And two new categories…

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First things first, I (Serenity) need to start with reminding you that when a book is added to the site, we do our best to ensure all of the tags are added, but we cannot physically read the books released each day to add every tag. Some are added months in advance and the look inside feature doesn’t exist until a book goes live. We rely on you guys with the reading superpowers to help add tags and help each other. If you see a book with missing tags, you can suggest them. If you see a book with the wrong tags, remember, we’re human and mistakes happen, but if you can message the site, we can happily update them for everyone!

After our site survey, we went away and looked at what we needed to do to be able to accomplish everything and in order to make things work smoothly, a lot of things are currently being rebuilt from scratch. In order to not disrupt the functioning of the site, we’re making the changes separately to make sure they work. In short, you can’t see a lot of what we’re doing, but a LOT is happening!

One thing that will be implemented on the site is a review of our verified authors. The sole purpose of this verification was that you as a reader would know the tags would be as accurate as possible because the author would update them. We’re currently running a manual check to see which authors have been active on the site and will be requesting they review their pages. Once that’s happened, any featured author will only be ones with comprehensive tags. For transparency, at no point have authors paid to have anything “promoted”. Featured books are chosen by me using the Random Book feature. If it’s a standalone, I will use it, and if it’s part of a series, I switch it to the first book in the series.

But onto the new tags!

There were a few tag suggestions made which haven’t been implemented now. For things like book length, we need to have the site work differently and that requires some playing on our beta site so we don’t screw things up! Don’t worry, there will be more!

New Triggers Warnings:

• Abuse – Manipulation/Gaslighting
• Abuse – Sexual (on page)
• Abuse – Sexual (off page)
• Child Abuse – Sexual
• Suicide Attempt of FMC or MMC
• Suicide Attempt of side character
• Self Harm (off page)
• Death (accidental) – such as car accident
• Death (from illness) – such as cancer

New Kinks:

• Age Play
• Breeding
• Chastity Belt/Cock Cage
• Cock Warming
• Edging
• MDL
• Orgasm Denial
• Pegging
• Squirting
• Shibari

• DDLG has been updated to DDL

New Uncategorised Tags:

• Betrayal (from FMC)
• Betrayal (from MMC)
• Bi-Awakening
• Cinnamon Roll MMC
• Fluffy/Light
• Foster Care / Adoption – for characters in the system. At this stage it is not intended for any child of the harem being put into care. If this is something that is required, that would need to be a different tag.
• Grovel (light)
• Grovel (heavy) – we understand these two Grovel tags are ones that are down to interpretation, but hopefully having two options will help!
• Playlist Included – some books include music recommendations or playlists. We will not be providing links at this stage.
• Science Experiments

New Tropes

• Found Family
• Small Town
• Sunshine/Grump

New Category – Sports

Previously, Sports was an uncategorised tag. This has now become a new category and presently all books with tag have defaulted to “Sport – Other”.

• American Football
• Basketball
• Baseball
• Cheerleading
• Football – some of you will call this soccer
• Gymnastics
• Ice Hockey
• Ice Skating

New Category – Mental Health

We recognise that while mental health issues can lead to mental health D=disabilities, they are not mutually exclusive. “Disability – Mental” remains in the Disability category, we’ve added a new category to capture some of the mental health issues for those that might want to read about characters they can relate to. These are currently quite generic but if we see certain tags being used a lot, we can look at being more specific if needed. Any that were also listed under the Trigger Warnings will also remain there.

• ADHD
• Anxiety
• Autism
• Bipolar Disorder
• Depression
• Eating Disorder
• OCD
• Personality Disorder
• Psychotic Disorder
• PTSD
• Self Harm
• Substance Abuse

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Super Mod got really excited and spotted additional tags before I’d even finished updating them. Yes, she’s happily going updating books that she can, but she is one person and there are over 16,000 books. Not only is it going to take time for her to work her magic, she hasn’t read all of the books. Please, please help us out by suggesting tags if you see them missing.

As always, if you click on a tag, it will take you to a list of all the books with that tag.

Tags are also searchable on the tag page. We did make it so that clicking on a book opens a new tab so that you don’t have to go through all the pages again, but Search does still have some issues. We are working on it!!

(Admin note: Our wonderful Super Mod sent us this blog post two weeks ago, but Serenity was locked in a writing cave to get her book finished and she didn’t read this until today… Serenity sucks! However, I still want everyone to read this lovely blog.)

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Happy Holidays to all from your very own Super Mod. As we close out the holiday season and move into a new year, I thought I would like to share some gratitude. If you read my previous blog post, well, some of this might feel a bit repetitive, but there’s no such thing as too much when it comes to sharing thankfulness.

