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Amazon bans subgenre of erotic books

Thread starter KathleenD
Start date Dec 15, 2010

KathleenD

New kid, but no need to be gentle.

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Dec 15, 2010

#1

I went back and forth between posting this here and self-pub.

So, one of the things I want to do someday is self-pub my shorts. I don't write incest erotica, or any of the things on the typical publisher no-no list, but I'm not sure that's relevant.

If Amazon bans one type of writing, what's to stop them from going after anything some pointy headed bureaucrat decides is bad next month?

http://theselfpublishingrevolution.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-in-book-banning-business.html

Said The Sun

foremost, for prose

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Dec 15, 2010

#2

This is pretty fucking sad.

defyalllogic

i'm a girl. (i have tendonitis)

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Dec 15, 2010

#3

can you buy kindle books from non-amazon sites? if you already had the product and they ban your fav genre, can you shop elsewhere?

scarletpeaches

Banned

Dec 15, 2010

#4

A) I think it's common knowledge that I despise self-published books and have never read a good one.

B) This doesn't appear to be about self-publishing anyway.

C) Amazon is run by a bunch of goatraping thundercunts.*

*This is my personal opinion and not endorsed by anyone else on this site.

dangerousbill

Retired Illuminatus

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Dec 15, 2010

#5

It's only going to get worse. Conservatives are well organized and well funded, and they can go after any genre they please, and Amazon will buckle. Amazon isn't concerned about books per se, but about profit. If they perceive that publishing, say, gerbil-sex stories will result in a boycott campaign from conservatives, they'll eliminate that genre, too.

I suspect it will go beyond that. Conservative Christians hate books on evolution and Big Bang cosmology, in fact anything that doesn't fit their cramped view of the world.

Watch this space. You heard it here first.

dangerousbill

Retired Illuminatus

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Dec 15, 2010

#6

scarletpeaches said:
A)
C) Amazon is run by a bunch of goatraping thundercunts.*

I think you have the title of your next work.

scarletpeaches

Banned

Dec 15, 2010

#7

Can't see them stocking that.

kuwisdelu

Revolutionize the World

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Dec 15, 2010

#8

Heh, I guess I wasn't the first to notice this. Damn.

JulieHowe

Spent the night with Jack Daniels

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Dec 15, 2010

#9

scarletpeaches said:
A) I think it's common knowledge that I despise self-published books and have never read a good one.

B) This doesn't appear to be about self-publishing anyway.

C) Amazon is run by a bunch of goatraping thundercunts.*

*This is my personal opinion and not endorsed by anyone else on this site.

Is goatraping really a compound word?

RobJ

Banned

Dec 15, 2010

#10

KathleenD said:
I went back and forth between posting this here and self-pub.

So, one of the things I want to do someday is self-pub my shorts. I don't write incest erotica, or any of the things on the typical publisher no-no list, but I'm not sure that's relevant.

If Amazon bans one type of writing, what's to stop them from going after anything some pointy headed bureaucrat decides is bad next month?

http://theselfpublishingrevolution.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-in-book-banning-business.html

Of course, none of us knows whether they will extend the ban into some other genre or subgenre, though I don't see much reason to get too excited about what they might do until it looks as though it'll actually happen.

What seems to have actually happened here, according to the link, is that someone's book containing stories about mother-son and father-daughter incest has been pulled, and a whole bunch of books of similar type. Given the statements in their guidelines, Createspace are perfectly entitled to do so, and it's down to them to judge what's appropriate and what isn't. People presumably accept those guidelines when they put their work up for sale with them.

I can understand the frustration that someone might feel with the guidelines being vague, but I don't think it's difficult for most people to imagine why they might want to pull stories containing mother-son and father-daughter incest. I'm not judging people who like to read that kind of stuff, though I have to say it's not my bag, but I do understand how Createspace might consider it inappropriate.

It's covered by their guidelines. Vague as they are, I'm not surprised they pulled it. So, no grounds for complaint, as far as I can see. I can imagine people affected by it will be angry, though. That's only natural.

