[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Then one of the others like Core, and so on.

Sent an email to Core asking about their acceptable product policies. I hadn't looked at them because they have *no info* about what they do online.

There are a bunch out there. Doing it yourself is a foolish risk, and very expensive. I do not know who and who does not allow erotica/etc because I do not travel in those circles.

I know who doesn't allow erotica/etc, which is the vast majority of payment processors, with many of the remainder requiring ridiculous amounts of money held in escrow and the right to seize all assets at a moment's notice, based on their suspicion of fraud. (One of them demands the right to physically inspect your base of operations--at your expense, you must fly their agent to your business.)

I do however write/maintenance this kind of code, PCI compliance, and so on as part of my day job. There are DOZENS of companies that do this stuff for various rates.

There are not DOZENS of companies who process erotica with underage or rape themes. The fact that these themes are staples of mainstream literature seems to have missed them; apparently, they don't mind books with these themes as long as people are not willing to admit an actual interest in them--as long as the descriptions don't tell people that's what's inside, payment processors are happy to deal with them. Books that focus on rape are just fine as long as they're marketed as "military sci-fi."

I don't mean to imply "meh, erotica publishers can just whip together some code & do it themselves." I mean that there are no good options right now--and investing in writing code and contracting with banks & credit card companies directly may be what the erotica publishers need. They may need to pool their resources and create their own online payment processor that's focused on *books* rather than video-etc-pron which is where the high-chargeback risk is. (Because there's a lot of "What's that, honey? You found a payment to HotCollegeBeotches.com on the Visa statement? How did THAT get on my credit card bill--must've been some joke site Tom at work signed me up for when we went out for drinks. I'll cancel it immediately.")

Books, including ebooks, are low risk, low chargebacks. People who buy them tend to know they want them, and returns tend to be related to merchant or marketing errors--bad formatting, incompatible-with-my-device, and so on.

Some payment providers will deal with erotica--but not with rape, underage sex, and other "extreme" content, varying by company. Most providers will deal with books containing any amount of rape, underage sex, incest, bestiality, necrophilia, you name it--as long as those books aren't marketed as erotica. There's no reason for this schism other than attempts to inflict the corporate board's sense of morality on other people.

However, I note that absolutely no payment providers have any objection to content with explicit murders, whether that's textual or visual. A friend on my blog said,
[Insert obligatory rant here about how Western culture appears to get much more upset about the possibility of a character getting their genitals caressed than they do about possibility of the character having said genitals amputated sans anaesthesia, and the rather oddly skewed priorities this displays.]