# RESOLVED: Playster Rejecting LGBT+ Fiction (Update Pg 7, #161)



## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

The other day, I updated the pricing of my latest release, a f/f romance (_Any Other Love_). It had previously been on sale for $0.99 and I flipped it to $3.99. This was the only change I made; the content remained the same.

Yesterday, I received an email from Draft2Digital informing me that my book had been rejected by Playster for "erotic content."










Mind you, the book had already been accepted by Playster, *twice*: once for pre-order, and again for final upload before release date. I was also surprised because, though the book has a steamy heat level, it's far from erotic. Furthermore, my m/f romances have the same heat level, and none have them have been rejected.

I replied to D2D via email:










I haven't heard back from D2D yet.

I'd hoped that maybe it just depended on who reviewed the content, but after talking to several other authors of LGBT+ fiction, it seems that Playster is specifically targeting LGBT+ fiction, regardless of heat level or genre. For example, I spoke with an author of LGBT+ SFF. There isn't even romance in her book, and Playster rejected it. An author of sweet LGBT+ romance was rejected, too.

Each of the authors who reached out to D2D or Playster for comment have yet to receive responses.

I've posted about it on my personal Facebook and my Twitter account, both of which are publicly shareable.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabethkaylene/posts/1338405346284899
Twitter: https://twitter.com/elizabethbarone/status/903305523113721856

If you are the author of LGBT+ fiction and Playster has rejected your book(s) for "erotic content," please let me know. Please also write D2D and/or Playster to complain; the more of us who push back, the better.

Playster does have content guidelines that prohibit sexual content. However, if they're going to reject my f/f romance, they should also reject my m/f romances. There's no reason to reject SFF with LGBT+ characters, though, nor is there reason to reject sweet f/f romance. It seems that Playster is rejecting fiction solely on the grounds of having LGBT+ characters, and that is _not_ okay.


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## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

It's messed up that people are still doing stuff like this.  And not even up front about it either.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Heh, I just replied to your thread!



paranormal_kitty said:


> It's messed up that people are still doing stuff like this.  And not even up front about it either.


It really is. I've never had anything like this happen to me. It's not a nice feeling. I wrote this book because there isn't a lot of f/f romance. I also wrote it because there are no books -- that I know of -- with LGBT+ characters who have chronic illnesses. I'm somewhere between angry and sad on this one.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

You aren't alone. They rejected my gay romance book: Cursed: Broken. I contacted Draft 2 Digital by phone and said: (1) its not erotica; (2) its not erotic romance; (3) its mild romance. So the reason for not allowing it in is because its gay.  I told them its completely not okay for Playster to hide behind gay = porn. Because it's simply NOT true and if they are allowing heterosexual romance in then they should let gay romance in.  

I haven't heard back either.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

*****************


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Content removed. I don't consent to the new TOS of 2018.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

My LGBT content has gone, just the hetero content is left. This is unconscionable. I will email them and pull my entire catalogue with them.


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## Theora (Aug 17, 2017)

An author I'm following had this problem as well:
"Also, some sad news. Playster opted to remove Penumbra from it's list due to erotic content. Which I guess is their choice, except that my fellow authors have noticed that they're targeting LGBT books, and not mainstream romances. Anyone who's read my stuff knows that romances get quite a bit more explicit than I do, and yet they're not pulled down. I haven't checked this out thoroughly so my perception may be skewed, but right now I'm very suspicious. If they are targeting LGBT content, I hope there's an outcry against it." (

__
https://164850206888%2Fa-dark-radiance
)

I don't even know what 'Playster' is but I guess a company can do what it wants, right? In this case it seems like a pretty stupid move unless they hate making money.


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## UK1783 (Aug 5, 2017)

This sucks. I dunno what's going on with the Internet lately but there seems to be this huge censorship drive going on. 

A friend of mine had his YouTube channel shut down because of it's content. I guess all of these companies can do what they want as they are private companies. The problem is though is that they masquerade as being public.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> The problem is though is that they masquerade as being public.


Well, no. Private companies are private. None of these are "public". They are not run by the government, so can't censor as such. They can have rules about what they allow, and enforce as they choose. I think they're making the wrong move removing only certain books while leaving similar ones up because they are "straight". There's going to be a backlash, and it ain't going to be pretty.

I guess I'm glad I never got around to uploading there. Saves me the work of taking stuff down.


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## UK1783 (Aug 5, 2017)

Yes, they are private. So they can choose to publish whatever they wish according to their rules.

These rules from many different internet platforms are starting to push people away. It's not a good idea at all.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

They have the right to refuse LGBT content, and authors have the right to refuse ever doing business with them in the future and posting to social media about their discriminatory practices. Seems fair to me. Let the market sort them out!


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Lilly_Frost said:


> I guess the part where it says "Playster has rejected this book for erotic content which *does* comply with their current content guidelines" is a typo on D2D's part?


You caught that too, huh?



PhoenixS said:


> If you can validate this -- and it looks like you're in process of doing just that -- then a whisper (or a tweet) into a few well-placed ears such as _The Advocate_ and _OUT _would be a great next step. Playster can certainly choose not to carry targeted content, but publishers can choose not to provide their content and customers can choose not to subscribe there because of it.
> 
> It's situations like this one's shaping up to be that I wish our catalog was wide just so I could pull our books in protest.


It may be because it's Saturday morning and I haven't had enough brain juice yet, but what do you mean by validating? Getting other authors together, then giving names, dates, etc to media?

Because I'm happy to do that.



C. Gold said:


> They have the right to refuse LGBT content, and authors have the right to refuse ever doing business with them in the future and posting to social media about their discriminatory practices. Seems fair to me. Let the market sort them out!


Couldn't have said it better myself.

In their TOS, they do say they can reject content for any reason they deem inappropriate. It's very obvious to me what is happening here.


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

They are a private business and can choose to list whatever they want. If that means they choose not to list LGBT books, then that's fine. They aren't banning authors for writing them since those with hetero and homosexual books are able to keep the hetero stuff up. 

For me, if I take my books wide, I will put my LGBT series in other places and put my other work on their site with a note at the back saying, "check out this great series on *list of sites*" If they want me to encourage people to buy elsewhere... that's their choice. 

Having social media and such sites kick up a fuss about it is not going to help anyone. Make people aware that they can find their gay fiction elsewhere by all means, but no need to start lighting torches and gathering pitchforks.


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## michisjourdi (Jan 21, 2016)

I just removed my children's book from their store. I won't publish with them until this is resolved.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

This is grotesque. Writing to D2D now. In fact, I might actually bestir myself to blog about it.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

*****************


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

I had never heard of them before Elizabeth brought it up, but I certainly will avoid them!


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

RandomThings said:


> Having social media and such sites kick up a fuss about it is not going to help anyone. Make people aware that they can find their gay fiction elsewhere by all means, but no need to start lighting torches and gathering pitchforks.


I'm not usually a torches-and-pitchforks kind of guy, but the only way discriminatory business practices ever change is by raising public awareness about them--particularly when there are probably pressure groups on the other side pushing hard the other way.

