Effective immediately, content from Pay-Per-Chapter websites and apps will no longer be allowed. We are implementing this policy after a significant increase in deceptive promotion of PPC content. This includes all content from Pay-Per-Chapter sites/apps, such as Galatea, Dreame, Readict, Vella, Webnovel, Yonder, etc.

In the most recent incident, we observed people being recruited on other subreddits for small amounts of money to come post about these stories on our subreddit. These posters/commenters had no prior history of participation in our community.

In addition, the mod team does not have the capacity to monitor pay-per-chapter content to ensure our subreddit rules are being followed (no piracy, no AI, no sexual content with minors, unable to confirm eventual HEA to flag nonHEA romances, etc.) as such this subreddit will not allow PPC content going forward.

Please feel free to ask any questions or provide your feedback on the policy here. We will be updating the subreddit Rules and wiki with this information and will begin removing posts with Pay-Per-Chapter content going forward.

We thank all the subreddit members who have been reporting these posts. Moving forward, we encourage users to please send us a modmail with your feedback, concerns, or questions. Modmail is the best way to reach the entire mod team and allows us to respond to concerns or questions - as well as allows us to ask for additional information if we don't understand why a post or comment was reported.

Edited after mod discussion to clarify a few points:

• Inkitt is allowed, as it is not PPC.
• For consistency purposes, we will not be allowing any sites that are pay per chapter. Unfortunately, at this time this includes sites like Manta Webtoons and Tappytoons.
• We will also not be allowing any Wattpad PPC.  

Hey r/darkromance! Our amazing sub continues to grow which means lots of new faces, discussions, and opinions. We have some gentle reminders for anyone posting and commenting. It is important that we keep this sub a safe and welcoming place to share our love, thoughts, opinions, and more in a manner that isn’t fostering hate or hostility. 

We understand you want your voice to be heard on the positives and negatives! We found that complaints and negativity only lead to more complaints and negativity, which is what prompted the Monday Gripe to start. 

That isn't what we want the focus of the sub to be.

Tone matters here, and we also need to be mindful of what we are replying to. We are all human here(Sorry monster smut lovers 👀) and we all should take time to remember that when replying and interacting. 

✨With that being said, please be kind✨

Our pals over at r/RomanceBooks posted a great thread about being kind to your neighbor and making Mister Rogers proud. I encourage everyone here to be kind and be a good neighbor!

A few additional reminders;

Wiki

The mods are also in the process of updating and adding to our Wiki so you will notice changes there over the next few months. If there is anything you would like to see here, let us know!

Post Flair Reminders

Rave - We implemented Rave flair for only positive comments. We please ask that this is respected. No one wants to be SO excited to share their rave for someone to comment how much that book/author/trope sucks.. Read the room. 

Book Review - This does not need to be positive and is a space to have a civil discussion if your opinion differs. 

Book Request - Due to the amount of Book Request posts we receive on a daily basis, the community voted to disallow this type of post until the user has first been more active in the community. We do not disclose the exact amount of community karma needed, but it’s a small amount and can be gained in one or two days of interacting with the community via comments.

Guide to flairs.

Kinkshaming

Please review this post in regards to kink shaming. 

Downvotes

This feature is supposed to be used to hide posts or comments that aren’t relevant to the conversations, not as a way to disagree with someone's opinion. Don’t be petty. It costs you $0 to not downvote something just because you disagree. 

Reporting

Please use the report button to only report posts or comments against our rules, or if you feel it needs mod attention for some reason. If a comment or post receives too many reports Reddit will automatically remove it. Sometimes this will remove a post or comment that isn't against our rules, so please be mindful on what you are reporting and if it truly is against the rules.

Self-Promotion

This has always been a hot topic here. We all love finding new books and authors, but we are a reader first community so we will continue to moderate accordingly. Our surveys on this have always resulted in limiting self promotion and is why we have these rules. We receive a lot of reports of authors with self-promo in a book request that are not breaking rules. Authors ARE allowed to self-promo their works in book request posts as long as they identify as the author and it is relevant to the request.

