The Sordid Story of PayPal – And the Light at the End of the Tunnel (Part 2)

All right, so PayPal was having a fit about incest, rape, and bestiality.  Unfortunately, they have an extremely broad view of what these terms mean.  This was explained in the email my publisher sent to its authors when PayPal decided New Concepts Publishing was in violation of its terms:
PayPal, no doubt under pressure from VISA/Mastercard/Discover, is demanding that all sites currently selling erotica on their site that includes incest/pseudo incest, rape, underage/barely legal, and bestiality remove all such items immediately or have their card services canceled and all funds in their account confiscated.

NCP has never sold anything that contained outright rape for the purpose of titillation, bestiality, underage sex, or incest of any kind.  However, the Morality Police are leaving a lot of grey areas and refusing to define anything.


Why does this matter to us, or to you?


Aside from the fact that we hate any and all incursions on our freedom of speech, and this is a BIG one, there are a number of our books that actually fall in these gray areas.


Some of the books on our site include BDSM, which is legal but can and often does include 'play' rape.  According to the Morality Police, this is rape.  Some authors have used outright rape for motivation, there are a few that have it in there to show trauma.  There are a large number on our site that simply fall under 'forced seduction' where the heroine wasn't exactly willing, but had a good time anyway-or possibly didn't.  In any event, if this happens at  any point in your novel, let us know.


Bestiality has never been an accepted genre here at NCP.  It is generally defined as a person having sex with a naturally occurring non-human animal.  As defined by PayPal, however, that also includes paranormal romance where the hero/heroine is not in full human form.  If you've written a book that includes anyone having sex with someone who is not entirely human at the time, please let us know.


Incest and pseudo-incest have never been accepted as a major theme in any NCP novel, but with the broad definitions PayPal uses, this would include any time a woman or man has sex with someone and a relative-even if they never actually touch each other.  If you have a book with us that includes sex with more than one hero/heroine where the relatives are both in the room having sex at the same time, please let us know.  Even if it's step siblings or someone married into the family, or a great uncle's son.
Underage sex, barely legal sex, and sex that was legal in a historical setting are not allowed.  So if you've written anything that falls under that category, please let us know.  If the heroine is 18 or younger at any point in the story and any sexual activity occurs, including rape, even if it is a historical novel, this is taboo according to PayPal.  For those of you who have read my books, you know I write BDSM.  You know the heroine in my first book was raped in the past.  You know I write forced seduction scenes.  That put me in the direct line of fire as far as PayPal was concerned.