Banned Books Week
September 26, 2019
tl;dr ebooks now available for purchase on Gumroad!
At one point or another, a large percentage of my books have been banned by one retailer or another, especially the books I write under my Korin I. Dushayl pseudonym.
So once again I find myself spending Banned Books Week (September 22-28, 2019) advocating for my own work to be available for sale.
This year, I had to pull all of my books off Amazon because it has refused to pay me any royalties for a full year now (although you can, apparently, buy some of my books for up to a thousand dollars from third-party sellers, I will not see one penny from that sale).
This issue has been compounded by Amazon's elimination of CreateSpace, which I had used to produce print versions of all my novels, short story collections, Connecting to Kink and Pain of Love.
Recently, I started uploading my books to Draft2Digital with the understanding that it now offered a POD option and that I could sell my books through various retailers, including the Kindle store, allowing readers with those devices to purchase their books there.
But, Draft2Digital refuses to accept my books. Among the reasons stated were that the books would not be accepted by Kobo or iBooks, even though a) I had never asked them to be posted to Kobo or iBooks because b) the books are already for sale on Kobo and iBooks.
Other reasons given by "Tara" (who signs herself as Draft2Digital's Director of Operations but doesn't share her last name and uses a general support address) included "Rape erotica and sexual slavery erotica, where the predominant theme is rape violence for titillation is strictly prohibited".
However, none of the scenes she identified as rape or "sexual slavery" were written as erotica or "for titillation". They were written from a perspective of characters trying to define and understand consent (in the case of Phil in Choices) or women (and males in the case of Jesse in Playing With Dolls) coming to terms with their own sexuality and identity. Some of the scenes she quoted in her email were written to show the difference in what consent means to men versus women.
Broken and Shattered are specifically about abuse not sex. (And, as I told her, I have had people tell me they couldn't even read those scenes because they found them too painful. People who found them the erotic have told me they questioned their own reactions.) The entire point of those two books is to get readers to think about abuse versus consent and about the darkness in themselves and in others. Reviews I quote on my website show I succeeded.)
It should be noted, that the main reason I created the Korin Dushayl pen name, and why she is identified as a transgressive writer rather than an erotica writer, is to differentiate the books which were not written as erotica from my other work which was. Consent (including consent to polyandrous relationships versus cheating) is literally the most important thematic issue of the books Draft2Digital refused.
You can now purchase those four books -- Broken, Shattered, Playing With Dolls, and Choices -- on Gumroad. Each is available in .mobi (Kindle/Kindle app) and .epub (Nook, Kobo, iPad, etc.)
In the coming weeks, I will be making more of my books available via Gumroad. And, hopefully I will be able to find an affordable POD option, so they're available in print in the very near future.
Plus, the third book in the The Lady & The Spyder series will be available for pre-order very soon.
At one point or another, a large percentage of my books have been banned by one retailer or another, especially the books I write under my Korin I. Dushayl pseudonym.
So once again I find myself spending Banned Books Week (September 22-28, 2019) advocating for my own work to be available for sale.
This year, I had to pull all of my books off Amazon because it has refused to pay me any royalties for a full year now (although you can, apparently, buy some of my books for up to a thousand dollars from third-party sellers, I will not see one penny from that sale).
This issue has been compounded by Amazon's elimination of CreateSpace, which I had used to produce print versions of all my novels, short story collections, Connecting to Kink and Pain of Love.
Recently, I started uploading my books to Draft2Digital with the understanding that it now offered a POD option and that I could sell my books through various retailers, including the Kindle store, allowing readers with those devices to purchase their books there.
But, Draft2Digital refuses to accept my books. Among the reasons stated were that the books would not be accepted by Kobo or iBooks, even though a) I had never asked them to be posted to Kobo or iBooks because b) the books are already for sale on Kobo and iBooks.
Other reasons given by "Tara" (who signs herself as Draft2Digital's Director of Operations but doesn't share her last name and uses a general support address) included "Rape erotica and sexual slavery erotica, where the predominant theme is rape violence for titillation is strictly prohibited".
However, none of the scenes she identified as rape or "sexual slavery" were written as erotica or "for titillation". They were written from a perspective of characters trying to define and understand consent (in the case of Phil in Choices) or women (and males in the case of Jesse in Playing With Dolls) coming to terms with their own sexuality and identity. Some of the scenes she quoted in her email were written to show the difference in what consent means to men versus women.
Broken and Shattered are specifically about abuse not sex. (And, as I told her, I have had people tell me they couldn't even read those scenes because they found them too painful. People who found them the erotic have told me they questioned their own reactions.) The entire point of those two books is to get readers to think about abuse versus consent and about the darkness in themselves and in others. Reviews I quote on my website show I succeeded.)
It should be noted, that the main reason I created the Korin Dushayl pen name, and why she is identified as a transgressive writer rather than an erotica writer, is to differentiate the books which were not written as erotica from my other work which was. Consent (including consent to polyandrous relationships versus cheating) is literally the most important thematic issue of the books Draft2Digital refused.
You can now purchase those four books -- Broken, Shattered, Playing With Dolls, and Choices -- on Gumroad. Each is available in .mobi (Kindle/Kindle app) and .epub (Nook, Kobo, iPad, etc.)
In the coming weeks, I will be making more of my books available via Gumroad. And, hopefully I will be able to find an affordable POD option, so they're available in print in the very near future.
Plus, the third book in the The Lady & The Spyder series will be available for pre-order very soon.