The landmark civil rights cases I'm aware of concerned customers, then later employees. Vendors are obviously in a different legal situation, but that's partly because what rights vendors may or may not have hasn't been litigated, at least not to my knowledge.

Notice that Playster is excluding content based on LGBT material but not saying that's what it's doing. That could mean Playster is trying to pull a fast one and doesn't want to get sued for discrimination. If that weren't the case, why not say what they are really doing? Dropping LGBT content is eventually going to lose that audience, anyway, so it isn't concern about customer backlash.

I would imagine we all agree that a book store could say no to a particular genre if it wanted to. Erotica would be a good example. Bookstores sometimes also exist to cater to a particular religious or political ideology or even to specific interest. There's nothing wrong with that, either. Eliminating all books with LGBT characters and relationships, regardless of genre, from a general book store, is an entirely different situation.

I wish I were wide, so I could pull my books my Playster. I'd also suggest D2D drop Playster from its vendor list, though I can see why D2D might not.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

PhoenixS said:


> Exactly. Just so you have a preponderance of evidence that it's an intentional act against LGBT books and not that there is some other commonality that may be involved. Doing due diligence and not just conclusion-jumping. By which I don't mean that the conclusion is wrong! Just that the media will want to be sure there's something there. You probably have enough here even to broach them, and then let their investigative reporters take it from here, if they're interested in the story. If not, THEN you'll want to regroup and take on the challenge of doing that deep-dive investigation yourself.


Sounds like a plan.



Bill Hiatt said:


> I'm not usually a torches-and-pitchforks kind of guy, but the only way discriminatory business practices ever change is by raising public awareness about them--particularly when there are probably pressure groups on the other side pushing hard the other way.
> 
> The landmark civil rights cases I'm aware of concerned customers, then later employees. Vendors are obviously in a different legal situation, but that's partly because what rights vendors may or may not have hasn't been litigated, at least not to my knowledge.
> 
> ...


You said it better than I could've.

Sure, they have a right to reject whatever content they want to. The problem here is, they're only rejecting LGBT+ fiction -- some of which they'd already accepted. Hetero fiction has remained on their marketplace.

That's not okay, and I'm not going to sit quietly. People need to know that this is happening. They can draw their own conclusions and make their own decisions as to whether they want to continue to do business with a place like Playster. I'm not looking to tar and feather Playster, but I am going to speak up for myself and others.


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

Nope. As has been pointed out before, it is discriminatory if they say they are pulling LGBT because they believe that their particular deity frowns upon it. It is not discriminatory for a business to decide that they want to target groups of people who have a deity that gets it's panties in a bunch over LGBT fiction. As long as they just say, "we don't want to sell it anymore," then it is entirely their choice as a business to do so. 

By all means, make people aware. Send out a message saying that if you want to buy or sell LGBT works, you can't do it here. That won't happen though because as we already see here, people are talking about going to the press and raising a stink on social media. Before you know it, this whole thing will be a constant attack on a business merely because they choose not to sell a certain type of fiction. 

The minute, heck the second, they come out and say they won't sell it on their site because it's those dirty gay cooties, then I will light all the torches you want and sharpen every pitchfork I can find. Until that happens though, as a private company, they can choose to sell or not sell whatever they like and we have no reason to get all wound up about it. 

They are the ones missing out on making money as far as I can see, but they might be able to look at their numbers and say that the number of emails they get saying someone won't buy from them because of LGBT books is more than the number of people buying LGBT books. We don't know the reason for the decision and getting everyone riled up about this as it stands is just plain wrong.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Mark Gardner said:


> If you're sufficiently bestirred, let us know so we can reblog and tweet it.


Here you go, Mark: https://the-active-voice.com/2017/09/02/is-playster-rejecting-lgbt-books/

Thanks!


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## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

RandomThings said:


> Nope. As has been pointed out before, it is discriminatory if they say they are pulling LGBT because they believe that their particular deity frowns upon it. It is not discriminatory for a business to decide that they want to target groups of people who have a deity that gets it's panties in a bunch over LGBT fiction. As long as they just say, "we don't want to sell it anymore," then it is entirely their choice as a business to do so.
> 
> By all means, make people aware. Send out a message saying that if you want to buy or sell LGBT works, you can't do it here. That won't happen though because as we already see here, people are talking about going to the press and raising a stink on social media. Before you know it, this whole thing will be a constant attack on a business merely because they choose not to sell a certain type of fiction.
> 
> ...


IMO, doing what they seem to be doing is a lot worse than just out-and-out saying they don't accept those books. Doing it the way they are, it's like having their cake and eating it too. They deserve to be called out for it so people know.


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

They have a half dozen books tagged as LGBT and several music sets specifically labelled as part of Pride. Not a huge selection, but clearly they still have something up so you can't really say they are targeting everything related to the LGBT crowd. 

I have an online store through my facebook where I list all my works (LGBT and otherwise) and a number of other authors too. Now, if I looked at the numbers and saw that the main demographic to my store was the type to buy only the non-lgbt stuff, I would de-list it all and fill the space with more non-lgbt books. I would have a link somewhere on my author page telling you where you can buy the lgbt stuff, but it would be a business decision that benefited me. This company can do the same thing. 

The only thing they need to take a moment to do is to ensure their TOS state explicitly what content they are willing to sell and ensure their site complies with that. You can't force people to sell your work. They are providing a service and if they choose to remove every single book with a red head on the cover without debating it with the authors, they can do that. So long as they do not come out and say, "We're dumping all books with redheads because we find them icky," they are not doing anything wrong. 

What exactly do people want to come from this? A business to shut down or to be forced to list the books you say they should list?


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

RandomThings said:


> The minute, heck the second, they come out and say they won't sell it on their site because it's those dirty gay cooties, then I will light all the torches you want and sharpen every pitchfork I can find. Until that happens though, as a private company, they can choose to sell or not sell whatever they like and we have no reason to get all wound up about it.


Sometimes companies only admit they won't sell something because of "those dirty gay cooties" when they get called on it and have to make a choice to 1) be publicly honest about their practices, so that consumers can make informed choices, or 2) changing their practices. Until they're called on it, they try to have it both ways -- say nothing that sounds discriminatory so as not to push away Group A while hoping word quietly gets out within Group B that this is a site where their kids can't get a hold of LGBT+ content. I don't think we know yet whether Playster is actually trying to play both sides of the fence like that, but the only way to find out is to shed some light on the situation and see what the company says.

If you made me guess right now, I'd say this will turn out to be a dumb decision made by someone pretty far down Playster's food chain. I don't see any sign in the company's web presence that it's trying to focus on a very conservative market segment. Rather, all their imagery is young, young, young, and today's young folks support LGBT rights in very substantial majorities here in the U.S. If they've made a high-level choice to exclude LGBT+ books, well, it seems weird and self-sabotaging.

ETA:



RandomThings said:


> What exactly do people want to come from this?