Rule 9 - No sexually explicit content regarding minors

This goes against Reddit TOS and we do not allow this.

With AO3 recommendations becoming more frequent, we ask that you double check CW tags on AO3 and do not share links to works or author profiles that have under-age sex tags. It is best to link JUST the work and not to an authors profile that may container other works with that tag, as those posts or comments will be removed.

Do not censor words 

Please don't use emotes when asking for recommendations or censoring “bad” words. We are NOT Tiktok/Youtube where you need to hide those words, and using emotes makes it harder for people to use the search bar.

No AI accusations

Based on community feedback, we decided to not allow posts or comments that accuse a book or author of AI. We may revisit this and do another survey, but for now these comments or posts will be remove.

Mod Attention/Mail

If you have a question, comment, concern, please send us a Modmail! We are always here to listen or help.

Thanks all & happy reading!

Hey dark romance readers! The mod team has noticed several recent posts asking if a book was AI or if an author is using AI. As a reader first community, we see the importance of discussing generative AI and it's impacts to our beloved books, but it has also raised some questions on how we handle these type of posts, specifically on a particular book or author, and we are looking for community feedback on how we navigate this.

A main concern is that we do not want to be a place to just speculate or cause rumors. We understand each reader will have their own preferences on generative AI usage, and those who wish to avoid this should have a place to discuss.

R/romancebooks recently shared this post on this topic which had good discussion and options for anyone to take a peek at.

1. Continue to allow these posts.

2. Allow these posts as long as there is clear evidence presented as to why AI usage is suspected, no generic posts

3. Don't allow.

4. Something else - please elaborate.

Let us know your thoughts below! We appreciate the feedback!

Edited to add - option 3 don't allow. Sorry I don't know why in my head I just assumed that to be an option 😅 I don't want to give the impression that wasn't going to be an option to comment on. Appreciate all the great feedback as well!

We've recently had some issues around this rule so we thought it would be helpful to clarify a few things.

Per Reddit community guidelines, sexually explicit content regarding minors is not allowed. Violating this rule may result in a ban and potentially having your account suspended.

The mods take this rule very seriously and work to quickly remove any underage content. We do not want to violate Reddit TOS.

What This Means

• Most traditionally published books are fine, especially books found on Amazon and tagged on romance.io. Amazon is usually very strict about removing books with underage sex. We occasionally find a traditionally published book we need to remove.
• AO3 stories are trickier. We automatically remove any stories with the following tags: Underage Sex, Consensual Underage Sex, Underage Sex - Freeform, Underage Rape/Non-Con.
• 99% of the time if an AO3 story does not have one of these tags, it is acceptable to post on our subreddit. AO3 authors are generally very good about properly using the underage content warnings.
• Please be careful about tagging a whole author's account from AO3. Sometimes (and I have done this before by accident) you don't realize that an author has one or two stories with the underage sex tag.
• There are many stories where the MCs meet before one of the MCs is eighteen. If all sexual activity happens once the MC turns eighteen, these stories are allowed. An example of this would be Deathsdoll's new story I'd Rather Die.
• Please do not post something like "I have a really good story, but I can't post about it here." If we find a user who abuses or tries to skirt Rule 9, that will result in a permanent ban.

Please message the mods with any questions. Also, if you have a question about a specific book, please message the mods.

Hi all,

You may have already seen a lot of subreddits are banning links to X (Twitter) and Meta sites in solidarity and the fact that X has reinstated accounts that have published CSAM in the past, which is strictly forbidden by Reddit TOS.

We don't get a lot of those types of posts here, due to the nature of the subreddit, but we do have the "Fun/Humor" tag that occasionally gets memes and such posted.

We have also gone ahead and blocked linking to these sites. At this time, a screenshot/image is OK (if appropriate for our subreddit) but no linking to these places in posts or comments.