First and foremost, I am thankful for Serenity and Charlie. For creating this site, for letting me join their team, for their constant kindness. and for sharing their fun-filled selves. It is an absolute joy to work with them. We work around their day jobs their second (and sometimes third) jobs, and a pretty big time difference, but they go out of their way to make it happen. We’ve been doing this together for over two years now (longer for the two of them), and I am still thrilled every day they keep me around, and for the friendship that has come of it.

I am thankful for my fellow readers. Sending in books we need to add and tag suggestions, rating the books so other readers are helped, all of it makes this site even more excellent. This has become a lovely little community where readers and authors provide the information that helps folks find new authors, expand their TBR’s, and fall in love with new book boyfriends. Seeing you all suggest the site out in the wild, telling others about the features and the new reads it’s helped you find, it all gets me excited all over again and makes me want to work harder. So thank you, truly, for both using the site, and helping to make it the best it can be.

My gratitude to the authors is large. Some of it is simply as a reader, but a lot of it is as a moderator for Why-Choose?. I think it would be easier as a list, so here it goes, in no particular order, the reasons I am so grateful to authors:

1) For overcoming impostor syndrome, for being brave enough to put yourselves out there into the world, and giving us stories to get lost in, dreams to dream, and a way to escape reality for hours at a time.

2) For whoever came up with those nifty graphics (I’m sure there’s a name for them, I just don’t know it) with all the tropes, kinks, and content warnings, and all those who use them. It helps me both as a reader and for tagging the books here. Plus, you all make them gorgeous.

3) For authors who write a single series at a time, and for authors who have multiple series going at the same time. I love it all, and I know everyone’s brains work differently, as do their muses.

4) For giving me things to look forward to. I love when you drop a book and I finish it knowing that in the future, there will be the next one coming out. Maybe it’s already up for preorder, maybe it’s not, doesn’t matter. I’m excited by the anticipation. No, I don’t care if your series is complete yet, if it interests me, I will happily read along as your books release.

5) For authors who leave no doubt in their blurbs that I am looking at an RH book. Very few authors write only RH. Some of you are super straightforward, knowing it can cause you challenges on retail sites to call it RH, and do it anyway. Some of you may not label it blatantly as RH, but you still make it incredibly clear that it’s RH. Not feeling as grateful to those who insist on calling ménage à trois (there are more and more lately) reverse harem, but what are you gonna do? Again, this is something I am grateful for as a reader, and for my work here.

6) For the verified authors here on the site. For tagging the heck out of your books, sometimes even adding the books themselves before we have the chance. For helping us keep your page as up-to-date and accurate as possible. For helping readers find exactly what they are looking for when they use those tags for their searches. I’ve seen some of you share about the site in your groups, it hits me in the feels every damn time. Heck, a few of you even refer readers to the site for you CW’s/TW’s.

7) Speaking of CW’s/TW’s, thank you to authors who provide them. Whether it’s in the blurb, in the sample at the the beginning of the book, or on your author website, thank you. An even bigger thanks to those who put it on their website, provide that website, and put the warnings somewhere easily located. While I personally have no triggers I am aware of, I do have some pretty strong preferences for what I enjoy reading when I am escaping and hopefully swooning, so you have my deep gratitude.

8) For putting plus-size models on your covers if your character is written as such. Seriously, thank you.

9) For live releases, for preorder dates that sometimes get pushed up, and sometimes get pushed back. Putting up preorders for the whole series or just the next book in the series. All of it is wonderful, and each way is just as correct as the others.

And huge thanks to everyone for contributing to the overwhelming success of the Why-Choose? website. Because of all of you, we are closing in fast on 3 million hits for the year!

I hope the New Year is prosperous, healthy, and joyous for you all. May you find an abundance of stories (and book boyfriends) to write about, read about, get lost in, and swoon over.

This post was written by Why Choose?’s very own Super Mod but published by Serenity (because only she has the ability to do this). The only changes from the original version are to remove the names of a particular retailer.

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Hello all! Your friendly Super Mod here to introduce myself. Sort of. When I got the opportunity to help Serenity and Charlie on the site, I decided I would prefer to remain anonymous. I did this for two reasons. The first is that I truly believe ALL the recognition and kudos belong to the folks who came up with and executed this gorgeous site. The second, and possibly most important reason, I’m a huge introvert. But I’ll still tell you a bit about myself. Or at least, how I got here.