Speaking just for myself, a clear public position, so that authors and readers can make informed choices.


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

This is true Becca, which is why I am saying people need to stop with the immediate urge to 'raise awareness' which is the usual code these days for get the crowd riled up and sic em on the company. 

The point to remember is that whatever their reasoning, they are entitled to choose what to sell through their site. It may be because someone disagrees with something or other and so long as they do not state that is the reason, they are breaking no laws.


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## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

RandomThings said:


> The point to remember is that whatever their reasoning, they are entitled to choose what to sell through their site. It may be because someone disagrees with something or other and so long as they do not state that is the reason, they are breaking no laws.


Just because it technically doesn't break the law doesn't make it right.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

RandomThings said:


> What exactly do people want to come from this? A business to shut down or to be forced to list the books you say they should list?


That would be an excellent start. I'd also take every LGBT/ally knowing about this and able to avoid Playster as an alternative.


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## PatriciaThomson (Mar 23, 2016)

There are currently gay and lesbian romance novels on Playster--not a lot, true, but some of them do appear to be fairly graphic.  Doesn't it stand to reason if it rejected the OP's novel strictly because it was lesbian romance there wouldn't be ANY lesbian romance to be found on the site?  

I'm reminded of a young friend of mine who was positive that her local utility company was discriminating against women because her and her SO's names were both on the bill, but despite the fact that she established the account any communication from the utility was always addressed to him.  She went on a huge Twitter rant, the torches and pitchforks came out, etc.  I pointed out that her SO's name started with a C, hers with an R.  Sure enough, the utility verified that multiple names on an account would always be listed in alphabetical order and whoever came first would get the emails. 

Moral of the story--Occam's razor is a very real thing.


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

It doesn't make it wrong either. You can't force people to sell your work. You can't force them to sell something on their site that they aren't interested in selling. 

What you can do is take your business elsewhere without turning it into a whole circus of placards and finger pointing. They don't list LGBT work, so don't put any of your work on their site. Don't buy anything from them. Do you really think that making a fuss on twitter or blog sites will make them change their ways and put all the LGBT books front and centre?


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

PatriciaThomson said:


> There are currently gay and lesbian romance novels on Playster--not a lot, true, but some of them do appear to be fairly graphic. Doesn't it stand to reason if it rejected the OP's novel strictly because it was lesbian romance there wouldn't be ANY lesbian romance to be found on the site?
> 
> I'm reminded of a young friend of mine who was positive that her local utility company was discriminating against women because her and her SO's names were both on the bill, but despite the fact that she established the account any communication from the utility was always addressed to him. She went on a huge Twitter rant, the torches and pitchforks came out, etc. I pointed out that her SO's name started with a C, hers with an R. Sure enough, the utility verified that multiple names on an account would always be listed in alphabetical order and whoever came first would get the emails.
> 
> Moral of the story--Occam's razor is a very real thing.


Yep. In my day job I had to interact with people all the time. I once had a number of interactions with a very strong minded woman who seemed to think we were discriminating against her and her partner because they were gay. We weren't. We are a local government organisation with ample rules and policies to ensure no one is discriminated against but that didn't stop her going to the local news whenever she couldn't get what she wanted.

People are way too willing to go to extremes over the smallest perceived slight these days and need to take a breath to assess the situation first.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

RandomThings said:


> What you can do is take your business elsewhere without turning it into a whole circus of placards and finger pointing. They don't list LGBT work, so don't put any of your work on their site. Don't buy anything from them. Do you really think that making a fuss on twitter or blog sites will make them change their ways and put all the LGBT books front and centre?


Making a fuss is the way you get answers, RandomThings. I want to know for sure if this is a company I should avoid before I decide to avoid it. Would it be fair to make a permanent decision without all the facts?


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

Yes and nothing wrong with asking for a statement from the company that clearly says, yes they will list LGBT works or no they won't. That is the only answer you need about whether to shop there. The only question is, do they sell the books I am looking for.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

paranormal_kitty said:


> Just because it technically doesn't break the law doesn't make it right.


That entirely depends on the legislation of your country. In much of Europe this could break competition laws. A company which has an absolute or near absolute monopoly in their field can be held to the same legal and ethical regulations as state institutions.


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## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

RandomThings said:


> Yes and nothing wrong with asking for a statement from the company that clearly says, yes they will list LGBT works or no they won't. That is the only answer you need about whether to shop there. The only question is, do they sell the books I am looking for.


Even if I wasn't looking for LGBT books, I wouldn't give money to a company that knowingly did this.


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## RandomThings (Oct 21, 2016)

paranormal_kitty said:


> Even if I wasn't looking for LGBT books, I wouldn't give money to a company that knowingly did this.


No one is forcing you to. That is the beauty of the internet. You can spend your money elsewhere. But, just because you don't like it, doesn't give you the right to make sure no one else buys there either. Which is something that tends to happen in these situations.


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## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

RandomThings said:


> No one is forcing you to. That is the beauty of the internet. You can spend your money elsewhere. But, just because you don't like it, doesn't give you the right to make sure no one else buys there either. Which is something that tends to happen in these situations.


No one is making sure they don't; just getting the info out there. People can't decide for themselves if they don't know. If enough people find out about it and stop shopping there that it causes them to go out of business...that's life and the consequences of their actions.


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## PatriciaThomson (Mar 23, 2016)

People aren't shopping at Playster now.  It doesn't offer a lot of new releases, the reading app is buggy and apparently it has an issue of continuing to charge credit cards after an account has been cancelled.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Apparently this is their contact email address for questions: [email protected]


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## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

RandomThings said:


> No one is forcing you to. That is the beauty of the internet. You can spend your money elsewhere. But, just because you don't like it, doesn't give you the right to make sure no one else buys there either. Which is something that tends to happen in these situations.


Paranormal_Kitty can't make sure no one else shops there. People do have free will, after all. But this is a free society, and she certainly has the right to make sure other people have access to this information.


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## Spinneyhead (Nov 4, 2010)

paranormal_kitty said:


> Even if I wasn't looking for LGBT books, I wouldn't give money to a company that knowingly did this.


^This.

I recently signed up to D2D, to open up new markets. It turns out Playster and 24Symbols are the only ones not available through Smashwords. None of my erotica- straight and bi- was accepted. I was okay with this. if they don't want to publish erotica, fine. But, if they're blocking non-erotic books just because of LGBT content, then I'm pulling everything, and announcing it.

I'm not going to do any housekeeping until Monday, I reckon, so I'll check back in on this before then, and act accordingly.


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## Mercedes Vox (Jul 22, 2014)

After seeing this thread, I made a spreadsheet for my entire catalogue of GLBTQ+ books, which is 25 titles as of this writing. Only four of those books were blocked by Playster (and Scribd as well). Those are the only four books that I BISAC categorized/keyworded as *Erotica* (rather than Erotic Romance, Romance, Suspense/Thriller, or Historical). Those four titles were rightly blocked, according to the respective companies' TOS. Fair enough.