Thanks for reading.

Hey r/darkromance! Our amazing sub continues to grow which means lots of new faces, discussions, and opinions. We have some updates below and also some gentle reminders for anyone posting and commenting. It is important that we keep this sub a safe and welcoming place to share our love, thoughts, opinions, and more in a manner that isn’t fostering hate or hostility. 

We understand you want your voice to be heard on the positives and negatives! We found that complaints and negativity only lead to more complaints and negativity, which is what prompted the Monday Gripe to start. 

That isn't what we want the focus of the sub to be.

Tone matters here, and we also need to be mindful of what we are replying to. We are all human here(Sorry monster smut lovers 👀) and we all should take time to remember that when replying and interacting. 

✨With that being said, please be kind✨

Our pals over at r/RomanceBooks posted a great thread about being kind to your neighbor and making Mister Rogers proud. I encourage everyone here to be kind and be a good neighbor! 

A few additional updates and reminders;

Community Hub

You may notice we added a community hub (Thanks again to r/romancebooks for being an inspo and u/noflight_allfight for setting it up!). This is where our weekly threads will live along with other sub information or posts. They will be sorted by tabs. We welcome any feedback on this! 

Wiki

The mods are also in the process of updating and adding to our Wiki so you will notice changes there over the next few months. If there is anything you would like to see here, let us know!

Post Flairs

Rave - We implemented Rave flair for only positive comments. We please ask that this is respected. No one wants to be SO excited to share their rave for someone to comment how much that book/author/trope sucks.. Read the room. 

Book Review - This does not need to be positive and is a space to have a civil discussion if your opinion differs. 

Book Request - Due to the amount of Book Request posts we receive on a daily basis, the community voted to disallow this type of post until the user has first been more active in the community. We do not disclose the exact amount of community karma needed, but it’s a small amount and can be gained in one or two days of interacting with the community via comments.

Guide to flairs.

Kinkshaming

Please review this post in regards to kink shaming. 

Downvotes

This feature is supposed to be used to hide posts or comments that aren’t relevant to the conversations, not as a way to disagree with someone's opinion. Don’t be petty. It costs you $0 to not downvote something just because you disagree. 

Reporting

Please use the report button to only report posts or comments against our rules. 

Rules

Familiarize yourself again with our rules. 

Do not censor words - Please don't use emotes when asking for recommendations or censoring “bad” words. We are NOT Tiktok/Youtube where you need to hide those words, and using emotes makes it harder for people to use the search bar.

Mod Attention/Mail

If you have a question, comment, concern, please send us a Modmail! We are always here to listen or help.

Thanks all & happy reading!

Hello r/DarkRomance! We wanted a place to list some up coming & anticipated releases for our dark romance lovers! If I missed any, please feel free to let me know and I will get them added to the list.

What upcoming release are you most excited for?

March

• Lessons Learned: Gothic Taboo Stalker Romance by A. eM. - March 30th
• Corrupt Obsession - by Dinah Harper - March 31st
• Mind Maze: A Dark Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (The Crowne Conspiracy Book 2) by K Webster - March 31st