I have always been a voracious reader. Once I learned to read, that was how I spent almost all of my free time. It still is. However, I have never been a romance reader. Not judging there, it just wasn’t ever my thing. Then, relatively early in the pandemic, [an ebook retailer] suggested a book to me. It looked like it fit my urban fantasy taste, and also like it contained some humor. Excellent way to distract myself! I downloaded it and started reading. Ya’ll, it was Grave Mistakes by Ivy Asher & Raven Kennedy! Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve read that blurb, but let me tell you, it says nothing about being romance, much less reverse harem. After my initial shock wore off, I was completely hooked. And calling my BFF so I could get her hooked too. (it worked)

That first year of the pandemic, I read over 800 books, almost all reverse harem. I’ve always read a lot, but with all that free time, I was absolutely inhaling anything I could get my hands on. And, as I am sure you are all aware, it got more and more difficult to find RH books through the normal searches on the [retailers]. For whatever reason, they seem to revel in hiding our books from us. I was beyond frustrated trying to find books to read, thought maybe I had just read them all. But no! I came across a magical site that showed me I had in fact NOT read all the RH books. Not even close. I don’t remember exactly how I found it, but find it I did. I was in awe, it was a glorious thing. At that point, there were over 6,000 books I could search through to my little hearts content, and I was in heaven. But wait! I could add books to existing lists and make my own, tracking the books I had read and the ones I wanted to?!? I could check out the release calendar every day and not miss new books?!? I could search by tags for exactly what I wanted, and exclude what I didn’t?!? What is this sorcery??? And who were the magicians who manifested this masterpiece? I next realized that I had books on my Goodreads that were not yet on the site. That’s when I found I could suggest books to be added. And tags! I realized I could help. I could help the owners of the site, other readers, and the authors, the whole community who had been helping me maintain some sanity during the pandemic. So I sent all the book suggestions, so many tag suggestions, just… so much.

After a little deeper look into the site, I learned there were two (yes, only TWO) people who had dreamed up this site, created it, and were populating it with all these books. Two people who had full-time day jobs, plus part-time side gigs, PLUS one who was also an author on top of all that! I was then utterly gobsmacked that they were doing all of this for free. Free for authors, free for readers, just… completely free. All those hours they each have devoted to this site, all the expenses running a big site like this incurs, all of it, just unselfishly provided for all of us to reap the benefits of. That’s when I knew I had to do more. I had found out who the magicians were behind this magical site and immediately messaged Serenity & Charlie asking (read: begging) to be allowed to help in any way possible. I had no idea if they would accept volunteers, but I had to try. I’m in my mid-50’s, retired, love books, it was a pandemic, I had the time to give. It felt like a perfect fit.

At a time when so much seemed so awful, here were these two people, just quietly giving so much of themselves to others, generously making life a little easier for so many. It healed a little something in me. Even more amazing, these two incredibly kind, generous, beautiful people said I could be part of what they had created! I hear you, this probably isn’t changing the world, really, I get it. I just disagree. Because I think putting more kindness out in this world makes it better. Making even one little thing a little easier on another makes it better. An author providing huge support to other authors makes it better. So many readers still suggesting books and tags to help their fellow readers makes it better. None of that is trivial. I am in constant awe of Serenity & Charlie, and being a small part of their vision is an enormous joy and honor for me. I had read Serenity’s books, but we were all complete strangers. For them to put this much trust in me, make me feel part of their team, be so welcoming, and again, kind, well, there are not enough words to express my gratitude.

For Charlie & Serenity, I hope all the good they have put out into the world is returned to them multiple times. For us readers, may we all find our next favorite read and book boyfriend (or 6). For all the authors, may your audience increase in a big way, just as Serenity and Charlie intended.

We’re only a week into our survey, but after scanning the responses so far, I’ve realised there are a lot of suggestions for things we already have on the site!

Which means we’ve not done a very good job of telling you what the site can do already. For the next couple of weeks, I’m going to make a series of blog posts to tell you about these things!

But I’m starting with telling you a little bit about “us” – who are the people behind Why Choose?

From the feedback we’re getting it seems like you think there are a lot of us, but there are two Admins, one Super Mod, and 3 Mods.

The site admins are also the site owners and creators. They consist of me, Serenity Ackles (I am a reverse harem author myself), and someone who is actually a friend in real life, Charlie.

Charlie and I met at university – we worked in the same nightclub. I was the DJ and he was the SLT (Sound and Light Tech). It was a beautiful friendship cemented when I had to tow his car to the garage because he forgot to put petrol in it… We’d just finished working and it was about 3 in the morning. He’s also going to kill me when he realises I’ve included this titbit of information, and that I’ve still not forgotten this ten years later.

The two of us both have full-time jobs. He is actually a developer, and he is also a volunteer in his local lifeboat crew. I work in a global company, I’m a DJ, and I’m also an author.

And in case the spelling on the site didn’t give it away, we’re both based in the UK.

When the site went live, four people were asked if they wanted to be mods. There was no minimum requirement asked of them – they were just active users who could update tags and add books. Of those four, three are still mods.

One of these wonderful people reached out, asking if she could do more, and we ended up creating a special user permission for her – Super Mod. (Personally, I refer to her as a goddess). The difference between a Mod and a Super Mod is that a Super Mod can do a little more editing. When an author becomes verified, their profile is locked to them. Only they can update book covers, the blurb, and approve/reject any book tags suggested. My Super Mod has the power to update the blurbs. And while the site also checks for updated book covers, while this is still locked to verified authors (hence why you might still see covers with “Coming Soon” on them), she is also able to force an update on the remaining books.