Two items of note:

1) Although those 4 books are BISAC categorized as Erotica (because that is what they are), my properly BISAC categorized/keyworded Erotic Romances are all much, much steamier than the Erotica titles (especially the one series where one of the heroes is massively into some seriously filthy dirty talkin'). One of the blocked Erotica titles contains very light BDSM, but the BDSM elements in two of the non-blocked Erotic Romance titles are considerably harder/rougher/explicitly described. Hell, the GLBTQ+ title in my sig is Erotic Romance with a vigilante serial killer as one of the heroes, which contains explicit sex and also contains explicit violence because serial killer, and neither Playster nor Scribed blocked it. HOWEVER, this could be a date-related change of policy for Playster, as described in the next item.

2) After dropping out of KU in late July, I uploaded or re-activated my entire catalogue to D2D (excluding Tolino because a) I've sold only a handful of books through that portal and b) OMG what a nightmare that is when switching a title back to KU) on August 1 - 3. I then decided to go with Pronoun instead, so I de-listed from D2D on August 2, and checked daily to see where listings still remained. On August 8, I started uploading the entire catalogue to Pronoun, which I completed on August 12.

If this seems like a global issue for Playster now, without exception, this could:

a) _possibly_ indicate that only titles categorized as Erotica are being blocked, particularly if they are also blocking hetero titles categorized as Erotica, or

b) _possibly_ indicate that somewhere between August 9 and today is when Playster made it a policy not sell GLBTQ+ romance, erotic romance, or erotica.

If Playster has also blocked non-fiction GLBTQ+ titles, that would be a clincher that they find _all_ GLBTQ+ content objectionable.

I agree that it's any private company's prerogative to block content at their discretion, just as it would be my prerogative not to do business with an aggregator that chooses to partner with them.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Neither my title nor the ones by authors I've spoken to were marked as erotica.

I'm raising awareness because, if you actually read my original post, many of us attempted to contact both D2D and Playster regarding this matter. We've been ignored. That speaks volumes.

I would like for Playster to be more transparent regarding their policy. As I've said, my book had been accepted twice, then suddenly it was rejected. I'm wide on all channels, so one retailer certainly isn't going to hurt me. My objective isn't to shut Playster down or force them to accept LGBT+ books, but it is to get answers. Being that neither company has responded, my next step was to get louder. Simply pretending this is okay and ignoring it doesn't sit well with me.

When it seemed to be just me affected, my plan was to contact both companies and leave it at that. However, it isn't just me, and it isn't just LGBT romance; many non-romance, non-erotica titles have been suddenly rejected. I'm a big believer in coming together to make our voices heard. Often that is the only way to get anywhere, because it's easy to ignore one person but far more difficult to ignore a chorus.

If this is the mistake of a single employee, then I'm sure that Playster will remedy it and perhaps clarify their content guidelines. If it isn't, though, and Playster says they're no longer accepting any LGBT fiction, then readers and authors can make their own decisions.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

RandomThings said:


> No one is forcing you to. That is the beauty of the internet. You can spend your money elsewhere. But, just because you don't like it, doesn't give you the right to make sure no one else buys there either. Which is something that tends to happen in these situations.


RandomThings, I understand your point. I too sometimes worry when political correctness runs amuck.

When brick and mortar bookstores were still a thing, there were some in my area that had a very clear political ideology and only carried works that expressed that viewpoint. I didn't have any kind of problem, even though some of them represented a view quite different from my own. However, they all had one thing in common: they were honest about the perspective they were promoting. As a potential book buyer, if books are being shelved according to particular ideological criteria, I want to be aware of that. I want to be able to exercise my right to not do business with them if I think the philosophy being promoted amounts to bigotry.

One of my problems with Playster is that they aren't doing that. They are pulling LGBT works using a rule about sexual content even if the work has no sexual content, and they are allowing equally steamy or more steamy heterosexual content to remain. (I know there are apparently some books that haven't been pulled yet, but in the absence of any further explanation for the ones that have been, I'm inclined to assume Playster is moving through its catalog gradually, the way Amazon does.) Yes, legally they may well be able to do that, but I as a consumer have a right to know they're doing it. Otherwise, the "you can spend your money elsewhere" idea becomes very hollow. If I weren't an author haunting this board, I would have no way of knowing that I should be spending my money elsewhere.

We also need to keep in mind that businesses can't do whatever they wish just because they're private. That was almost exactly the argument initially made by restaurants when they were told they couldn't deny service based on race. Yes, that's not the same situation, but in both cases the rationale on the business end is somewhat the same. Cases involving alleged discrimination against vendors haven't been brought yet, at least not to the best of my knowledge. Maybe there isn't a case there; maybe there isn't. But the general idea that a business can do as it pleases was thrown out by the courts long ago.

I have a lot of friends who belong to religions that believe LGBT behavior is sinful. Among us, we have an unspoken agreement not to argue with each other about it. Interestingly, though, none of them worry about whether literature with LGBT themes is being sold in book stores they use. They just don't buy it themselves, any more than I buy titles that promote their philosophy.

My ideal would be a open book store environment. I don't want to see censorship of any viewpoint, whether expressed fictionally or nonfictionally. I'm saying this because, unless Playster recently changed ownership, I would suspect they're getting pressure from somewhere to drop LGBT content. I don't intend to push for distributors to drop content with which I disagree--but I expect those with different views to extend me the same courtesy.

Maybe Playster is making this move because, as you suggested, LGBT material isn't selling as well for them. However, what I'm seeing elsewhere makes me doubt that. For instance, not so long ago, LGBT material wasn't visible on TV at all. Then there was a brief period in which it appeared in shows specifically about LGBT issues (Like Will and Grace, which ran for eight seasons.) Now it pops up all over the place. It's very common to see an LGBT romance as a subplot in a series that isn't otherwise about that. Occasionally, the subplot is used to talk about prejudice, but often it doesn't make that specific point. It's just there, and the other characters don't make a big deal about it. None of these trends suggest to me that the audience unwilling to tolerate such material is bigger than the audience that doesn't.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

PatriciaThomson said:


> There are currently gay and lesbian romance novels on Playster--not a lot, true, but some of them do appear to be fairly graphic. Doesn't it stand to reason if it rejected the OP's novel strictly because it was lesbian romance there wouldn't be ANY lesbian romance to be found on the site?
> 
> I'm reminded of a young friend of mine who was positive that her local utility company was discriminating against women because her and her SO's names were both on the bill, but despite the fact that she established the account any communication from the utility was always addressed to him. She went on a huge Twitter rant, the torches and pitchforks came out, etc. I pointed out that her SO's name started with a C, hers with an R. Sure enough, the utility verified that multiple names on an account would always be listed in alphabetical order and whoever came first would get the emails.
> 
> Moral of the story--Occam's razor is a very real thing.


Actually this is because not just ONE person is deciding which gets in and what does not. I was told that Playster does not accept erotica or erotic romance. Mine are neither. Whats left? It's gay. And based on what I"m seeing here I'm not alone.

