Amazon urges you to read banned books… while banning books

~Originally posted on One Handed Writers~ Sorry for the lengthy title, but I don’t know how to put it any better than that. Back in June you may recall that we had our Amazon publishing account suspended. The reason given was that we had tried to republish books that they had previously blocked – fair enough. Last September they’d asked all erotica authors to republish their books with more subtle titles, covers and blurbs, so when we had a couple books blocked, we figured that’s all it was. Republish with cleaner terms, and all would be fine. Unfortunately, they were blocked again, and several months later we got an email from Amazon stating they had suspended our account. I could argue until I was blue in the face about how unfair it was that they didn’t give us clearer guidelines, or more transparency. I could complain about the fact that this is our living that Amazon is screwing with, and taking food out of hungry mouths (mine) by continually shifting their rules on acceptability. Hell, I could probably write a book on my outrage about the very concept of blocking erotica titles for sale because of the content or title, or because one [...]