How much does a Super Mod do?

I want to put this into a bit of perspective for you, so let me give you some stats.

This year, 2340 books have been added to the site.

Of those, 46 were added by the authors themselves.

There are two people adding the remaining books. Me and my goddess.

I added 34.

And this is why I call her a goddess… Our Super Mod has added 2260 books – that’s an average of 8.8 books per day.

In addition, this year to date, she has made 20,782 edits to books (we’ve just about to hit 15,000 books on the site), and that translates to 26,988 tag amendments (mainly additions). Fun fact, that works out to be an edit every 17 minutes since the beginning of the year.

Every single day, this goddess is on book selling sites looking for new books. Earlier this year, she literally went through every author already on the site to see if they had new books out that we had missed. If a book is showing as unpublished, she looks to see if it’s republished and sends me the new ASIN to be able to update information.

And that is our team.

But you wouldn’t miss me…

The site was my idea. I take full credit for that. I wanted a place where it was easy to find reverse harem books – because if you’ve looked on retailer sites, you know how difficult that can be. And while I agree with the books that are always recommended in the various Facebook groups are done so with good reason, it can be harder for baby authors to get visibility.

I wanted a place where readers could find their next favourite authors, and authors could find new readers.

So I made it.

Lie: I conned Charlie into making it.

However, I’m in this strange place where, without me, no one would notice.

Wow… That sounds more morbid than I intended!

Charlie builds the site. If he goes, f*ck knows what I’d do (I mean, we’re official business partners and at this point, his escape route isn’t going to be easy), but my coding skills are limited to being able to make font bold or italic in a html editor.

If my Super Mod decides that one day, she’s just sick of it all (and honestly, I can’t begin to imagine how many hours a day she spends – FOR FREE – adding books and tags), I would also curl into a ball and cry.

The fact is, these two people are how this site is running.

Sure, I do a fair bit of admin (you’d be surprised how much time I spend on working through things manually – updating ASINs, making sure there aren’t contradicting tags, sanity checking all the tag suggestions that come through for the unverified authors), but my time is limited and without my Super Mod, I wouldn’t be able to do that. I certainly am not in a position to update the site with new books daily like she does.

But Serenity, that book has the wrong tag!

In amongst the feedback we’ve had so far, there were a few comments about book information being incorrect or books missing, and you know what? You’re probably absolutely correct!

Now, I don’t want anyone to feel like this is personally directed towards them, nor as criticism, because, if anything, I think it’s clear that we’ve never really made this known properly – and that’s on us.

Hence this blog post!

But I also wanted to let you know the limitations we’re working with.

First and foremost is the number of people adding books to the site.

I’ve just laid those figures out for you.

I know I’ve added a few, as have a few authors, but the rest – all one person.

We’re also as limited as you are when it comes to finding the books. Unless we’re certain a book is reverse harem, we’re not adding it (and yes, we do make mistakes – books are frequently labelled as reverse harem or even why choose, when they’re not).

Okay, slight segway here…

You’re called Why Choose?

Our website address is www.why-choose.com, but if you look at our banner, from day one, we’ve been shouting that we’re “Why Choose? A Reverse Harem Book Tracker.”

When this site was created back in 2020, this was when we authors started experiencing the troubles that went along with declaring your book as reverse harem on certain retailers. To get around this, we had to find “code words”. Mostly, this was either RH or why choose. At some point, mainly in the last year (2023), why choose seems to have grown to become a catch-all phrase for anything that is more than just two individuals in a relationship.

Regardless of this, Why Choose? will remain a reverse harem site.

Why Choose? wasn’t just about a not so secret in-joke with what we have to call our books, but it was also to show that there were really that many books and authors, why would anyone need to choose just one favourite?

But now, more than that, there is one person adding these books – we do not have the manpower to add everything else that “why choose” now covers. This site was also supposed – and will continue to be – a resource for reverse harem books only. One woman and THREE or more guys.

Yes, this has become somewhat grey as we have RH with MM or FF in the harem, but at the heart of it, the woman is the centre of that relationship.

Now, we are considering, in the not too distant future, allowing any non-RH book in a series which currently features an RH book to be added to the site. This won’t include non-RH series written by the same author (if they have an MF-only series, for example). And it certainly won’t be until we can properly identify these books as readers are coming here for reverse harem books.

While I also wanted to create a sister site called Y-Choose? for MM books, that dream died when I realised how much work was needed just for this site…

Anyway, sometimes books which aren’t reverse harem do end up on the site, but as soon as we’re made aware, they’re removed. We’re not trying to trick you!

When we add the books, we try to tag them with as much information as possible. For me personally, I stop at what I see on the retailers. I know for a fact that my Super Mod will go the extra mile to use the “Look inside” feature, and if the author is one known to write darker books, check their websites.

But even then, unless we actually read the books, we can’t put every tag on there. (Remember, Super Mod is adding nearly 10 books a day, and they’re not always in the genres she reads!)

And sometimes, the wrong tag gets on them. Back in the early days, I assumed (wrongly), that most of the time, the same tag applied to the whole series. I also have fat thumbs. Mistakes have happened – sometime the wrong tag is there, and sometimes they’re missing.

All of this is data which isn’t added automatically.

So what is automatic?

Every single day, this site is checking what is on our site vs a certain retailer in particular. It starts simply by checking that the book is still published. Despite this literally running on a loop, it takes about a week to cycle through every book.

This means, if an author pulls a release day forward and releases early, sometimes the dates aren’t accurate in the calendar. Unless we get a waaaay more powerful machine – which we won’t because they cost a fortune – we can’t speed this process up. In fact, as we get more and more books on the site, it will take even longer. The best we can do is prioritising the imminent releases, and even then, I still cannot guarantee anything.

We also have authors doing live releases – completely their prerogative, but we can’t guarantee when we will see them in time to add them on release day.

I wanted to read that book, but it’s unpublished

Authors have a habit of pulling books – pre-orders or published. It happens a lot more than you probably realise. What this means is that there are books on this site listed as unpublished. Some of these will get republished and sometimes the only difference is a new ASIN (most common with pre-orders). Sometimes they’ve been reworked and have new titles.

Unless the book was never released, that unpublished book will stay on the site.

How frustrating is it when you know you’ve read a book and then you can’t find it again? We want you to be able to look back and see it did exist, which is why they’re staying.

Now, I hold my hands up and acknowledge this is a slight flaw. We are working on improving this though – making sure it’s clearer that the book is unpublished (I’m not exactly sure how yet, but it will happen), and incorporating a book history into the book page – which I will probably have to do manually!

So, if you see that there’s a book missing – let us know.

If you see a book has the incorrect information – let us know.

If you see the books has missing tags – LET US KNOW!

Seriously – we want the suggestions!

This site works best with the tags. The more tags we have, the more we can help protect those with triggers. The more we can help you find what you want to read. The more we can help you find your next favourite book!

Which leads me to my last point of the post…

You’re making bank, right?

What money do we make from this site?

Honestly?

Pretty much nothing.

Our income comes from two places. Firstly, from any wonderful person who has a few spare $ in their pocket to “buy us a coffee”. The second, recently too, is from the ads. Last month, that was less than $5.

Hell, I’m just gonna tell you.

Since 2020, that has all amounted to less than $100. Don’t get me wrong, I’m beyond grateful to anyone who has donated and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

But that really is it.

The statements about affiliate links? We keep getting rejected. They’re up because we keep trying.

Now, I do not say this to guilt you into donating or anything. Honestly.

But no one is paying to use the site – readers or authors.

The books which appear in our blog posts are those that belong to verified authors. When we first set that up, it was done with the belief that if an author joined the site, they would check and update their tags, which meant that you as a user would be shown books with correct tag information. Sadly, very few of the authors are active, and in the future, how we handle this will change so that an author needs to confirm the information is correct. But these posts/books – they’re not sponsored. Should that happen, we will say that (we need to for legal reasons anyway).

For real – if people are paying sites to promote their products, they need to declare it. It’s the law in both the US and the UK, at least (which is why some sites have statements about affiliate links, and certain book retailers have “sponsored” products related to this one.)

Being verified gives no preference on how the books are shown in the search either. (I mean, let me be blunt, I love the search and it is a huge improvement on what it was, but that girl currently doesn’t remember what page you were on when you click on a book and then hit the back button – do you think we’re able to push the verified authors to the top?)

Early on, I offered those authors ‘ads’. These were banners that I created myself, and there was no charge. You don’t see them anymore as it’s just not a feature that authors seem to want to use.

And I’ve just realised that I never made one for my own release, so before I trap myself in a sort of lie, that might appear for a week or so of you reading this post. *Ahem* XXXVII: The Elite by Serenity Ackles – that’s the same Serenity Ackles writing this blog.

As for the “Featured” books suggested on the bottom of the home page?

I have fun – I go to the random book feature and I pick four books at random. My two rules are that if they are not a standalone, I share the first book in the series, and also, I don’t repeat a book. This is why sometimes, they end up in the same genre, and sometimes, they’re from verified authors.

I’m going to wrap up here, and I hope that this blog post has provided some transparency for you. Please, please do not think this was written with any ill intent towards anyone, because it truly wasn’t.