What happens is there are SOME people over at Playster who are the ones accepting or rejecting books that are finding the gay ones more objectionable even if another person wouldn't find them so and would allow a lot more risque stuff in.

I remember when Google found an ad we ran (for people 18 plus mind) as not "family friend" because it was termed "gay romance". Got rid of the word "gay" and they approved the ad. People told me well Google is really LGBT friendly and I'm like maybe they are but not everyone at that company is and clearly not everyone reviewing their ads were. Whether its a lack of training, discrimination, or whatever, what we have here is a problem.

Playster cannot tell me they aren't selling my book because its erotica or erotic romance (doesn't even have full sex in it, kissing and stuff) when really its about them thinking gay = porn automatically without actually reviewing the content. A lot of people still think that and its a constant struggle. So yeah, if Playster wants to ban LGBT content fine. But don't pee on my leg and tell me its raining.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

D2D has informed me from the start that Playster absolutely refuses my HETERO content. So this idea they're bashing gays only is silly.

I'm surprised they allowed any gay at all if they were refusing my hetero romances that were erotica.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Laran Mithras said:


> D2D has informed me from the start that Playster absolutely refuses my HETERO content. So this idea they're bashing gays only is silly.
> 
> I'm surprised they allowed any gay at all if they were refusing my hetero romances that were erotica.


I'm sorry but not all gay romance is erotica. They don't want to have erotica on their site: fine. But mine isn't erotica and I comply with their TOS so the only reason is that they, like you clearly do, think gay = porn. It doesn't.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

X. Aratare said:


> I'm sorry but not all gay romance is erotica. They don't want to have erotica on their site: fine. But mine isn't erotica and I comply with their TOS so the only reason is that they, like you clearly do, think gay = porn. It doesn't.


I'm sorry, but not all hetero romance is erotica, either.

I've given up trying to convince D2D.

Everything I write, *including self-help books*, is rejected as erotica. I don't bother submitting anything to Playster any more unless it's under a different name.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

I think the issue that might be missed isn't so much Playster as D2D. Unless someone comes in and has gone Playster-direct saying Playster is doing this.

D2D is great. Love them. Direct deposits, uploading to Apple (I don't own a Mac), 10% cut, prompt payments...

What's not to love?

But D2D is a middle man and Playster is new. Imagine the contract. Playster saying "We don't want erotica." D2D submits non-erotica. Playster complains that some of the submissions were erotica. What is D2D to do?

Exactly what any middleman would do who wants that contract: start swinging the hammer more widely. Some innocents are going to get hit.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Laran Mithras said:


> I think the issue that might be missed isn't so much Playster as D2D. Unless someone comes in and has gone Playster-direct saying Playster is doing this.
> 
> D2D is great. Love them. Direct deposits, uploading to Apple (I don't own a Mac), 10% cut, prompt payments...
> 
> ...


This isn't D2D's decision (I asked, phoned them). This is Playster itself.

I'm guessing that it's like on Amazon when you knew not to upload anything erotic on the weekends because good old Carlos F. and his crew would hit it with a sledgehammer when it would get through during the week, because Carlos F has ideas about certain types of stories and whether they should be on Amazon or not.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Laran Mithras said:


> I'm sorry, but not all hetero romance is erotica, either.
> 
> I've given up trying to convince D2D.
> 
> Everything I write, *including self-help books*, is rejected as erotica. I don't bother submitting anything to Playster any more unless it's under a different name.


Of course hetero isn't! I thought you said earlier that all your EROTICA had been banned, which though I think its stupid, lame and wrong, it is against their TOS. But Gay Romance isn't erotica, it can be, there's Gay Erotica, but the problem comes when a hammer happy person at Playster believes gay = porn whether it has chaste kisses or not.

So if I misunderstood you, I'm sorry. They should publish your non-erotica, non-erotic romance.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

X. Aratare said:


> Of course hetero isn't! I thought you said earlier that all your EROTICA had been banned, which though I think its stupid, lame and wrong, it is against their TOS. But Gay Romance isn't erotica, it can be, there's Gay Erotica, but the problem comes when a hammer happy person at Playster believes gay = porn whether it has chaste kisses or not.
> 
> So if I misunderstood you, I'm sorry. They should publish your non-erotica, non-erotic romance.


My erotica. I understand that. Whether hetero or bi (I haven't written gay/lesbian only)
My romances.
My horror.
My sci-fi.
My fantasy.
And my self-help books.

Bah. I eventually got the non-erotica published, but they were on me like a dog on a steak bone.

But I don't mean to sound negative about D2D. They're really pretty good. I just think they're swinging that hammer wide. I think Playster encouraged them to be severe.

Of course, maybe I'm totally wrong. Maybe Playster said, "We don't want any LGBT material, no matter how clean." I just know that even my clean hetero stuff was rejected - but likely because I also write primarily erotica.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Mercedes Vox said:


> I agree that it's any private company's prerogative to block content at their discretion, just as it would be my prerogative not to do business with an aggregator that chooses to partner with them.


It's absolutely everyone's right to decide how to conduct their own business. The thing that often concerns me is when people (not you, just piggybacking off your comment here) think emotionally instead of objectively about how closely associated businesses may be.

For example, most people won't do business with a business that holds values they find objectionable.

But, what about one tier away? Do they do business with the business that does business with the objectionable business?

What about two tiers away? Do we boycott Amazon because they do business with D2D who does business with Playster (assuming the worst turns out to be true about their policy)? Or do we boycott Adobe because their software is used by the objectionable business?

Again, just raising that question so that everyone can mull it over for themselves and decide where to draw that principle/practicality line.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Mark Gardner said:


> As a proper Libertarian, I'm constantly at odds with both liberal and conservative philosophy. (I even had a listener call into the show, and refer to me on the air as the host's "liberal sidekick.")


I'm looking forward to our lunch this Tuesday. I can feel a bromance coming on.


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## [email protected] (Mar 20, 2014)

Hi everyone,

Jumping in here to let you know we are working on this. I believe this is just a misunderstanding over what is meant by some of the BISAC categories we sent Playster. We have seen such issues before since the BISAC standard is not international and the industry is working on new standards like THEMA to address such issues in the future.  We became aware of the issue on Thursday and we hope to have some news soon.  Please keep in mind that this is a holiday weekend in both the US and Canada.  Problems like these can take a few days to work out and correct.

Thanks,

Dan Wood
Director Author Relations
Draft2Digital


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Dan Wood said:


> Hi everyone,
> 
> Jumping in here to let you know we are working on this. I believe this is just a misunderstanding over what is meant by some of the BISAC categories we sent Playster. We have seen such issues before since the BISAC standard is not international and the industry is working on new standards like THEMA to address such issues in the future. We became aware of the issue on Thursday and we hope to have some news soon. Please keep in mind that this is a holiday weekend in both the US and Canada. Problems like these can take a few days to work out and correct.
> 
> ...


Thank you, Dan!


