Many of these authors have done well for them selves. Pumping out erotic short stories to the tune of once a week and can actually make a living writing (to that I’m very envious). However, the beginning of this year brought with it the PayPal censorship issue and lots of ugliness. Authors, seeing their work and livelihoods in danger fought back. In the process many e-book distribution sites, in an attempt to cover their own asses with PayPal and save their business threw the authors under the bus and banned their work. This of course created strife and bad blood between authors and distributors and PayPal.

Several months later and that issue has pretty much died down. With pressure, PayPal backed off on their TOS and authors felt vindicated, even though several distribution channels were now off limits.

However, a new issue has now come forward. In an attempt to protect it’s reader base from ‘dirty books’, Amazon has begun filtering certain titles. They’ve done this silently and with some malice as they never informed the authors their titles would be ‘filtered’. Many of these authors including the famous Selena Kitt have even lied to by Amazon when confronted. Only after being shown the proof through third party means did Amazon then come clean and admit to what they were doing.

This brings up a slew of other questions. Why not tell the authors that their work is being filtered and why? Because smart authors might find a work around? God forbid that happen. Well Amazon, smart authors are finding a work around and smart readers are still finding this books.

Of course I have an idea. It’s not new because it’s been discussed a lot in our authors group and already been used by Smashwords. Hey Amazon, how about creating a filter that the reader could choose to turn off and on instead of playing God and selectively filtering books based on one person’s opinion of what’s decent?

Oh but children might still find the dirty books and then parents will be mad.

Really? If the adult filter is turned on, then children shouldn’t be able to find the books. And if children are searching amazon without parents permission or knowledge and come across an inappropriate title why is it the author’s fault? The parents should have been paying better attention to what their children are doing…period!

So Amazon, can you be adult about this and do the right thing? Or is it easier to be sneaky and hide behind confusing TOS and non-existent rules that continually change to fit individual reviewer’s opinions?

Want to read more. Check out PW Daily for the latest info on this subject.