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@lrc It’s funny because there are different categories of clean even within my own meaning of the word.

• There is “Not clean, I am not reading this book.”— there are five swear words within this first paragraph and they talk about sex a lot. The MC has a LGBT relationship, or someone else does within the first two chapters. (Funnily enough, violence and graphicness has never been something I have thought “This is too much.”)
• There is “I will read this but I won’t recommend it to anyone else.”— By the time we get to the objectionable stuff, I am already emotionally committed. I don’t really notice curse words anyways and I can skip the sex scene. If there is an immoral relationship I will ignore it’s existence (tactic does not work if they are the MC, but luckily it is usually clear from the description so I can avoid it in the first place.)
• “Books I will recommend to my friends with a warning label.” — There was a sex scene. There was probably some swearing but I didn’t notice because I was engrossed in the story.
• “Books I will recommend to my friends but not my younger siblings.” — Books with graphic violence and a serious romantic subplot. Storylines featuring abuse and adultery that has not been extremely sanitized.
• “Books I will recommend to my younger siblings.” — clean…?

So are what point has the category switched from “clean” to “not clean”? If I were to say, “I want more clean books” I would mean less sex, less cursing, and less immoral relationships. But that doesn’t mean that it is good for kids.

Also, I would say that curse words do not include made-up curse words. “Stars Above!”, “Shattered Prisms!”, and “shutter it!” would all be appropriate. There are cases where a word is clearly specially made to replace a real-life curse word, like it is one letter off, which counts as a curse word.

I think that people who say,

clean stories are too bland, too sickeningly sweet, too easily resolved, and pretty much just uninteresting,

mean a different kind of clean. They mean sterile. The bad germs have been cleared away but the good ones have too. It’s different, even if we are using the same word.