was no way in hell anybody at the home office had ever read that author. Then I wondered how many women not accustomed to finding erotic romances at Walmart wrote nastygrams to the company. With the kinkier/more explicit stuff being published in mainstream mass market romance now, I can definitely see retailers wanting some kind of a rating from the publisher.

Sadly, there’s a good chance that will lead to retailers such as Walmart not buying certain ratings at all and Borders/etc shelving them separately.

Why should an adult need a rating beyond that?

I see any additional rating system rife with the potential for abuse. It’s possible that Amazon’s snafu last spring could be made to look like child’s play. Yes, worse case scenario.

Caligi & Julie, I too am sick of the mindset that says we must protect people from sex but they can consume as much violence as they want. The movie The Dark Knight is the perfect example. Overall I enjoyed the movie but it had to be most violent PG-13 movie I’ve ever seen. If it had pushed the sexuality envelope that far I’m sure it would’ve been rated R.

So I’m firming in the “Just say no” party.

Want more info on the heat level of the book? I think that’s valid but I think that could be better handled with good cover copy. Samhain, Loose-ID, etc. already have publisher notes with theme content like anal play, menages, bondage. Those notes tend to be much better than any potential rating system would be. Because let’s face it, I probably wouldn’t remember what theme fell into which rating and maybe I’m okay with menages but any type of anal play squicks me out. How would that play out in a rating system? It probably wouldn’t so I’d still be stuck but with the notes I can already make an informed decision. I still might be wrong…

Edited to add: IF there should ever be a rating system then I want it all: sexuality, violence, profanity, drugs & smoking, etc. And then we will have the “bestest” censorship program on the planet.

I do hope that ratings are not inevitible. As adults, we should be able to read what we want to without someone telling us “no, no”. It has already been pointed out that many retailers would not stock books that had a high ‘heat’ level. It seems that violence and gore would win out over sex……once again.

Ratings allow the ninnies to demand retailers exclude objectionable content. If Wal-Mart decides to not sell the spicier rated books, publishers will stop publishing them, a la the ESRB’s AO rating. Wal-Mart wouldn’t sell AO games, so no one publishes anything racier than M.

I don’t want my reading options limited. I hope to hell the industry resists content ratings.

Ratings on adult books will lead to conservative retailers like Walmart cutting out books that have too much adult content. God, why is this issue coming back again? We duked this one out in the RWR YEARS AGO! (I know, because I wrote an “In My Opinion” piece against it!)

I hope we never get ratings. Ratings inevitably lead to censorship.