JulieHowe

Spent the night with Jack Daniels

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Dec 15, 2010

#11

KathleenD said:
I went back and forth between posting this here and self-pub.

So, one of the things I want to do someday is self-pub my shorts. I don't write incest erotica, or any of the things on the typical publisher no-no list, but I'm not sure that's relevant.

If Amazon bans one type of writing, what's to stop them from going after anything some pointy headed bureaucrat decides is bad next month?

http://theselfpublishingrevolution.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-in-book-banning-business.html

I'm not happy with Amazon proactively deleting paid content from people's Kindles (they've done this before.) I have the money set aside to buy a Kindle for myself. Maybe I'll spend the money on something else.

Deleted member 42

Dec 15, 2010

#12

The grounds for complaint are that Amazon deleted purchased books from customers Kindles and online accounts at Amazon, without a refund, notice or explanation.

brainstorm77

practical experience, FTW

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Dec 15, 2010

#13

defyalllogic said:
can you buy kindle books from non-amazon sites? if you already had the product and they ban your fav genre, can you shop elsewhere?

Yes some other files can be uploaded to Kindle.

RobJ

Banned

Dec 15, 2010

#14

Medievalist said:
The grounds for complaint are that Amazon deleted purchased books from customers Kindles and online accounts at Amazon, without a refund, notice or explanation.

When you say purchased, I believe the Kindle terms and conditions talk about the digital content being licensed, not sold.

kuwisdelu

Revolutionize the World

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Dec 15, 2010

#15

Medievalist said:
The grounds for complaint are that Amazon deleted purchased books from customers Kindles and online accounts at Amazon, without a refund, notice or explanation.

RobJ said:
When you say purchased, I believe the Kindle terms and conditions talk about the digital content being licensed, not sold.

Which are just two more reasons I will never own one until these things change.

JulieHowe

Spent the night with Jack Daniels

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Dec 15, 2010

#16

Medievalist said:
The grounds for complaint are that Amazon deleted purchased books from customers Kindles and online accounts at Amazon, without a refund, notice or explanation.

This.

As far as content, the publishing house belongs to Amazon. At a minimum, they're acting as a content broker - matching up books and book-buying customers. So they probably have a legal right to decide what they'll allow to be distributed.

As an Amazon customer who was ready to buy a Kindle, I'm totally unhappy with the fact that they've once again proactively deleted content. This happened last year with a copyright infringement complaint, which I believe was later proven to be unfounded. The work was in the public domain, but Amazon customers who fired up their Kindles were surprised to find the book they had paid for was deleted from their collections the next time they synced up their devices with Amazon.

Last edited: Dec 15, 2010

Jamesaritchie

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Dec 15, 2010

#17

KathleenD said:
I went back and forth between posting this here and self-pub.

So, one of the things I want to do someday is self-pub my shorts. I don't write incest erotica, or any of the things on the typical publisher no-no list, but I'm not sure that's relevant.

If Amazon bans one type of writing, what's to stop them from going after anything some pointy headed bureaucrat decides is bad next month?

http://theselfpublishingrevolution.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-in-book-banning-business.html

Amazon didn't ban anything. All Amazon did was decide they don't want to be forced to sell something they don't want to sell. You really don't want to take that right away from them, or anyone else, do you?

Well, maybe you do. So how about someone forces you to start selling books that say everything YOU believe is crap?

Now, deleting without refund is something else, but only if Amazon was the seller, and not the source. They should refund, if responsible, but they should also, absolutely, have the right not to sell such books. That's protecting everyone's rights, not just Amazon's.

firedrake

practical experience, FTW

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Dec 15, 2010

#18

Jamesaritchie said:
Amazon didn't ban anything. All Amazon did was decide they don't want to be forced to sell something they don't want to sell. You really don't want to take that right away from them, or anyone else, do you?

Well, maybe you do. So how about someone forces you to start selling books that say everything YOU believe is crap?

Now, deleting without refund is something else, but only if Amazon was the seller, and not the source. They should refund, if responsible, but they should also, absolutely, have the right not to sell such books. That's protecting everyone's rights, not just Amazon's.

