Saturday, August 23, 2014

An Adorable Slave is Objectionable - but only taken as a whole

Apple's ebook iTunes books store is refusing to carry the complete version of my novella An Adorable Slave because of "Prohibited Explicit or Objectionable Content" however they are allowing the individual parts (four separate books) to be sold (through Smashwords because I don't deal directly with Apple). Usually a work taken as a whole is more understandable than when viewed in individual pieces, but apparently this isn't so for Apple. I'm not terribly concerned because Apple ebooks are a very small part of my overall sales, but it's amusing because--and I'm only guessing here--Apple has someone or someones skimming through every ebook (or at least the ones labeled as erotica) being sold on their site looking for objectionable content--as is their right, I don't mind that at all--but there is very little consistency to what is objectionable. So for some of Apples reviewers a passage or scene might be perfectly fine, but for a different reviewer it's likely to turn an average reader into a maniacal pervert.

I just wish Apple (and Amazon/Kindle) would tell me exactly what passages or pages or what terms or sentences are "bad". Call me lazy but I'm not going to go through a 40,000 word novella guessing at what parts are objectionable, remove them or rewrite them, and then resubmit it to Apple, or any other ebook retailer, and hope it's accepted on the second or third or fourth time.

What I'm really complaining about is the lack of consistency and the lack of information as to what is objectionable. On the plus side I've had a few books rejected by Smashwords but they are very specific in what they refuse to carry (kudos to Smashwords, they aren't uptight prigs).


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