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6 comments on “Amazon’s Brand of Censorship – Avoid Getting Banned from Amazon as an Author – Part 3”

  1. Dave Hill on said:

    While I’d love to see clearer guidelines, how is this any different from a more traditional publisher, who might reject a work because the manuscript was badly formatted, or because it was considered offensive by the editor looking at it?

    And if the courts can’t come up with a decent, binding, consistent description of porn, I don’t expect Amazon (who does carry, for example, Penthouse Letters collections) to be able to.

    That spotting potential violations is effectively crowdsourced (relying on complaints) is less worrisome than how Amazon will actually address those complaints. But, again, if folks complain today to Random House about a given book being offensive, the only difference is that they have an editor that they can have a long discussion with before deciding whether to stop publishing the work.

  2. Janelle Madigan on said:

    Is it just me, or do these guidelines raise more questions than they answer? I mean, how many romance and erotica books are bought/sold on Amazon each year? Is that offensive content? Where is the line drawn, and who’s drawing it?

    Amazon has opened a lot of doors for authors and is a big part of the reason people can pursue the indie author path. I hope the company continues to be as author-friendly as it seems. (As a disclaimer, I’m currently unpublished, so I haven’t worked with Amazon as an author.)

  3. Deanna on said:

    Thanks for all the helpful information about Amazon. Even when you read the fine print, you don’t always grasp all the details because there is so much of it. These articles are a helpful reminder. ?)

  4. june G on said:

    Not reading small print for anything can cause BIG PAIN later… so first rule of thumb, read the small stuff first. Good article. As for quality, who wants to buy a written work (electronic or paper) that is laced with typos?

  5. C.D. Reimer on said:

    I’ve seen too many poorly formatted ebooks from traditional publishers that fall under the category of Poor Customer Experience. I read elsewhere that the problem is the source file that the traditional publishers use for the ebook is often the original file submitted by the author, which haven’t been spit polished for print publication yet. Sometimes a good enough story will make me blind to the obvious formatting issues, but too often formatting drags the story down.

  6. Ciara Ballintyne on said:

    I am not a U.S. lawyer which makes it difficult for me to comment on specifics, but generally speaking I think there would be a reasonable chance of some provisions being struck out or not upheld by a court for a number of reasons, including vagueness (an obligation that isn’t specific enough cannot be enforced), or for reasons relating to unfair power – i.e. Amazon is basically forcing people to agree, there is no ability to negotiate etc.. Of course, it begs the question – can you afford a protracted legal battle against Amazon? In an overwhelming number of cases the answer will be no and I expect Amazon knows it.

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