Kobo took extra steps today to assure LGBT publishing houses that their self-published eBooks were not directly targeted with the recent purge of erotica content. Kobo’s content policy reiterated that the parameters for acceptable content included most LGBT material and the main purpose of the “purge” was to remove “overt and illegal” material such as pornography, nudity, and sexually explicit content: Adult or explicit material depicting illegal acts or deemed to be exploitative shall be disallowed for publication on Kobo’s main bookstore and all others that tap into their feed.
“Kobo has been a great distributor to work with and has always been fair to all publishers,” says Robert Christofle Publicist for Icon Empire Press.
If you have come to the party late, the purge refers to a large number of hardcore adult content making their way into categories that they shouldn’t of. Parents were finding erotic material in the children’s section and found their kids looking at book covers portraying very depraved acts. This promoted WHSmith and other major bookstores to shut down, while the purge is going on.
Electronic bookstores that offer self-publishing programs are not doing enough to insure that this problem will never happen again. There are no options for customers to just filter out these types of books in their search results. There is no dedicated self-publishing section which puts everything in the same category. Companies are not doing enough to insure that a bookstore is a safe haven and not a den of inequity.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
