ibooks

Smashwords recently arranged a deal with Apple to supply ebooks to them for their iBooks platform.

I hadn’t checked in on my Smashwords sales and download figures for a while (total of 6384 - yay) but today I noticed that I have an open ticket, or error notification, on Kissing Cousins, one of my free short stories. When I click on the link, it tells me that Apple has tagged my story as ‘containing prohibited or explicit objectionable content’. As a result, my daily sales figures have halved for Apple.

There is nothing in that story that is that objectionable, at least to me, and it kind of worries me. I mean, people think Amazon is bad? How bad do you reckon Apple will be if it becomes the new gorilla in the room? I have spoken before about my concerns on the thin edge of the wedge so far as offensive material goes. I don’t get dinosaur sex or whatever the current fad is, but I will defend your right to write and read it. Someone may have issues about hetero sex whilst another person may object to homosexual sex or even seeing a photo of two women kissing. In Australia, a bus-stop ad showing two fully dressed men, one standing with his arms around the other from behind and holding a condom packet in his hand caused quite the ruckus. One group wanted it banned and another larger group insisted they put it back.

Objectionable material is in the mind of the beholder.

But ooh … does it make me a real erotica writer? If I am already banned?