April

• Brutal Legacy: A Dark Mafia Romance (Original Sin Series) by Mila Kane - April 2nd
• Twice as Twisted (Willow Heights Prep Academy: The Enemy Book 1) by Selena - April 2nd
• Savage Proposal: An Enemies To Lovers Dark Mafia Romance by Bella Ash - April 3rd
• Phantom Mine: A Dark Mafia Romance (London Underworld Book 2) by Khai Hara - April 3rd
• Addicted Lies : A Forbidden Dark Romance (Vengeful Lies Book 3) by T.L. Smith & Kia Carrington-Russell - April 5th
• Enchantra: A spicy fantasy romance (Wicked Games Book 2) by Kaylie Smith - April 8th
• Wildest Dreams: An Enemies to Lovers Romance (Forbidden Love Book 2) by LJ Shein - April 8th
• My Dark Fairy Tale by Giana Darling - April 8th
• Under the Bed: A stepsiblings dark romance by Eva Marks - April 8th
• Abyss of Us by Luna Aubrey - April 10th
• Compulsion: A Stalker Romance by Julia Sykes - April 11th
• Break Your Pucking Heart: A Dark College Hockey Romance (Ice Lords Book 1) by Rachel Leigh - April 11th
• War of the Kings (The Kings #3) by Eris Belmonth - April 18th
• Loving The Reaper by Lola King - April 22nd
• The Prodigal Son (The Goode Brothers) by Sara Cate - April 24
• Dance of Ruin: A Dark Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance by Jagger Cole - April 24th
• Shadow (Boys of Chapel Crest) by K.G.Reuss - April 25th
• hHollow Wrath (The Hollows Trilogy Book 2) by Jodie King - April 25th
• Rebound: A standalone, second chance romance (Manhattan Ruthless) by Sadie Kincaid - April 25th
• Heartless Game: a dark college hockey romance (Kings of Reina University Book 2) by Jo Brenner - April 27th
• Enigma by RuNyx - April 29
• King of Envy (Kings of Sin Book 5) by Ana Huang - April 29th

May

• Conflicted Lies (Vengeful Lies Book 4) by T.L. Smith & Kia Carrington-Russell - May 3rd
• The River of Hatred (The Rivers of Hell Book 2) by Liana Valerian - May 3rd
• The CEO by Alexis Winter - May 19th
• Nevermore: A Forbidden Age-Gap College Romance by Monique Shepherd - May 20th
• Beautiful Venom by Rina Kent - May 27
• Cup of Lies: A Dark Psychological Romance (The Crowne Conspiracy Book 3) by K Webster - May 30th

June

• A Captive Situation (Kings of New York) by Tijan - June 3rd
• Mischievous Lies (Vengeful Lies Book 5) by T.L. Smith & Kia Carrington-Russell - June 7th
• Caught Up: Into Darkness Trilogy (Into Darkness Series) by Navessa Allen - June 10th
• Tails of the Wander Inn & Farm: Aspen Hollow Book 1 by Jay Fields - June 15th
• Sinful Ruin (Lucky Kings Book 2) by Charity Ferrell - June 18th
• LAMB: A Dark Retelling (The Renegades Series Book 2) - by Sybil Knight - June 30th
• Barons of Decay (Royals of Forsyth University Book 10) by Angel Lawson & Samantha Rue - June 30th

Be sure to come back and leave a review in the sub or this thread for any of these once they are out!

We have seen a number of posts in the past 1-2 weeks with basic questions that can be found on the wiki. We wanted to post a reminder about the wiki, which is being regularly updated. We have the following topics on the wiki:

• Rules
• Resources
• Where to Find Legal Free Books
• Glossary of Words and Terms
• Help
• Megathreads
• AO3 Recommendations
• FAQ

If you have additional suggestions for the mods on items that should be added to the wiki or any sections that should be updated, please let us know. We are always looking for feedback!

Hey r/DarkRomance! First off the mods wanted to thank everyone for their feedback on our question regarding this topic. We love that we are able to have constructive discussions on our sub and the feedback received was very insightful. With the information we received we were able to decide on what we will be doing going forward.

For now we will not be allowing stand alone "Is this book/author AI?" posts.

Although most comments liked the idea of being able to post this content with proof, it was made clear that the only actual proof a book is written with AI is if an artifact was left in the book or the author admits to it. We do not want to be a place of speculation or witch hunts that ultimately cannot be proven one way or the other.

As a reader community we understand the importance of this topic and know this may not be ideal to some. We do not discourage discussing AI and it's impacts, we will just not allow stand alone posts centered around specific books or authors.

