Banned Books Week: Why Readers Need to Care About Ebook Sellers' Arbitrary and Capricious Content Guidelines
September 23, 2014
On Dec. 5, 2012 I published "Aunt" Grace."
On May 11, 2013 I learned that "Aunt" Grace won second place in the National Leather Association: International John Preston Short Story Award for excellence in literary works in SM/leather/fetish writing published in 2012.
On Sept. 3, 2014 my publisher account with All Romance was terminated because of "Aunt" Grace.
A little background: Previously, I had only published my novels and short story collections (including the two that contained "Aunt" Grace) on All Romance. With the loss of Kobo retail outlets in U.K., the death of Sony and Diesel, and Amazon doing everything possible to bury my books, I saw potential for replacing some of these lost sales if I increased what was available at All Romance. I decided to invest more in that market and spent several weeks reformatting all my short stories and resizing all the covers to meet the site's requirements.
I worked with the publisher relations supervisor to manage some technical difficulties I had in taking advantage of the interface that allowed books published on All Romance to be sold in the iBookstore. Then I received a notice from the Chief Operating Officer, accusing me of violating the site's content guidelines, specifically regarding "Works which contain incest or pseudo-incest themes for the purpose of titillation" and "Works that are written for or being marketed to the barely legal market."
The latter accusation was aimed at Jail Bait and Teacher's Pet. While I admit the blurbs (designed to sell books) toy with the "barely legal" angle, that's not what the stories are about. They both tell a story of an 18 year old discovering her sexuality, constrained by society's one-sided, misogynist standards regarding women's pleasure. (Two Brothers, about two young male virgins, one of the other stories that appears in Young & Eager, never gets banned for violating "barely legal" guidelines, even though the younger brother is only 18. Of course, that one gets criticized because the two brothers are in bed with the same woman and OMG, they might touch each other, even though they don't.)
Both Jail Bait and Teacher's Pet and the collection they appear in together are now published on Apple and Kobo, two of the most restrictive markets in terms of prurient content, via Smashwords. From the beginning, the first story was always available for sale on both markets in another collection, further proof that all these "content guidelines" are arbitrary and capricious.
Most of the All Romance COO's ire appeared to be directed at "Aunt" Grace." She erroneously claimed it "contains a pseudo-incestuous relationship between Grace and your protagonist, who she refers to and has thought of as a niece." She terminated my account without warning, removing 60 plus works from two markets because she had a problem with three, forcing me to scramble to reformat everything yet again.
First, pseudo incest is an oxymoron. Incest is sexual intercourse between closely related persons. If people aren't closely related, there's no possibility of incest. Pseudo is defined as pretended; false or spurious; sham.
"Aunt" Grace contains no incest, pseudo or otherwise. The characters are two women who became acquainted as young girls because of other people's marriage and who rediscover their attraction to each other as young adults.
It involves two women who are not legally related. Grace's mother married the father of the boy who grew up to become Jen's father long after both Grace and Jen's father were born. Jen's father never appears in the book. Jen grew up calling Grace "aunt" because that was required then, even though they weren't related in any way and weren't that far apart in age.
The two women always had the hots for each other. Their attraction was constrained more by their families disapproval of their orientation than their "relationship." In the book, although Jen calls Grace "aunt" out of habit at first, the word "niece" is used only once, and that's facetiously, when Grace introduces Jen to her slave.
"Jen, this is my slave, Emma. Gurl, this is my," Grace cleared her throat, "niece, Jen."It's worded to make it obvious to most readers that Grace does not think of Jen as her niece.
The story is also about Jen fighting against misogyny in her chosen career and prejudice against her sexual orientation. She finds refuge, and a chance to explore BDSM, in Grace's leather family.
I ran into the same specious objections to "Aunt" Grace at Kobo and Apple. In both cases, in order to sell this award-winning story, I had to make arbitrary and capricious language changes, changes that eliminated the women's backstory and reduced the characters' depth. I also switched the cover to say "Sir Grace" instead of aunt.
This was not the first time my work was banned by All Romance. In 2012, Broken and Shattered were kicked off the site.
I write books as Korin I. Dushayl about the dark side of BDSM, including questionable consent and abuse of power. I've redefined them as transgressive because the sex scenes in them often aren't supposed to be erotic (which doesn't mean that some people won't find them arousing). But, if any character exploits another in a story I write, it's obvious to readers (if not the character themselves) that the relationship is inappropriate at best, criminally damaging at worst. I don't portray abusive stalkers as romantic heroes.
I'm all for labeling books based on what's in them so adult readers can choose what they purchase based on their own personal preferences, triggers, and boundaries. One person's hottest sex scene ever will make another person want to hurl.
However, it is inappropriate and inexcusable for any individual or corporation to make arbitrary and capricious decisions about what other adults get to read.
Further proof that all this hoop jumping is for absolutely no legitimate reason and that so-called "content guidelines" are arbitrary and capricious:
- both Apple and Kobo sell the original "Aunt" Grace as part of another collection and no retailer has voiced any objections to that other collection;
- as of this writing, Apple still has not accepted Two Brothers for sale from Smashwords even though it was one of four books All Romance neglected to pull and the exact same story is still for sale on Apple via All Romance;
- I had to change the title and cover of Young & Eager to get it sold on Kobo even though all four stories within the collection were already for sale individually.
- On Amazon, Apple, and Kobo I must call my Family Dynamics collection, Leather Family Dynamics (although at least on Amazon, unlike the other two, I didn't have to change "Aunt" Grace).
- Apple published and then pulled Sir Grace in the space of a few days. I was told I needed to change the category listed from "Romance > Erotica" to "Erotica > Romance" and I'm still waiting for it to be available for sale again. Meanwhile, that version of the story is available for sale on Apple in Leather Family Dynamics.
Even Smashwords admits, in much kinder words, to the arbitrary and capricious application of "guidelines" by Apple. In explaining the reasons why books accepted by Smashwords don't get distributed to Apple, the site states the process "is performed by humans, and is therefore subject to some inconsistency from time to time. You may also find that things that were okay a year ago are no longer acceptable to them going forward."
In the midst of all this, Amazon had the unmitigated gall to encourage people to read really old books that had once been banned such as Madame Bovary and The Prince while arbitrarily and capriciously banning current work by numerous erotica authors.
All Romance, Apple, Kobo, and Amazon will continue preventing you from reading books the way they were written -- how the author believed was the best way to tell the story, the way you may find entertaining and/or arousing -- unless readers protest. The retailers have made it quite obvious they don't give a rat's ass about their authors. We're just content providers and if any single person -- on the retailers' team or a random visitor to their websites -- finds our content objectionable, it's gone.
The only way to change this puritanical attitude that readers have to be protected from evil authors who produce books those readers might want to purchase and consume, is to yell loudly and repeatedly at any retailer that bans books for arbitrary and capricious reasons. Better still, purchase your books from other retailers, or whenever possible from authors and publishers directly, and let the retailers know why.