We've been censored on Kobo!
Watching censorship in action...
After a dedicated push to bring Kobo titles to market, we are now watching all of that work be removed in an explosion of censorship. Very Dirty Stories eBooks released to Kobo have all vanished from the store catalog in the span of 12 hours, and we have not received an explanation. Our closest guess is that Kobo will be aggressively removing all erotica titles from their Writing Life program. A quick search turns up only 2657 Romance titles under Erotica which is considerably fewer than we recall in past weeks.
There's nothing we can do. Cherish Desire Erotica will go forward, but with Kobo and other retailers shaking in their boots about selling adult content to adults, writers and publishers are just caught in the middle.Where censorship comes from...
Typically speaking, I avoid this topic. I don't interfere in your life, and generally you don't interfere in mine. That's a good way to live. But something changed in Great Britain over the last couple of years, and now we see the censorship that stems from government interference in adult rights.
In the name of protecting the children or maybe just governing people's unhealthy habits, David Cameron made a successful play to censor the internet. His success will see the implementation of ISP level censorship across a broad set of topics without any public supervision, and require adults to actively request full access to the proper internet. Not only is this a shame tactic, the opt out of the internet filtering will be filed with the government so you can be tracked for standing up for your right to access the world without being filtered and managed. You're always and already monitored, and there's no opt out for that. This is just another way of making you feel guilty for actually being an adult.
If that was it then most of us former colonists would laugh a bit and move on. Let's be perfectly honest folks, England is a fine little island and we love to visit, but it's not exactly a world superpower. Unfortunately, censorship is a bit like the flu. Censorship is universally contagious. But it doesn't spread through laws since most of the western hemisphere isn't ruled by law. It's spread through the emotional perception of risk.
And WH Smith, Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble think there is very real risk to their brands. This weekend all four began sweeping through their self-published ebook titles and aiming to cleanse themselves of any possible further accusation of selling legal adult content. If that's sounds ridiculous then you're not alone. But it's happening anyway. "Self-Published Erotica is Being Singled Out For Sweeping Deletions From Major eBookstores" on The Digital Reader gives a good summary. In short, self-published authors are being broadly targeted for removal with no warning or information on appeals. The majority of the content being censored is both legal and easily accessible with a Google search. The panic about being able to find abusive works at WH Smith makes headlines, but it ignores two very important facts. First, children should be using the internet with adult supervision and involvement. Second, there are abusive titles available, some of them like "Lolita" are considered classics and not being removed, and then there is all the graphic sexual content that depicts gay, alternative, and BDSM lifestyle pairing which is only abusive to people not from those walks of life.
Of course, that's me being reasonable. Living on a mudball overpopulated with primates has taught me that reasonable is unlikely at best. So where we stand today is a tough spot. Either open a marketplace which will persevere the censorship of the masses, or move our erotica back to dark rooms off dirty streets. I'm not sure which is better. But I do know that this latest wave of censorship isn't going to go away easily.
Keep watching Twitter and Facebook for more updates. Cherish Desire continues to push the envelope with new updates for Kindle formats, new print editions, and new retailers.