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## KingSweden (Dec 16, 2013)

Well that's shitty of them. I'd definitely spread the word like you're doing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

elizabethbarone said:


> Neither my title nor the ones by authors I've spoken to were marked as erotica.
> 
> I'm raising awareness because, if you actually read my original post, many of us attempted to contact both D2D and Playster regarding this matter. We've been ignored. That speaks volumes.
> 
> ...


Neither were mind labeled erotica or erotica romance so I'm not really sure unless D2D is actually sending different categories onto them I cannot see.

Here's the thing (and I said this to D2D on Thursday when I called about this) if Playster doesn't want LGBT books FINE. But it needs to say that. Don't hide behind its "erotica" or "erotic romance". It's their site, but BE HONEST.

And finally, if Playster does want LGBT books on its site, it needs to be made aware that its process to review books is broken. Mine are not erotica. They are not erotic romance. So they should want to sell them.

I give kudos to D2D and Elizabeth for raising the flag here. If its a mistake fine, if its by design also fine. But I need to know whether I'm wasting my time submitting to them.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Content removed. I don't consent to the new TOS of 2018.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

X. Aratare said:


> Neither were mind labeled erotica or erotica romance so I'm not really sure unless D2D is actually sending different categories onto them I cannot see.
> 
> Here's the thing (and I said this to D2D on Thursday when I called about this) if Playster doesn't want LGBT books FINE. But it needs to say that. Don't hide behind its "erotica" or "erotic romance". It's their site, but BE HONEST.
> 
> ...


My feelings exactly.



CoraBuhlert said:


> None of my LGBT titles were erotica or erotic romance either. The romances are sweet and one isn't even romance at all, but post-apocalyptic. And none of them contains anything more graphic than a kiss. And yet, all of them are gone from Playster. So yes, there's definitely a pattern there.


Yup -- whether by mistake or otherwise.

And just to make it clear, in response to another post upthread, in no way am I seeking any legal action. Just trying to make things more fair and clear for authors of LGBT fiction.

Another element of this that I thought was interesting: I couldn't find any LGBT books on Playster, but another author who looked too said they have a Sensual section.

Their guidelines definitely need to be clarified!


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Mark Gardner said:


> Sweet! Are you coming up to sleepy biscuit to see me? There's a great hot dog cart down the street from the station. The dogs are so good, I even wrote the proprieter into my second superhero novel.


Oops. My face is red. Wrong fellow Arizona author with a common Anglo-Saxon name on Tuesday.

We could get together some other day, though. Where're you at? I'm north of Tucson...

And now I'm curious about "sleepy biscuit."


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

No one is calling for tar and pitchforks, just some communication and clarity. To insinuate -- or outright state -- otherwise is being a bit of a pot stirrer. When something happens, then you find out it's happening to others, and there's not a drop of discussion from the company in question, one is left to make one's own conclusions.

Like Amazon, it's likely if there is an issue with a certain type of book, removal of said type isn't going to be enmasse, but take some amount of filtering down. So to say, well, X books are there, when there have been verified statements that some are no longer, is nonsense.

And how is anyone to know to take their business elsewhere when we aren't supposed to let people know what is going on? Geesh.

D2D is on it. Now we know they're aware of the situation, and that's good. Let's get this stuff explained, and then go on from there. All any of us are asking for is a clear, honest statement about what will and will not be accepted so we can make relevant business decisions.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

she-la-ti-da said:


> No one is calling for tar and pitchforks, just some communication and clarity. To insinuate -- or outright state -- otherwise is being a bit of a pot stirrer. When something happens, then you find out it's happening to others, and there's not a drop of discussion from the company in question, one is left to make one's own conclusions.
> 
> Like Amazon, it's likely if there is an issue with a certain type of book, removal of said type isn't going to be enmasse, but take some amount of filtering down. So to say, well, X books are there, when there have been verified statements that some are no longer, is nonsense.
> 
> ...


THIS.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

We'll see what D2D does, but it is nice Dan at least made us aware that they know there is a problem. (Recently, Amazon's been a lot slower about that.)


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Bill Hiatt said:


> We'll see what D2D does, but it is nice Dan at least made us aware that they know there is a problem. (Recently, Amazon's been a lot slower about that.)


I was so pleased to see Dan's post in here. I'm really glad they're looking into things.


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## RJCasta (Apr 20, 2017)

X. Aratare said:


> Of course hetero isn't! I thought you said earlier that all your EROTICA had been banned, which though I think its stupid, lame and wrong, it is against their TOS. But Gay Romance isn't erotica, it can be, there's Gay Erotica, but the problem comes when a hammer happy person at Playster believes gay = porn whether it has chaste kisses or not.
> 
> So if I misunderstood you, I'm sorry. They should publish your non-erotica, non-erotic romance.


On a completely unrelated note, I love your covers.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

RandomThings said:


> No one is forcing you to. That is the beauty of the internet. You can spend your money elsewhere. But, just because you don't like it, doesn't give you the right to make sure no one else buys there either. Which is something that tends to happen in these situations.


Who is 'making sure no one else buys there'? It is not 'making sure' to let others to know this company's anti-LGBT policy. Then it is the buyer's decision. No one is twisting their arm not to buy or to buy if they so choose.



C. Gold said:


> They have the right to refuse LGBT content, and authors have the right to refuse ever doing business with them in the future and posting to social media about their discriminatory practices. Seems fair to me. Let the market sort them out!


Exactly.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Dan Wood said:


> Hi everyone,
> 
> Jumping in here to let you know we are working on this. I believe this is just a misunderstanding over what is meant by some of the BISAC categories we sent Playster. We have seen such issues before since the BISAC standard is not international and the industry is working on new standards like THEMA to address such issues in the future. We became aware of the issue on Thursday and we hope to have some news soon. Please keep in mind that this is a holiday weekend in both the US and Canada. Problems like these can take a few days to work out and correct.
> 
> ...


I'm sorry but I call [bullcrap] on that excuse. Having a gay character in a non-erotic novel (some of which that were refused were SFF for heaven's sake and not even romance) doesn't change its BISAC. However, I hope they do change this idiotic policy. If and when they do, I'll tweet saying they have. Currently I have tweeted letting my followers know this policy. I'll have to see a real change first.

ETA: To clarify, I mean Playster needs to change their idiotic policy of discriminating against LGBT fiction. The nonsensical excuse and the policy are on them, not D2D.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

RJCasta said:


> On a completely unrelated note, I love your covers.


Thank you! The painted ones were by Mathia Arkoniel. The others were by our very own Sylvia Frost!

As to what JR Tomlin said about Bisac categories, I agree that it's NONSENSE. I don't think that D2D is lying or anything like that. But I have ABSOLUTELY no categories that would place my work in erotica. NONE. So I find it hard to believe Playster's excuses to D2D. But I get that D2D is in a bad spot. They're in the middle. They're trying to work for us, at least to get an explanation. But JR is right that this doesn't make any sense what Playster is telling D2D.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

X. Aratare said:


> But I get that D2D is in a bad spot. They're in the middle.


