Welcome to another episode of the Self-Publishing Roundtable, the weekly self-publishing news webcast.
This week has been quiet one on the news front, so we are running with Simon Cantan winning the Last Author Standing competition as our lead story….
Na just kidding, we are covering the big news of what I like to call, Daddy Gate.
For those indies out there living under a rock, things hit the fan when UK distributor and High Street brand, WH Smith took their e-book store offline. They stated they were ‘disgusted’ with some of the erotica titles found on their site. WH Smith for those US viewers, are about the equivalent of Barnes & Noble. They take their e-titles from Kobo.
Things really got messy when the following message appeared on their site:
“Our website will become live again once all self published e-books have been removed and we are totally sure that there are no offending titles available”
The titles brought to question were erotica featuring, incest (usually a step parent/child relationship) , rape and bestiality.
Then things really got crazy when as a result of the move, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo started removing self-published titles from their stores, not just erotica books.
There has been plenty of backlash and opinions, so I will share some of the main articles that have hit the net this week.
The original article – “An Epidemic of Filth”
BBC story on Amazon removing book
Story on Kobo’s official response
An interesting article on the subject, including a suggestion that indies may have to distance themselves from erotica authors.
In depth coverage from Ryancaseybooks.com
There are plenty more. We will be covering the story for a while, but we do have other interesting stories to get too, including:
Want Fries With That E-Book? – McDonalds joining the e-book party? Seems so. How long before Realm Keepers appears next to your Big Mac?
Michael Kozlowski is advocating that all online bookstores have devoted sections for self-publishing. Not necessarily for positive reasons.
Bloomsbury Seeks Deal With Author Solutions – Author solutions often gets bad press with indies. Bloomsbury (Harry Potter’s publisher) has seemingly signed a deal with them.
There is plenty more to cover if we have time, we look forward to seeing you Thursday night LIVE!
P.s. My joke aside, congratz to Simon for winning the Last Author Standing.
