Quote:
Originally Posted by Amalthia
After someone called those who do read these types of books "godless" I'm not sure if anyone is brave enough to come forward.
(snip)
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Actually if I remember correctly, the post in question called the proposal that these types of books were even worth free speech protection a "Godless position."
Although I think that could reasonably be read as meaning that the poster thought people who would actually *read* such books would be Godless or worse, and it wouldn't surprise me if many people took it that way.
Even before that, many people consider their "guilty pleasure" reading to be personal enough that they don't bring it up in public, so it will probably be hard to get information on the actual scope of the problem. For what it's worth, I suspect that the readership for books like that is noticeably smaller than the readership of erotica that caters to more generally held tastes.
Speaking for myself, my concern is provoked not by the number of readers affected, but by the principle of the thing. Indeed, if many readers were affected, I would kind of assume that customer outcry was assured and didn't need much help from me.
Regarding the idea that it is not censorship when a company refuses to carry a book, I recall when we had the Agency 5 price-fixing fight, and Amazon turned off the "buy it now" button for a lot of books. John Scalzi was very upset about it because it seriously impacted, not just his bottom line for that time period, but that of many newer authors who were less well known. Amazon refusing to carry a book has a serious impact on how many people read it. Whether you call deliberately taking actions that reduce the number of people who read a book censorship or not is an argument over sematics, I guess--but let's not confuse "they can find it elsewhere--if they try hard enough" with "it makes no difference."