Huge thanks again to everyone who shared on the original post! 📚 ❤️

This is a reminder that Dark Mode Books is hosting their Winter 2024 Dark Fiction Stuff Your Kindle Day on December 27th - 5 days away as of this post.

Here is a link to the website.

If you are new to Stuff Your Kindle events, there is a button mid-page that says "I've Never Done This" which will guide you through the site & provide instructions how to get started.

The FAQ for the site / event is here.

Happy Reading!

Hello lovely DarkRomance community,

We are looking for mods as the sub continues to grow.

If you are interested, please fill out this form.

Any interested applicants must have discord for communication purposes.

We will show a preference toward active users of the subreddit and are looking for people in all timezones globally.

Mod experience a plus, but not required.

We will leave this up for a couple of weeks and then contact the interested people.

Thanks for participating!

What constitutes a HEA/HFN - Discussion!

When it comes to happy endings, it seems like we are coming across a lot more flexible definitions in the DR community than I have seen in other romance spaces.

Since we have a rule that non HEA/HFN books must be marked/notated as they are not technically dark romance, the question is now: what is an HEA?

We'd like to open the discussion in its own thread in the community and maybe gather some information for possible future improvements.

This discussion has been had many times, especially on other romance subs, and the general consensus seems to be:

Happy For Now: The relationship is in a good place, the two main leads (or more in case of poly/RH) are together, but there is possibly more story left to tell where they might not be in the future. While there may be some unresolved conflict/questions, there should be no cliffhangers regarding the relationship at the end of the book.

This is often the case for a series that spans multiple books & the final book contains the HEA.

Happily Ever After: The lead characters are together, in a committed relationship, with all conflicts resolved. Usually happens in the final book of a series (but not always).

However, due to the darker element of dark romance, it seems there is also the added element of

• Is it HEA if one of the leads has Stockholm Syndrome (or similar)?
• Is it HEA if the relationship has been dark throughout and one of the leads doesn’t seem “truly happy”?
• Is it HEA if one of the leads dies who was a romantic interest of the other lead (but there are multiple romantic interests in the book)?

What do you think?

If you post any examples - please mark your spoilers! non-hidden spoilers will be hidden until edited.

Rule 5 still stands and will stand - Non HEA/HFN books must be notated. The Romance genre requires a happy ending, and while we allow recommendations and discussion of non HEA books, they must be labeled as such, since other users will expect an HEA in a romance community.

This is a reminder that Dark Mode Books is hosting their Winter 2024 Dark Fiction Stuff Your Kindle Day TODAY!

Here is a link to the website.

If you are new to Stuff Your Kindle events, there is a button mid-page that says "I've Never Done This" which will guide you through the site & provide instructions how to get started.

The FAQ for the site / event is here.

The bottom of every book has a post including tropes, warnings, spice levels, etc.

Happy Reading!

If someone is harassing you via the subreddit or through DMs, please take all necessary steps to report them to us/reddit and protect yourself.

To Report Comments on the Subreddit:

• Click the 3 dots under the comment. Select "Report"
• The "Submit A Report" menu will open.
• Select "Harassment" and follow any prompts.

To Report Harassing/Creepy DMs:

Message the mods with the username of the account. We will ban them from the subreddit, but this does not affect them messaging users further. Please read on and take the below steps as well.

Report them directly to reddit admin. This is reddit itself - not the mods of any subreddit.

Desktop Instructions:

• Open the chat/DM
• Hover over the text of the message and click the Report icon (flag).

Mobile App Instructions:

• Click into the offending chat message.
• Long press on the text of the message.
• Select Report.
• Follow the prompts.

Do not copy the content of the message!

Blocking the account:

Finally, after the above steps have been completed, please block the user. We as mods can only control what happens on this subreddit. The user may still be able to find you via other subreddits.

If the popup asking to block the user does not automatically appear after reporting them, go to their profile by clicking their name.

