On the upside, it feels fucking cool to have your books banned for being too hot.
Sometime during the wee hours of the morning Bookstrand removed ALL indie books without notice to the authors. This seems very shady, dirty, and underhanded. And just to make it clear my books do not include sex with underage characters and it's all consensual. I'm off to do some writing before work.
Well, before I go. This just arrived in my inbox.
Dear Indie Author,Oh well, ALL my titles can be downloaded from Amazon. Go ahead a pick up a banned book and be naughty.
We have made a decision to no longer maintain most indie author accounts at BookStrand.com. Therefore, we are deactivating all titles associated with your account and no new uploads will be accepted. Your final distribution payment will be disbursed to you within 30 days and your account will be closed. During this time you will still be able to access your sales report from your account.
BookStrand will focus on its core business by servicing accounts of publishers with clear submission and publishing guidelines that best serve our targeted audience. Our customer base was successfully built on this premise, and it's time to go back to our roots.
While we understand you may be disappointed in losing a distribution outlet for your work, there are still several outlets that currently accept self-published titles. We wish you the best in your endeavors.
Sincerely,
Howie M.
BookStrand.com
It makes you feel even colder when your books are ban because a corporation decided you shouldn't be writing certain books.
ReplyDeleteI would imagine that something could be done, in my research I have found a few things, but not sure if my voice will be important enough to the Los Angeles Times to do an actual story.
- Bonnie
This really blows... and not the good kind either O_o
ReplyDeleteBonnie, this has attracted some attention over on twitter... Heidi Cullinan, the President of the Rainbow Romance Writers (the LGBT branch of RWA) is aware of the situation (Taylor forwarded my blog post to her earlier). I don't know what she'll say about the "ban PI" part but at the very least, the censorship by paypal part is turning a few heads.
I'm interested in this research you mentioned...
It's very chilling and makes me sick to my stomach.
ReplyDelete