I know. Three posts in a week’s time. This might be some kind of record for me, but I’ve had a lot to say this week, I guess.

I’ve been sitting on this post for three days now, since the big kerfluffle at WH Smith and Kobo blew up. I keep debating on whether I should post it or not, because it does have a controversial subject, and I try to refrain from those subjects. It is the equivalent of politics in the publishing world. But I’m going to post it anyway, and I would hope that anyone who decides to comment, whether in favor of what I say or against, will remember to remain civil and mature in their responses.

I’ve been doing a lot of watching of this issue, reading, and absorbing. I want to make sure I have all the facts before I give my opinion.

And now I feel like I do, and I’ve pretty much solidified how I feel about this whole thing.

Authors have a right to write whatever they want.

It’s true. We do. We have that right. This is one of the glorious things about self-publishing as well, because now we can sell what we want. And all these book stores that have opened up their doors to independent authors? That’s fantastic. But there’s something else…

Bookstores have the right to sell whatever they want to.

This is also true. They have that right. They can say, “Yes, we will sell this book over here, but we don’t want this book over there.” This is not censorship. This is not bullying. This is a business decision by a company to do what is best for their business. Much like when an author decides to write under a pen name, or decides not to write any more books in a failing series. We have a right to end that series, and bookstores have a right to not sell our books, especially if it isn’t in line with what they sell or what they think will make them money or improve their image.

Bookstores are like restaurants.

So, let’s say you’re eating at a restaurant, and suddenly, a cockroach crawls across your plate. Or a rat. Are you going to eat there again? How is the restaurant going to deal with that? You tell some people about your experience, and then one thing leads to another, and the local paper is running your story about the restaurant that has rats. And if that restaurant keeps functioning with a rat problem, who’s going to keep coming back?

That restaurant’s gotta shut down to take care of the problem.

They have to deploy traps and put poison down. It’s the same with bookstores. Right now, WH Smith and Kobo are scrambling to kill the rats. They’ve quarantined as much as they could, and they realize that not all the books are rats. But they have to grab as much as they can in one fell swoop and then they can sift through to find the rats, and release the rest of the books. Sadly, this means that many authors’ books are offline on Kobo. Some, in the last few days, have already started coming back. Patience is where it’s at now. Which is hard, when you’re losing money by your product not being there, but that’s the name of the retail game.

It’s not censorship.

Most traditional publishers have guidelines. Even the biggest digital first publishers do not allow bestiality, rape for titillation, or incest in their catalog. But with the rise of self-publishing, many are not going through gatekeepers, like publishers and editors. For some, it has been liberating. Authors who have been told historical romances are dead have found an audience. New adult writers have found themselves somewhere to fit in. Unfortunately, with the awesome comes the awful.

People write things like bestiality or rape or incest (or pseudo-incest) and make bank, because for the first time, retailers gave them an audience. But the thing is… they shouldn’t have been given that audience. These guidelines are in place at publishers because they are illegal material in many areas of the world. By writing them, porn writers have unwittingly put retailers at risk of breaking laws in certain countries. Hence the swift, overarching removal of as many books as they could. Better to err on the side of caution than to get sued by the government and risk criminal charges.

The actions of the few affect the many.

The truth is that many people who write things like this don’t actually care about rules. They don’t want guidelines and scream “censorship!” or “bullying!” whenever they don’t get their way. They get their books sent back to draft status because they violate the TOS on the retailer’s site, but they change the cover or the blurb and send that back into the world with very little changed. They play with the filters and push the envelope to see how far they can go. This is a very small group of authors, but it’s enough to cause issues.

So, the restaurant shuts down.

This, in effect, means that everyone has to pay the price of the restaurant shutting down. Not just authors. Not just the patrons of the restaurant. But the waitresses, the cooks, the managers. The retailers, the authors, the publishers, the readers… We all get hurt by this when the actions of the few affect the many.

Publishing is a business.

These businesses are entitled to sell what they want, but even they have to deal with the outcry, and yes, these businesses might have a moral code that suggests that “hey, these books don’t fit in our moral code.”

Boycotting these retailers won’t help your cause. They discovered a flaw in their system, very publicly, and are working to correct it. Give them the time to do so. Let them fix their search engines and filters. They aren’t out to destroy authors and create an age of censorship. They are trying to correct a mistake, and sometimes, things get worse before they get better.

You should see me when I’m cleaning. It gets far more messy before it finally gets better. I imagine the same thing happens to others, too.