So you wouldn't have any problem if they decided not to sell your genre for some reason, then?

scarletpeaches

Banned

Dec 15, 2010

#19

Jamesaritchie said:
Amazon didn't ban anything. All Amazon did was decide they don't want to be forced to sell something they don't want to sell. You really don't want to take that right away from them, or anyone else, do you?

Well, maybe you do. So how about someone forces you to start selling books that say everything YOU believe is crap?

Now, deleting without refund is something else, but only if Amazon was the seller, and not the source. They should refund, if responsible, but they should also, absolutely, have the right not to sell such books. That's protecting everyone's rights, not just Amazon's.

I would have a problem if the manager of my local Waterstone's sold me a book then marched into my - no, broke into my - house and took it back, offering no refund, explanation or apology.

If Amazon have a problem with selling incest erotica, well, they damn well should have spoken up when the books were first uploaded, shouldn't they?

defyalllogic

i'm a girl. (i have tendonitis)

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Dec 15, 2010

#20

Medievalist said:
The grounds for complaint are that Amazon deleted purchased books from customers Kindles and online accounts at Amazon, without a refund, notice or explanation.

I didn't see this in the article. Have they done this again since the 1984 episode?

Boston Steve

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Dec 15, 2010

#21

Medievalist said:
The grounds for complaint are that Amazon deleted purchased books from customers Kindles and online accounts at Amazon, without a refund, notice or explanation.

And that there was a court judgment, following the 1984 fiasco, in which Amazon agreed not to do this again except under certain very specific circumstances.

JulieHowe

Spent the night with Jack Daniels

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Dec 15, 2010

#22

defyalllogic said:
I didn't see this in the article. Have they done this again since the 1984 episode?

The text is copied and pasted below. FWIW, this is the blog writer's view, based on what she says her readers are telling her - no official response yet from Amazon, as far as I know.

When some of my readers began checking their Kindle archives for books of mine they’d purchased on Amazon, they found them missing from their archives. When one reader called to get a refund for the book she no longer had access to, she was chastised by the Amazon customer service representative about the “severity” of the book she’d chosen to purchase.

KathleenD

New kid, but no need to be gentle.

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Dec 15, 2010

#23

I think... and now I'm on dangerous ground... but I think they're not deleting them from the Kindles this time.

For non-Kindle owners: Everything you buy from Amazon is in two places, your Kindle and attached to your account on the Amazon cloud. If you delete a book from the Kindle, you can restore it from the cloud. There are some other features that let you sync across devices, and I believe the books have to be on the cloud in order to allow you to do that.

Unlike the 1984 incident, this time it appears that Amazon did not delete anything from the Kindle - but they did remove the books from the store with no warning, and also from the individual accounts on Amazon servers (what I've been calling the cloud). That means the reader with no more access to the book had been storing the book on the cloud, not her own hard drive - and no longer has access to the book at all.

The former is their right, the latter is borderline, IMHO.

And James, I appreciate what you're saying, but these books have been on sale for a year with no objections, and not in violation of any specific rule. As I said on that woman's site, incest may not be my cup of tea, but neither is bukkake and Amazon sells that.

Going after outliers doesn't mean all other content is safe - it means something else is going to be the outlier and thus at risk. It may be their right, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Boston Steve

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Dec 15, 2010

#24

JulieHowe said:
The text is copied and pasted below. FWIW, this is the blog writer's view, based on what she says her readers are telling her - no official response yet from Amazon, as far as I know.

When some of my readers began checking their Kindle archives for books of mine they’d purchased on Amazon, they found them missing from their archives. When one reader called to get a refund for the book she no longer had access to, she was chastised by the Amazon customer service representative about the “severity” of the book she’d chosen to purchase.

If they're just deleting it from the archives, not from users' Kindles directly, they probably skate around the court judgment on a technicality.

RichardLeon

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Dec 15, 2010

#25

scarletpeaches said:
Can't see them stocking that.

Yeah, but you could change the name to a major online bookseller called [thinks really hard...] Orinoco. And see if they notice.

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