We’ve been contacted recently by a few independent authors who are up in arms about :
Many have taken this to mean that Amazon and Kobo are removing all books by independent authors from their online bookstores. This isn’t true. AMAZON AND KOBO ARE NOT REMOVING INDIE AUTHORS. We have heard that because of certain regulations regarding erotica in certain countries, books of this genre may be affected. Unfortunately, we don’t know the details. If one or more of your books has/have been affected, contact Amazon () and Kobo () right away.
We don’t know about B&N, but we are assuming the circumstances for their online bookstore is the same.
PG covers related topic here and here.
In some cases they are taking out all Indies and smaller publishers, and it’s been in a strange pattern. Books distributed through Smashwords to Kobo are still there. Those through Draft2Digital have all been taken down, no matter the subject matter. It was a full sweep. Those who go with Kobo directly seem to be half and half. Some are taken down, some are not, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.
On Amazon, the takedown appears to be associated with keywords, with a bunch of books that aren’t even romance swept up in the mess.
It is a mess. The claim is to want to filter some subjects, and yet some books with that same content are still up, but are released by big publishers. To a lot of people, this is showing how targeted the retailers are being. If they want to filter out that content, then fine. Filter all of it, regardless of source. Big publisher, small, medium, independent, whatever. Don’t discriminate.
It’s probably going to get more messy before it gets solved.
My publisher is not affected by this so far, thank goodness. I don’t write in the genres and subject matter that are supposedly the targets. However, I know of some author friends who aren’t in those genres and subject who HAVE been swept up in this, and that concerns me. If this goes further, will my publisher be hit, and through them, my books?
I do support the idea that a company has a right to list what they want to sell, and keep out what they don’t, but if they are claiming they don’t want to carry books with certain subject matter, then at least be honest about it. Delist ALL books with that subject matter, regardless of the publishing source! Don’t be a hypocrite about it.
And the news updates. Some authors and small publishers are now reporting that some of their Smashwords titles are being taken down at Kobo. But, not all.
I think they’re aware that they’ve botched it. We made sure to check with both Kobo and Amazon before posting information on this. They absolutely do not want to rid their online bookstores of independent authors. They have had to make some changes regarding restrictions in certain countries. This is what they told us when we inquired about it. So, if your books have been affected, contact them immediately.
I can speak from experience about Assazon. Please see here –
The Kobo thing is relatively new. It started with an article being written about salacious titles listed on WHSmith’s website, who get their feed from Kobo. Kobo does self-publishing, as does Smashwords that distribute to them. There isn’t really a… quality control thing there. The biggest problems seemed to be incest, rape and bestiality mainly. While I understand all that, and we don’t publish incest or bestiality, we do have books that contain fantasy rape scenes. 99.9% of our books have a HEA.
I hope this isn’t true. I’m a faithful reader and I would hate to see my favorite authors get penalized.
I seem to remember Smashwords doing something like this before and it didn’t blow over well, so they changed it back.
The issue that happened with Smashwords occurred because of Paypal throwing a hissy-fit. The fiasco also affected All Romance Ebooks. Right from the start, Smashwords was on top of the problem, communicating with the authors and publishers about what was going on, and trying to find solutions.
But, it was definitely started by the payment portal of Paypal (who then tried to blame it on the credit card companies it works with in order to take CC payments).