[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Unless it is clearly specialized I expect a bookstore to offer me any book it can. I certainly don't want or expect a bookstore to make any sort of value judgments on the content of books.

This is, of course, completely unrealistic. I know you can't find these books at Borders, for example.

Note, too, that Amazon is only applying these standards to self-published books.

This expectation is even more valid for booksellers that try to bind me into a close relationship, as Amazon clearly does with the Kindle.

All bookstores would like to bind you into a close relationship.

Once a bookstore arbitrarily refuses to sell titles with sexual keywords, what do we have to expect next? The refusal to sell books that violate certain political sensitivities?

If they stop selling some books, maybe they will soon only sell *one* book! And it will be Mao's Little Red Book!!!

See, I can do that, too.

As I said upthread, Amazon is acting both as retailer and as a quasi-publisher for these books. No one on this thread would complain of censorship if Macmillan refused to publish a given title for any number of unarticulated reasons.