Over the next few blog posts, I’m going to work on sharing details about different existing features, and in the background work on creating a much better Help/FAQ section for the site.

If we’re missing tags or have something wrong, please let us know. If you know we’re missing books, please let us know (please help us by suggesting tags too), and we’ll get them added. And if anyone wants to be a Mod, please drop us a message on the Facebook page (if you’ve already expressed interest via the survey, you don’t need to do this again. I’ll be reaching out to people soon).

Thank you for reading!

Serenity

For the first time, we’re asking YOU exactly what you like and don’t like, want and don’t want, on this site.

It has been a little over two years since Why Choose? went live, and although real life slowed our development down this year, we’re back with a vengeance.

We have a very long list of features and builds that we want to implement, including the App.

BUT we want your feedback first!

Why?

Simply, we want to make sure the features we think you want are the ones you’re going to use before we spend time building them. We want to make sure the site as currently is works for you, or if there is more we can do to improve what’s already here.

We’ve compiled a bunch of questions, which should take about ten minutes to complete, and in doing so, you’re in with the chance of winning a $50 Amazon gift card.

The Why Choose? database has grown far beyond our expectations (do you see how close to 15,000 books we are now??), and that’s largely due to you guys using it, so we want to make sure this site is the best it can be.

We hope to hear back from you!

Serenity and Charlie

xoxo

If a harem is a group of women sharing a single man, then a reverse harem is, quite simply, the opposite – a group of men sharing a single female.

But as to when and where this term originated, that’s up for discussion.

If you Google reverse harem, you’ll often find sites which suggest it derives from the Japanese “ハーレムもの or harumumono”. The direct translation is more like “harem stuff”, and really, doesn’t imply whether it’s a male or a female at the center of the attention.

There’s also the suggestion that reverse harem takes its origins from the Arabic “حَرِيمٌ” or harim, which can mean “a sacred inviolable place”, or “female members of the family”.

Seeing as none of these sites and sources lead back to a source that I’d be happy quoting, I’m going to leave that researching to you and focus on the what…

Only, even the “what” isn’t quite so cut and dry!

For a book to be considered reverse harem, it needs three things:

1. There needs to be a female at the heart of the group
2. There needs to be three or love interests (two is ménage)
3. She absolutely cannot choose just one person at the end of the story.

But, as with most things, here comes a caveat.

When it comes to the harem members, over the last couple of years, it has become more and more common to see some of the guys either in established relationships with one (or more) of the other guys, and even a female in there too.

We get it – some of you like books with MM or FF in them, and some of you don’t. That’s why there are four tag options to help you with your searching (this is, of course, dependent on whether a book has been tagged correctly):

• MM within the harem
• MM outside of the harem
• FF in the harem
• FF outside of the harem

If you want it, include it, and if you don’t, have the search exclude it for you.*

Ultimately, what I can say with certainty, is that about five or six years ago reverse harem was considered a “trope”. A theme within the romance genre, that so many people said would die off into obscurity.

Nearly 15,000 books later, I think we can all agree that reverse harem has firmly rooted itself as a sub-genre of romance!

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*Please note, regardless of your opinion on this content, we will not be moving any of these tags to be listed under kink or trigger – these are people’s sexual preferences.

You’re probably reading this wondering what on earth is going on at Why Choose?

Back in the beginning, when Charlie and I created Why Choose? as a joke, while we were still deciding on our look and branding, someone (Serenity) had the brightest of ideas to use Comic Sans at the site’s font. And someone (Charlie) decided that was a brilliant idea, and did just that.

We laughed.

A lot.

For the first two weeks, long before we went live, everything was written in Comic Sans and it looked AWFUL!

Unfortunately, that decision has haunted us until this week!

I’m trying to find a place to rent in Delulu land and convince myself that none of you noticed the lingering traces of the font. That, when you loaded the home page, for the briefest of seconds, you didn’t see the menu bar flash to Comic Sans…

We’ve spent all this time trying to find where in this site the font was hiding, but Comic Sans was pulling a Where’s Wally? (or Where’s Waldo?).

However, last night, something in Charlie must have snapped because he went checking the code to see where that font was clinging on.

Today, I can report, Comic Sans has gone.

Honestly, in the grand scheme of the site and everything we’ve built—and have yet to—this is small. But for us, it really is a victory, and I’m celebrating!

Happy Wednesday!

Serenity

PS. No, I didn’t toy with the idea of posting this in Comic Sans at all…

It’s been a while, but new tags have been added to the site this week! (Actually, a few have been here for a little while, but we never made the announcement, so I’m doing a round-up here.)

