Turn Away

"'Nearly a third of self-published ebooks are “erotica,' according to a new analysis from Digital Book World and the Book Genome Project, compared with about 1% of traditionally published ebooks.

     What’s more, nearly 10% of that subset of self-published ebooks has themes of incest or bestiality.
     How big of a problem is this for ebook retailers?
     'It obviously matters when you are perceived as being a wholesome, family oriented, though declining brand like WHSmith,' said Andrew Rhomberg, an ebook observer and founder of ebook discovery start-up Jellybooks, referring to the British ebook retailer that shut its digital doors last week temporarily until it had cleaned its shelves of much of its erotic content, adding, 'but should Amazon worry, probably not.'
     While 'electronic books' have been around in some form or another since the 1980s, they did not rise to commercial prominence in any form until 2007 at the introduction of the Kindle. Perhaps the ebook business is going through the same kind of growing pains the Internet as a whole had around adult content in the first five or six years of its commercial existence."
— Jeremy Greenfield, Forbes
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they want it both ways...

"[...] Amazon and others are 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater' by removing too much of the self-published erotic content and complains that Amazon in particular is not giving authors sufficient explanation as to why their ebooks are being taken down. Another post at International Business Times reports on how readers of such content are up in arms, too, signing a petition to have content reinstated at their favourite ebook retailers. (Kobo seems to be at the centre of this scandal and has recently released a letter explaining its position and what it’s doing about it.)

     Each of these retailers have policies on what kind of content authors can publish and sell with them. [...] Barnes & Noble says in its content guidelines that it may remove any book that 'graphically portrays sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal.'
     Amazon’s policy is similar: 'We don’t accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts. What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.'
     That would mean Fifty Shades of Grey, last year’s mega-best-seller (and the fastest selling book of all time), could be removed, which begs the question, who gets to decide what is and is not sold in bookstores?"
— Jeremy Greenfield, Forbes
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Why do e-book outfits love the letter 'K'? (Part 1)

From: Sesame Street
via The Official Cranberries Fanblog

"Looking to keep pace with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and the fast growing self-publishing market in general, Barnes & Noble is phasing out its PubIt! self-publishing service and relaunching it as Nook Press, an upgraded e-book self-publishing platform offering an array of new services to authors and publishers. B&N is partnering with the self-publishing platform Fast Pencil to supply Nook Press with its proprietary online authoring technology, while also offering Fast Pencil authors access to a variety of marketing opportunities via B&N’s Nook platform. […]

     Much like PubIt!, Nook Press will pay authors up to 65% of the e-book list price based on how much an author wants to charge for a book. The Nook Press platform is nonexclusive (authors and publishers can sell the e-book where they want) and, like PubIt!, Nook Press is free of charge and B&N takes a percentage of the list price when the books sell."
— Publishers Weekly
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Oops, sorry... wrong "Kobo" (photo from: kapok.com)

"Kobo, a small Canadian ebook and e-reading company now owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, kicked Google’s butt… when it comes to selling ebooks through independent bookstores, that is. […]
     The reason the program existed in the first place was to give independent bookstores a way to get involved in the growing market of ebooks and digital reading, to give them a chance to survive the ebook revolution.
     After Google announced that it was cancelling its program this past spring, Kobo swooped in and signed a deal with the American Booksellers Association to provide e-readers, tablets and ebooks for them to sell.
     In the first month of the Kobo partnership (Oct. last year), independent bookstores sold more ebooks than in the entire two years working with Google. The key, say bookstore owners, is being able to sell the devices along with the ebooks. It just makes more sense to customers."
— Jeremy Greenfield, Forbes
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