Barnes and Noble Yanks Books - Smashwords Offers Solution

Happy Thursday, everyone! Well, what an interesting month it's been, eh? Let's get to the publishing news, just in case you haven't seen it. Strap in, grab your coffee, and let's get going!

Over the last month or so, B&N has pulled several Indie erotica titles off their platform. Authors who were hybrid experienced an interesting effect when their Indie titles dropped off, but their publisher titles stayed up. What are they worried about? Well, if you caught my post from a while back that tackled the subject of what content would be allowed in books, you'll know. If you missed it, take a look here.

So, it seems the taboo topics are under fire. Namely:  Age play, bestiality, dubious consent, incest or pseudo-incest, non-consensual sexual slavery, rape for titillation, underage, snuff, scat, necrophilia.

Some of those have "never" been allowed.

Or have they?

According to the Smashwords blog, few retailers will take incest or pseudo-incest, and iBooks won't take them at all.

I beg to differ. After a quick search on B&N, I found the time-honored (even made into a movie) Flowers in the Attic series. I read that series. Not only do the children locked in the attic (the elder brother and sister) experience a coming-of-age sexual happening, but their mother slept with her uncle to conceive said children (which is why the grandmother wanted the kiddos to disappear). Sorry for the spoiler for those of you that haven't read it and had planned to.

Once I checked that out, I went over to iBooks. Guess what?

Yeah. There it is, but iBooks doesn't take books with incest in them?


By the way, it's also available on Amazon.

Doesn't it seem an awful lot like it's just Indie published books that are being targeted? Why not yank V. C. Andrews' books from those same platforms? If there's a taboo topic, she covered it. I've read several of her series, and MANY of them have incest happening across all arms of the family.

Guess what else? There are no "warnings" of sensitive material on ANY of those.

But JO! Those are referring to EROTICA titles.

Are they? Now, since the Great Blocking of Indies, if your book is erotica or not, you have to say whether you used one of those taboo topics. Yeah, even for sci-fi or paranormal.

HOW IS THAT OKAY? 

Do the publishers get to skirt all that? They do. It's obvious by what I've shown above. I'm positive there are others.

Smashwords is trying to provide a solution for Indies and restore trust with their retailers. Read about it on their latest blog post here, which is where the list of taboo topics above came from.

But, the bottom line is, Smashwords shouldn't have to. It's getting out of hand, and something needs to change.

If you publish fiction with one of the taboo topics listed above, please go update your books on Smashwords. It's now part of their ToS, and if you're caught not labeling them, you'll be banned from using them as a distributor.

*facepalm*

Can you name a trad pubbed book with one of the above topics?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Nom De Plumes

Happy Hump-Day, good people of the blogosphere! I can't believe it's Wednesday already. Time sure does fly when you're working your tuckus off. Today, I'd like to talk to you guys about pen names; also known as a Nom De Plume. Without beating around the bush, let's get going!

Why in the world would an author use a pen name?

Well, in my case, I use one because I don't want crazy people beating down my door if they don't like what I have to say. A couple of my books (the Mystic series, for one) teeter on the edge of calling people out for their crap and show what it's like to live on the other side of judgment. Another one has violence (and a lot of it) that a lot of folks say left them gasping for air as they read (Yassa). But, there are authors throughout history that used pen names to meet other goals. Here are a few:

• Dr. Seuss.
• Stephen King (aka Richard Bachmann)
• J.K. Rowling
• Jonathan Swift (aka Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.)
• Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte (aka Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell)
• Charles Dickens (aka Boz)
• Benjamin Franklin (lots of akas - mostly female names!)
• Anne Rice (aka A.N. Roquelaure)

So why did these authors choose their pen names?

For publishing reasons, of course. One was chosen because the publisher thought the author's books wouldn't sell as well if people knew it was a woman who wrote them. Back in the days of the Bronte sisters, women didn't write and they felt they had no choice but to submit as men. Sometimes pen names were chosen to allow the author to publish more frequently or even to get published at all (their real name may have been damaged in some way). Anne Rice said she didn't want anyone to know she'd written a naughty book. But, beyond that, she wanted to see if it was her name making her sales or her excellent writing. Makes sense to me.

So, if you're an author, and you use a pen name, why? Is it to hide who you really are, to break into a genre only (usually) written by a certain gender, or is it something simpler like a state of separation?

Inquiring minds are dying to know.

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo