Indie Author's Marketplace discussion
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Kobo's Decision To Remove Books.
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This has been a problem waiting to happen. There was a fuss a few months ago about Amazon making erotica harder to search for, although I haven't noticed it. Adult filters are needed. It would be nice to have quality filters too... :-)
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Yes. And language filters. All too often, I'm searching something and I have to scroll through twelve pages of foreign language works to find the English. It would be so much easier to press a button to select the language I want.
Considering how old these Amazon/Kobo sites are, you would think these things would be in effect by now.
I've heard of a few Erotica and Self-Publishing authors having their work removed, even though it doesn't fall into the categories they insisted they were going to remove. Now they're shutting down the entire Self-Pub/Indie Publishing part of their sites, which penalises the whole industry.
However...as an author who isn't a fan of hard-core Erotica etc, it does get very tiresome to search for a book and have nothing but porn/erotica showing up in my search feed. There is no content filter on these sites, that prevents these titles from appearing on a search for a regular, innocent book. The only site I know of that has a content filter is Smashwords.
Here's a little bit about what's going on from the International Business Times (from - http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/514...
"Following a lot of negative media coverage regarding unregulated publishing of indecent material, ereader manufacturer Kobo has announced it is shutting down its self-publishing platform as it continues to investigate the problem.
The problem was first highlighted by technology news website The Kernel, with its report focusing on the presence of large amounts of indecent material on Amazon's Kindle platform.
The investigation showed amateur ebook titles such as Daddy Daughter Sex Stories and Forced To F**k Daddy In Diapers were available to buy from Amazon, however it later emerged that pornographic ebooks were also available to buy online through WH Smith, Waterstones and Barnes and Noble.
WH Smith's online ebook portal is provided by Kobo, the Canadian ereader manufacturer which is owned by Japanese conglomerate Ratuken.
Violated policies
Kobo, the world's second biggest ereader manufacturer, has admitted that a "select few authors and publishers" had violated its content policies.
Kobo is removing the titles in question accoridng to Cerys Goodall, senior director of public relations, who said in an email statement that the company was also "completing a thorough review to ensure that compliance to our policies is met by authors and publishers."
It means that Kobo is "quarantining and reviewing" all new submissions to the online Kobo store and it has removed all self-published titles from the UK store. "We expect titles that comply with our policy to be returned to the store within the week," Goodall said.
Censor
The company is also reviewing it polices and procedures in order to implement better safeguards against this happening again.
"Our goal at Kobo is not to censor material; we support freedom of expression. Further, we want to protect the reputation of self-publishing as a whole. While some may find our measures extreme, we are confident that we are taking the necessary measures to ensure the exceptions that have caused this current situation will not have a lasting effect on what is an exciting new channel that connects Readers to a wealth of books," Goodall said.
Prior to the announcement by Kobo, John Whittingdale, the chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said: "It is disgusting that WH Smith, one of the country's most respected retailers, is selling hardcore pornography alongside children's books. Retailers have a responsibility to families and it is unacceptable that anyone could access this material within a click of a mouse."
Waterstones, Amazon and Barnes & Noble have similarly said they are removing indecent content from their online ebook stores."