Genre – Human Omegaverse (This is for non-shifting omegaverse/sweetverse. Please do not combine with the “Omegaverse” tag as this is specifically for any shifter/alien romance etc)
Trigger – Pregnancy Complication
Trigger – Somnophilia
Trigger – Homophobia
Trigger – Racism
Kink – Somnophilia
Kink – Pet Play
Trope – Forced Proximity
Trope – Office Romance
Trope – Arranged Marriage
Trope – Found Family
Store Availability – Kobo Plus
Translation – Portuguese
MM Outside of the Harem
FF Outside of the Harem
HEA
HFN
Cliffhanger
Jealous/Possessive FMC

If you have read any books where you think these new tags apply, please feel free to help us update the site and make suggestions to the relevant books!

It’s hard to believe that, back in 2020, in the middle of a lockdown, Why Choose? was nothing more than an idea in this author’s head.

As an avid reader of reverse harem stories, I had gotten so frustrated trying to find more books to read. There are some brilliant, active Facebook groups dedicated to reverse harem book lovers, but I was frequently only ever seeing the same books being recommended (and don’t get me wrong, they’re constantly recommended because they’re good books!) when I knew there were more out there.

We all know that searching for reverse harem books on certain retailers is far from easy and code words have to be used/deciphered.

Which led to me starting a simple excel spreadsheet of reverse harem authors. A list that I wanted to share with everyone.

I had two goals. Goals which are the same back then as they are today:

1. Help readers to find their next favourite author, and collect all the book boyfriends.
2. Help authors to find readers to who will fall in love with the characters and worlds they’ve created.

There’s no gatekeeping here. If there’s any reader out there that can understand the concept of having more than one favourite, it’s the reverse harem reader, right?

In my other, other life, I am a nightclub DJ, which is how I know Charlie (the site’s developer). Knowing that he knows way more about developing sites and apps than me, I gave him a call to ask him how much it cost to make an app because the figures I were finding were making my eyes water. Apparently, that’s right.

But Charlie was intrigued and the next thing I knew, he became my business partner and Why Choose? was born.

By the time the site went live, we were at close to 6,000 books. Today, we’re close to 15,000!

We didn’t start tracking page hits until a month later, but in September of 2021 we had 44,292 hits. In June 2023, it was 261,078!

But this is still the beginning for us.

We’ve got a few more site features to come (it’s easier to build them on a website and test them out than to do an app because you have to force updates to each device), so keep your eyes peeled.

And the app?

It’s coming. We’ll be wanting app testers too, and I’ll personally be reaching out to some of the most active members on the site.

Disclaimer: none of these are requirements. We authors love our readers just for reading our books!

We’ve seen it in reader groups; readers asking what’s the best way to help their favorite author? A lot of the time, they think there’s not much they can do because they can’t afford to, but actually, just telling another reader about the amazing book you just read helps more than you can imagine. That’s why Why Choose? encourages you to tell your reader groups when you loved a book you’ve read. Or if you’ve discovered a new author (and if you’ve not, why don’t you try our random book generator? – you can find the permalink in the Extras menu!)

Share, comment or like an author’s posts (or ours – we won’t complain about that). You’ve probably missed dozens of posts across all the social media platforms and that’s because of the way these platforms work. If you keep interacting, you will keep seeing them. Then they will show you similar posts and yay, more RH content. But it also helps an author because these sites recognize that people are interested and won’t suppress them. If you’ve signed up to a newsletter, actually open it to read it. Quite a few email providers allow you to look at the email without opening it. That’s great for them, but for us, our email provider deems you as not interested. It also means that you don’t lose our emails in the junk box black hole.

We’ve probably all seen the various memes about reviews, but they really are like magic juice (not that kind of magic juice – behave!). The big thing is that it helps an author get visibility and on a site where we get locked in a dungeon for having the words ‘reverse harem’ anywhere near our books, visibility there is a huge deal! Not only that, but there are some readers who won’t read a book unless they’ve got a few reviews to back them up. No one expects you to write a book – we did that for you (;-)). Just a couple of words to say why you liked it.

The next one, I wish I didn’t have to say, but I will anyway – read the books from a legitimate site! If you read a pirated book, aside from taking money from the author, you put them at a real and legitimate risk of having their account shut down on Amazon. 99% of reverse harem authors are in Kindle Unlimited. We’re there because of you – our reader. Our readers read unholy amounts of books (seriously, your annual book reads are no joke!) and the best thing for you is Kindle Unlimited. Our sub-genre has the highest number of readers enrolled in KU compared to any other genre – we’re in the high 90%+ of members. Which means we authors need to put our books in KU even though everyone but the author is getting the better deal. (Did you know authors only get $0.004 per page read. Yep. Less than half a penny.) The books go into KU and we have a contractual obligation to only have them in KU. And somehow, if they end up on a pirate site, that’s our responsibility.

Which leads me to the next way you could help an author out. (And I’ll explain this because I see it get asked so often).

