Amazon and B&N: Deleting M/M Erotica and Offensive Content

As I was perusing twitter today, I noticed several tweets about Amazon & B&N censoring offensive and explicit content from self-published authors. When I googled this, I found a BBC News article on the subject. According to the linked article, Amazon and B&N are in the process of removing such content from their online stores. B&N claims that this sort of work already violates their content policy, which justifies the removal. Amazon has yet to comment. As is to be expected, self-published authors are rallying against this action, criticizing the e-venues for censoring their content. The word censor, of course, is a great buzz-word in the writing community, because it immediately evokes riot and outrage. At this point, it's anyone's guess who will win the dispute, but it may be necessary for self-published erotica authors to find new avenues for distributing their work.

As someone just entering the m/m dark erotica genre, with content that I imagine would certainly be pulled from Amazon or B&N, I don't feel it will affect me too much. The ones that will really be hurt are those who have already established networks within the Amazon or B&N marketplaces. Fortunately, when I was first researching how to distribute my manuscript, I quickly dismissed Amazon. Amazon's lure to the $.99-$9.99 seems grossly unfair and their Kindle Select program doesn't appear to serve the author as much as it does enable Amazon to walk all over them. My displeasure about this led to me posting my usually free title on Amazon at $12.99--a price that guarantees I would make only 35%, rather than the 70% I would make if I offered the title at under $9.99. I had no intention of ever selling any of these copies through Amazon, but I took the action as a statement that I didn't like how they were treating their self-published authors, particularly those that are bound by Amazon's Kindle Select 90-day-distribution agreement.

As a disclaimer, I don't want to dismiss the success that self-published authors have surely had with Amazon or B&N. Certainly, there have been plenty who have benefited by the exposure that these e-venues offer, and I'm glad that they found success. With a situation like this, there's a sense that if you want to play their game, you have to play by their rules. To some extent, I understand that, but I am largely not interested in their rules, especially when they come at the creative and financial exploitation of their self-published and self-promoting authors. This information has definitely helped me realize how important it is to create a marketing platform that is not geared toward these avenues, which could be shut off to me entirely in the future. Does this mean that I'm completely in the clear? Absolutely not. If other venues follow suit, then I, along with other self-published erotica authors, will have to find new avenues for distributing their material. I currently use Smashwords and Scribd to host my e-book, and if they decided to take similar action, then I'd have to find a new way to distribute. Fortunately, it's early enough in my e-publishing career that I'm able to keep this in mind as I venture forward.