That's fully what I think. Targeting D2D would probably be missing the mark.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

X. Aratare said:


> Thank you! The painted ones were by Mathia Arkoniel. The others were by our very own Sylvia Frost!
> 
> As to what JR Tomlin said about Bisac categories, I agree that it's NONSENSE. I don't think that D2D is lying or anything like that. But I have ABSOLUTELY no categories that would place my work in erotica. NONE. So I find it hard to believe Playster's excuses to D2D. But I get that D2D is in a bad spot. They're in the middle. They're trying to work for us, at least to get an explanation. But JR is right that this doesn't make any sense what Playster is telling D2D.


My guess is that D2D is trying to sort things out and guessing that BISAC may be the issue. I know it isn't on my end, nor would it be for the SFF and sweet romances I've mentioned. It could be that a Playster employee took it upon themselves to equate LGBT fiction with certain BISAC categories. Either way, I'm glad D2D is looking into things, and I agree that they're in a rough position. I've long had a good experience with D2D.



Laran Mithras said:


> That's fully what I think. Targeting D2D would probably be missing the mark.


I think so, too. Tomorrow is Labor Day in the States, so we probably won't hear anything else 'til Tuesday. I'll let everyone know when I do hear something.

In the meantime I've left my D2D account as is, just so that they can see Playster accepted my m/f romances.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Laran Mithras said:


> That's fully what I think. Targeting D2D would probably be missing the mark.


I wasn't blaming D2D, to clarify what I was saying. The pathetic excuse and the policy are all on Playster.

I am assuming that D2D does not put all fiction with LGBT characters in erotica. If they do, they need to stop, but that seems extremely unlikely.


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## K&#039;Sennia Visitor (Jan 14, 2014)

I have 4 books published to Playster. Two are Christian romance and 2 are non-fiction. I had a couple of actual eroticas that were rejected. I've only done one lesbian story, so far. It is erotica though, and I haven't submitted it, I don't think. It isn't on my list of stores, and usually with D2D if you submit and are rejected, the rejected store still shows up as a symbol on your books page. 

I'm used to being turned down for erotica, so I didn't even think twice about the email. 

I'm also used to living in a society where anything Quiltbag is rejected, so a store doing it sadly feels normal to me. But I agree that if they're going to be that way they should shout about it and let everyone know about it.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Content removed. I don't consent to the new TOS of 2018.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> And gay or lesbian fiction does not equal erotica.


This may be the issue, if it's some employees at Playster. Perhaps they believe that if it's LGBT, it's about sex?

I don't blame D2D, they distribute for us to other markets, and they have to go along with those markets' rules about what is accepted. I don't think D2D does anything like putting other categories on our books, as I remember, I choose what to put uploads in. But I do know that some sites have some sort of review system, looking for sex (possibly targeting certain words and phrases that likely trigger "EROTICA!!!") and other things they won't accept.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

D2D have a track record here in that one of its other Smashwords-doesn't-have-it retailers is 24Symbols, who also provoked a kboards thread when LGBT books were taken down. The kboards search engine failed to bring up that thread (in which Dan of D2D also commented IIRC) and a general internet search only brought me a link to an author complaining about it:

http://www.brianolsenbooks.com/lgbt-discrimination-at-24symbols/


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

I just realized my post last night made no sense. Ah, brain fog. Sorry, guys!

I meant some Playster employee(s) might be equating regular LGBT BISAC categories with erotica.

There. That's more like it. &#128514;



Mercia McMahon said:


> D2D have a track record here in that one of its other Smashwords-doesn't-have-it retailers is 24Symbols, who also provoked a kboards thread when LGBT books were taken down. The kboards search engine failed to bring up that thread (in which Dan of D2D also commented IIRC) and a general internet search only brought me a link to an author complaining about it:
> 
> http://www.brianolsenbooks.com/lgbt-discrimination-at-24symbols/


Somehow I'd totally missed this. I'm glad 24Symbols fixed the issue, though, and were so receptive to changing their automatic processes. It gives me hope that Playster may, too.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Mark Gardner said:


> I think the thread you were looking for is here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,228522.0.html


It's good to see that 24symbols made the appropriate change so quickly. The process in this case has been slowed down by a holiday weekend in the US, but hopefully it will be resolved equally quickly once everyone is back at work.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Take a look at this garbage response I got from D2D:

Hello,
In the case of the book that was rejected by Playster, Cursed Broken, there is sexual content throughout the file. They do not allow erotic romance or erotica. I found several very graphic scenes portraying two men together in sexual activity. Any sexual activity, not just penetrative sex, is not something they will allow.

This book appears to be to graphic to overturn the decision with Playster, I apologize for the inconvenience. 
Please let me know if you have any questions. 
Best Regards,

Crystal
Draft2Digital

*So according to D2D if ANY BOOK has anything more than kissing it's not allowed on Playster.
* Actually I should amend this as Crystal says: NO SEXUAL ACTIVITY so really kissing is out, too ... Is looking across the room at another person considered sexual activity? Not sure. Hmmm, maybe we shouldn't even allow people to LIKE one another in the books. That might be misconstrued as sexual activity! So I guess NO ROMANCE books should be on there? huh

Those of you whose M/F books have more than kissing: were they not allowed? Somehow I think not ...

This is complete and utter [bullcrap].

I responded to D2D as follows:

I am really disappointed with D2D. There is a distinct difference between erotica/erotic romance and romance. The fact that a company who is distributing books does not know this shocks me. Romance CAN AND DOES have sex in it. It is NOT just kissing. In my 100k book, there is LITTLE sex in it in comparison to most m/f romances.

But if you really are telling me that Playster ONLY accepts kissing: What about all the m/f books with full blown sex on its site? See kboards: https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,255017.0.html to see how absurd that statement really is.

I'm sorry but this is simply nonsensical. Either Playster has the absolute worst review system possible which somehow allows all the sexy m/f books in and not the m/m or its prejudiced against gay romance books.

Also, I'm truly SHOCKED that D2D believes it should be the arbiter of what genre a book should be in. That's not your role as a distributor. I am truly tempted to pull my books off your site and spread the word.

***

As an aside, I don't give a damn about Playster. I hadn't even HEARD of them before I got this original email about not taking my books. I called and put up a fuss because I see this for what it REALLY is: gay = porn thinking and I fight that with all I can.

I've been writing gay romance for a long time and I've seen it all. But having D2D evidently SKIM my book to tell me: OMG, YOU HAVE SEX IN YOUR ROMANCE SO WE WON'T HELP YOU! is one of the lowest moments in my career. Is D2D so clueless that it thinks romance books DON'T have sex in them? Or are JUST have kissing? Where they Hell have they been?

I'm really thinking that I'm going to pull my books from them. In my view they are aiding, a discriminatory practice.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

X. Aratare said:


> Take a look at this garbage response I got from D2D:
> 
> Hello,
> In the case of the book that was rejected by Playster, Cursed Broken, there is sexual content throughout the file. They do not allow erotic romance or erotica. I found several very graphic scenes portraying two men together in sexual activity. Any sexual activity, not just penetrative sex, is not something they will allow.
> ...