If a book is in KU, the author only gets paid for the first time each page is read. If you read it a second time in KU, there’s no payment. If you borrow the book and read 100 pages, return it, come back to it later and read all 300 pages, those 100 pages don’t count the second time. It’s fine – we authors know this. We wouldn’t expect you to go to a bookstore, buy a book, then go and buy another copy if you want to read it again! But, did you know that making sure you go all the way to the end of the book helps?

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Seriously though, we authors are incredibly grateful for all our readers just reading our books. There’s absolutely no expectation on anyone to do any of the above!!

Is there anything I’ve missed? What do you do?

Our goal at Why Choose? has always been to help authors find readers and readers find their next book boyfriends. To help with that, we’ve now branched out into more social media platforms.

You can now find us on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest! We’ll be posting new releases from all the verified authors so you don’t miss their new books (providing certain social media platforms don’t decide to hold posts in review… you know who we’re talking about…).

If you want to help us and your favorite authors, if you see one of our posts, please come interact – tell us what you loved about that book. Help another reader fall in love too!

Facebook	Twitter	TikTok
Instagram	Pinterest

We listen to the suggestions and we add in bulk…

Recently added tags:

• Secret Societies
• Trigger Warning – Eating Disorder
• Kink – “Call Me Daddy”

We already have DDLG as a Kink tag, however, we realised that there is a difference between this (age/role play) and a character calling another “Daddy”.

If you want books with true DDLG dynamics, it’s the “Kink – DDLG” you need to search. If you like it when your FMC (or one of the MMC’s – who are we to say) to call another “Daddy”, this is the tag for you.

Did you know that all the books on Why Choose? can have a Heat rating tag? We (Admin and Mods) don’t add these unless we’ve read the book, so there are many books which aren’t rated – and we need your help!

We understand that “Heat” is subjective, so we have a scale here on Why Choose? to make sure we’re all talking on the same page:

🔥 Clean Romance (No on page steam – our Fade to Black option)
🔥🔥 Sweet Romance (Some sensual scenes, we’d rate it PG-13)
🔥🔥🔥 Middle of the Road (Some on-page naughtiness)
🔥🔥🔥🔥 Steamy Romance (On page scenes)
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Explicit Romance (Erotica or Hot! Hot! Hot!)

If you read a book and you see the Heat tag missing, please give a suggestion!

We’re trying to let as many readers know that authors have new releases as possible, so Why Choose? now has a TikTok account!

We’re posting new releases and a monthly round-up… And there will be competitions too… so if you don’t want to miss out on anything, follow us on TikTok:

@whychooserhbooktracker

We’re reaching nearly 10,000 books on Why Choose? but did you know that as we’ve been adding them, we’ve been trying to tag them to make your searching as easy as possible?

When adding books, we’ve relied on either guessing from the blurbs (where there are blurbs), or from when the admins or mods have read them. Which means, although we’ve tried, we may have either missed some or put the wrong tags on.

If you’ve read the book and you think there’s a tag missing, please do help us out by suggesting tags. We’ve got nearly 350 tags including triggers and kinks.

Trigger Warnings

At Why Choose? we know that some readers need Trigger Warnings. That’s why we give you two options (editable in your profile) to make searching safer for you. Hard Triggers mean that any book with something you cannot read will not show up on the site for you, provided you’re logged in. Soft Triggers are for those who can read books with certain triggers provided you’re in the right frame of mind. These will give you a warning bar at the top of the book page for you.

If you see a book which is missing a Trigger Warning, please do let us know. We want to make reading as enjoyable experience for everyone as possible.

Searching Tags

There are now two ways to search a tag. If you’re on a book page, you can click on the tag and it will show you all the books listed with that tag.

Alternatively, you can visit our amazing search page and filter down even more – putting in what you do and don’t want. Please note, this is an ‘AND’ search – you want vampires AND werewolves.

When it comes to searching by Triggers, these are not listed in the search option. We understand that there are occasionally topics that have overlap, such that some may find it a trigger and others may find it a kink. To keep it simple in these situations the books are tagged with both the “Trigger” and “Kink” tags. Kidnapping is one of these examples.

And of course, if you set your profile to exclude a certain trigger, you won’t have books with those Kinks appearing in your searches!

If you want to see our full list of tags, you can visit:

https://why-choose.com/extras/tags/

We have spent the Christmas break working on a few things to improve Why Choose?

Most of this was things you can’t see – we’ve improved the servers and performed some maintenance on the database – which should mean the searches and loading times have improved dramatically for you.

We’re also introducing this newsfeed so you can see all the new releases from our verified authors, and we’re going to give them a shoutout on Facebook too! Due to several requests, we’ll be introducing more author driven content and interviews.

We’ll also keep you updated on site developments. There will be a lot of these over the coming months as we strive to improve user experience at Why Choose?

As always, thank you for using Why Choose?, and we hope you’ve been able to find many more books and authors to fall in love with.

Charlie and Serenity