This post, by Ruth Ann Nordin, originally appeared on The Self-Published Author’s Lounge on 2/25/12.
This is a piggyback on Joleene Naylor’s post which talks about Amazon removing about 4000 books. Details are in her links, so I won’t go over it except to say that it looks like authors (in general) are seeming to have a harder time keeping their books on sites where we need to sell them to make a living or to be on our way toward making a living. Sorry I’m posting so soon after you, Joleene.
The post Joleene just made falls in line with the same topic I have in mind, which is the fact that screws are being tightened across the board for authors. From the post Joleene made, it sounds like small publishers will face some hard times as well. My focus will be on indie authors because this is an indie author blog.
Last night, I came across this thread on the Kindleboards: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,105037.0.html. It was saying that Smashwords is dropping erotica titles with incest, beastiality, rape, and underage characters. I’m summing it up, but you can go to the latest press release on Smashwords to learn the specifics: https://www.smashwords.com/press/release/27. The Kindleboards link will give you more of a commentary on it and what authors think of this.
I’ve been studying this since last night and through the morning to best form my thoughts for this post. I wanted to do a post on it because this is something that has the potential to impact all of us, but I wanted to get as many facts straight as possible. Even after the time spent on looking up articles on this, I don’t know if I have the full scope of what is happening. Is it only indie erotica authors who write the above taboo themes being removed, or are small press authors affected, too? If I got my facts right (and I might be wrong so correct me if I am), then it sounds like Siren Publishing still has books up at Bookstrand with the taboo subjects in their erotic books. That’s the gist I got from this Kindleboards thread: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,104604.0.html. I am not familiar with Bookstrand. Until this week, I never even heard of them.
Read the rest of the post on The Self-Published Author’s Lounge.