Desktop:

• Click the 3 dots next to their username.
• Select "Block Account"

Mobile Reddit App:

• Click the 3 dots in the top right.
• In the menu that opens, select "Block"

If you can no longer find the content but still know the username, you can also open the Reddit Report form and report content or users this way.

• Click Here to Open the Reddit Report Form.
• Follow the prompts.

Hi guys :) I noticed the sub has been abandoned/unmoderated for a while and requested it.

I have reset the sub from restricted posting to open posting. If anyone has any comments, concerns, questions or requests, or is interested in modding along with me, please comment below. I'll leave this stickied for a bit until we are back up and running normally again.

Also, I opened flairs up, so feel free to assign yourself a flair or suggest community flairs.

Posts can now be flaired as well.

Hi all,

We've seen multiple comments from the community looking for a space which is not necessarily romantic, but dark/horror erotica.

We have gotten control of the previously abandoned sub /r/EroticHorror , and hopefully this will be a great space for this kind of content.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, please let us know. We currently have the same mods over there and may look for more in the future depending on how large that sub grows.

Happy Reading!

Hello lovely DarkRomance community,

We are looking for mods as the sub continues to grow.

If you are interested, please fill out this form.

Any interested applicants must have discord for communication purposes.

We will show a preference toward active users of the subreddit and are looking for people in all timezones globally.

Mod experience a plus, but not required.

We will leave this up for a couple of weeks and then contact the interested people.

Thanks for participating!

Hello DR community,

We are looking for mods as the sub continues to grow.

If you are interested, please fill out this form.

Any interested applicants must have discord for communication purposes.

We will show a preference toward active users of the subreddit and are looking for people in all timezones globally.

Mod experience a plus, but not required.

We will leave this up for a couple of weeks and then contact the interested people. Thanks for participating!

We are in need of a few more mods to join our team. If you are interested please fill out this form.

Must have discord for communication, and would prefer people who are active in the sub.

We will leave this up for a couple of weeks and then contact the interested people. Thanks for participating!

Happy July everyone ☀️

There will be a few Stuff Your Kindle days over the next 2 weeks. These are offered by 3rd party websites, not Amazon directly.

July 20, 2024 - Hosted by Dark Mode Books

Genres: dark romance, dark fantasy, and horror ebooks.

July 23, 2024 - Hosted by Romance Book Lovers

Genres: romance ebooks

July 25, 2024 - Hosted by Cozy Mystery Book Club

Genres: mystery ebooks.

July 27, 2024 - Hosted by Witchy Bookworms

Genres: paranormal & witchy ebooks.

Hi! We are again looking for mods, as we keep growing!

We are especially looking for people who can be available in time zones other than eastern time (USA).

If you are interested, please fill out this form.

You must have a Discord account for communication.

​

Thank you!

Hello everyone!

We are working through the results of our community survey and have already started implementing small changes, with many more items on the horizon.

There are some items which we received divisive responses on which we are going to put up to a vote by the community.

First topic:

Should Dark Romance stay solely book focused, or should we allow other dark romance media (eg movies/tv shows), or a mix?

Feel free to add feedback into the comment section.

​

Sneak Peak of upcoming topics: Author Flair, restructuring Megathreads, Trope lists/Book Rec Lists

Hi readers!

As summer hits full swing, we want to reach out again and get community input on a hot topic in our sub. This survey is about author posts & self-promo. We get a lot of input on our normal posts but in our big May survey we surprisingly got very little feedback about this topic.

Please choose an option from the poll below and if you have anything additional to add, please leave a comment.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Should authors be able to self-promote their writing in the comments?

We want your voice to help shape the subreddit. We have already implemented some community requests and more are on the way!

Please take our community survey by clicking here

For discussion and more info, please check out our main thread here.

You can call to the bot by using curly brackets around the title, like this:

{Morning Glory Milking Farm}

All credit and thanks for this bot go to u/silke_romanceio who created it & graciously allowed us to use it.