Civil War Horror: KOBO UK banned my books!

Monday, October 21, 2013

KOBO UK banned my books!

If you pay attention to publishing news, you've probably heard about the great self-published porn scandal. The media discovered that some indie publishers have been uploading incest and rape porn, and probably making tons of money in the process.

Online bookstores have gone into panic mode. Amazon is cleaning out adult titles, WH Smith shut down their entire website, and KOBO UK has been deleting self-published books. KOBO UK hasn't just been deleting porn, though. They've cast their net wide and are deleting ALL indie books, including my three fiction titles.

Wait, what? My books are fantasy and horror. They don't even have any sex scenes in them! Fifty Shades of Gray is still available on the site, though.

While KOBO UK claims they will bring legit books back online, that hasn't happened with my titles yet. Meanwhile erotica readers have started a petition demanding that erotica be allowed. The petition makes it clear that they don't support underage sex scenes (even though Lolita is considered literature) and they've garnered more than 14,000 signatures.

In the meantime, I'm not going to shop on KOBO anymore. If they have such bad business practice as to punish innocent authors such as myself after being caught profiting from porn they let on their site in the first place, they don't deserve my money.

(Yeah, this image is a bit over the top, but I'm really pissed off right now)

6 comments:

Dianne K. SalerniOctober 21, 2013 at 5:50 AM
I have never shopped at KOBO, but I certainly won't ever start now. To accept self-published work on your site, then suddenly delete them for no real reason is highly unprofessional. Are they going to give back their share of the income from all prior sales to the author? Bet not. Plus, as you say, Fifty Shades of Gray is still there, along with a lot of other traditionally published erotica, I bet.
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Tony LaplumeOctober 21, 2013 at 6:04 AM
Understandably upset about what's happened.
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Jack BadelaireOctober 21, 2013 at 9:36 AM
It's ridiculous. I've never been a fan of Kobo - tried publishing through them once, and found the overall experience just disappointing and nowhere near as mature as Amazon's. With this nonsense, it has really driven the last nail in the coffin for me.

What's even more annoying is that it is ONLY, as far as I can tell, books that are being published through Kobo directly. If your titles are getting there via Smashwords, I don't believe those are being banned. So, Kobo is actually being harder on those authors they've lured into publishing directly with them. So much for the "Kobo Writing Life", as Kobo calls their portal...

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Alex J. CavanaughOctober 21, 2013 at 9:39 AM
That is really stupid! That's even worse than Amazon deleting reviews just because. I hope you win that battle, Sean. And I only shop iTunes and Amazon anyway.
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Monday, October 21, 2013

KOBO UK banned my books!

6 comments: