Quote:
Originally Posted by John Carroll
I just received this email from Kobo
To our Kobo Writing Life and self-publishing partners:
As you may be aware, there has been a significant amount of negative media attention in the UK regarding offensive material that became available across a number of eBook platforms. Kobo was included in the reports from media and we are taking immediate action to resolve an issue that is the direct result of a select few authors and publishers violating Kobo’s content policies.
In order to address the situation Kobo is taking the following steps:
1. We are removing titles in question from the Kobo platform.
2. We are quarantining and reviewing titles to ensure that compliance to our policies is met by all authors and publishers. We will ensure that content meeting the policy is made available online as soon as possible.
3. We are reviewing our policies and procedures to implement safeguards that will ensure this situation does not happen in the future.
We are working hard to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.
Our goal at Kobo is not to censor material; we support freedom of expression. Further, we want to protect the reputation of self-publishing as a whole. You have our promise that we will do all we can to ensure the exceptions that have caused this current situation will not have a lasting effect on what is an exciting new channel that connects Readers to a wealth of books.
Sincerely,
Mark Lefebvre
Director, Kobo Writing Life
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How sad and what an over reaction to an issue that's been there for a long time. I agree there should be better filtering and the defaults should be set so the Puritans don't have erotic dreams thinking about the covers they saw but the mass removal of Indie books is just silly. This is something they could have fixed over time without hurting authors. In the spirit of Thanksgiving I was going to give thanks that I don't live in a Nanny state, but apparently I'll have to drop that one.
Why are these issues always raised around sex when all manner of violence is ignored?