If they are treating different romances differently based not on the amount or nature of the sex, then that definitely seems discriminatory. Of course, this could be Crystal's mistake rather than the official position of D2D. Dan's earlier email suggested the organization as a whole couldn't look at the issue until after the holiday weekend.

The problem with Crystal may also be a misunderstanding of the boundaries for erotica. I'm not sure everyone on this forum would define the term in the same way. I'd certainly agree with you that a romance could go further than kissing without becoming erotica. For me, the boundary might depend upon how explicit the sex is, but I'm not sure everyone would feel the same way. (I don't write romance or erotica, so I haven't given the boundary issue much thought.)


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Bill Hiatt said:


> If they are treating different romances differently based not on the amount or nature of the sex, then that definitely seems discriminatory. Of course, this could be Crystal's mistake rather than the official position of D2D. Dan's earlier email suggested the organization as a whole couldn't look at the issue until after the holiday weekend.
> 
> The problem with Crystal may also be a misunderstanding of the boundaries for erotica. I'm not sure everyone on this forum would define the term in the same way. I'd certainly agree with you that a romance could go further than kissing without becoming erotica. For me, the boundary might depend upon how explicit the sex is, but I'm not sure everyone would feel the same way. (I don't write romance or erotica, so I haven't given the boundary issue much thought.)


Bill - while I think yours is a reasoned response. Here's the thing: in no one's definition does romance = just kissing. NO ONE'S. That's why there is "sweet romance" which is a specific genre where there is nothing more than kissing.

Maybe my version of romance is steamier than another's. Fair enough. But I know what I just told you about romance in general is true.

And it is the hypocrisy I'm seeing that m/f books with far more than kissing sail through to Playster, but not gay or lesbian books that is really chapping my hide.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Lorri Moulton said:


> Romance is romance! I don't care if the main characters are m/m, w/w or m/w....romance is a story about two people, who care about and love each other. Why is this being banned?
> 
> I'm glad I'm in KU.


Yeah, but Amazon has done crazy stuff too. I had to get one book out of the adult dungeon 12 times. TWELVE. Finally, I forced them to put a note on the damned thing to say it had been reviewed and approved. It's yaoi manga which we STROVE not to have anything, even kisses in, but that genre was routinely getting dungeoned no matter what was actually in the book, title, description or cover.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

X. Aratare said:


> Bill - while I think yours is a reasoned response. Here's the thing: in no one's definition does romance = just kissing. NO ONE'S. That's why there is "sweet romance" which is a specific genre where there is nothing more than kissing.
> 
> Maybe my version of romance is steamier than another's. Fair enough. But I know what I just told you about romance in general is true.
> 
> And it is the hypocrisy I'm seeing that m/f books with far more than kissing sail through to Playster, but not gay or lesbian books that is really chapping my hide.


I do think it's the apparent unequal treatment that's the problem. If you look at Playster's TOS, it gives them plenty of wiggle room to ban *anything* sexual, including kissing. The language is that they don't allow anything that's "obscene, vulgar, pornographic, offensive, profane, contains or depicts nudity, contains or depicts sexual activity, or is otherwise inappropriate as determined by" them.

It seems self-sabotaging to interpret those limits puritanically, but hey, it's their catalog. What they can't do, so far as I'm concerned, is label two men kissing "inappropriate" while letting a man and a woman go all the way up to explicitly described intercourse before slapping on the "inappropriate" label. Well, they _can _do that, but if they do, they should own their discriminatory stance publicly, IMO.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Content removed. I don't consent to the new TOS of 2018.


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## Azalea (Mar 22, 2014)

While I am attempting to withhold judgement until this issue gets more official response from Playster/D2D, I've got to say, what's going on here looks pretty obvious.

Discrimination.

It's not okay. I, for one, *want* to know about shady business practices like that, so that I can make informed decision about who to avoid giving my money to. They have the right to keep LGBT books out of their store. I have the right to blacklist them for offending me.

And I can't imagine what they'll end up saying. Own up to it, and stick with their policies? Or say, "It was a 'mistake?'"

Right.  I've got some oceanfront property...

We'll see.


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## EllieDee (May 28, 2017)

> but found an apocalyptic story featuring two gay men and promptly blurred the cover to shield sensitive eyes from the shocking going ons. The cover shows a mushroom cloud.


Well, despite how angry and offended I feel about Playster's antics, this made me laugh. Thanks for sharing!


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

The only thing I ever put into Playster was political non-fiction, so I'm waiting to see if they do a 24Symbols style mea culpa. If they do not then I will remove my non-fiction as they would not be someone I wish to do business with.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

X. Aratare said:


> Bill - while I think yours is a reasoned response. Here's the thing: in no one's definition does romance = just kissing. NO ONE'S. That's why there is "sweet romance" which is a specific genre where there is nothing more than kissing.
> 
> Maybe my version of romance is steamier than another's. Fair enough. But I know what I just told you about romance in general is true.
> 
> And it is the hypocrisy I'm seeing that m/f books with far more than kissing sail through to Playster, but not gay or lesbian books that is really chapping my hide.


Yes, we all agree that inconsistent enforcement of erotica rules based on whether the content is same sex or not is wrong. What was in my mind at the time I first responded, and what I should have made clearer, was that Crystal wasn't looking at a lot of books and making comparisons. She was just looking at yours. Does yours only include kissing? I may have misunderstood your earlier posts, because I thought yours had somewhat more than that. If not, then yes, Crystal's response is less easy to explain than I thought.


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## Playster (Aug 12, 2015)

We can assure you that Playster is in absolutely no way discriminating against LGBTQ+ content.  We've been receiving books with underage characters, and therefore put a temporary ban on all books labelled 'erotica' that are delivered from self-publishing platforms.  We acknowledge that this is a cautious approach, but we're working diligently towards a long-term resolution.  We're committed to providing authors with an alternative revenue stream but, as a small company, we don't yet have a QA team large enough to go through books at the rate we receive them.

We're taking all of your comments into consideration, and we're investigating the possibility that some books have been mislabeled. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

X. Aratare said:


> Take a look at this garbage response I got from D2D:
> 
> Hello,
> In the case of the book that was rejected by Playster, Cursed Broken, there is sexual content throughout the file. They do not allow erotic romance or erotica. I found several very graphic scenes portraying two men together in sexual activity. Any sexual activity, not just penetrative sex, is not something they will allow.
> ...


What's most troubling to me is that m/f romances at steamy/spicy heat levels are being accepted. Yet m/m and f/f romances are deemed too graphic.

This makes zero sense.

Do you by chance have any heterosexual romance in D2D/Playster? I'm wondering because we need to push this point across. Romance has various heat levels and there's a huge difference between erotica, ero-romance, and steamy romance. I understand Playster's content guidelines reject any sexual content, but m/f romances with sexual content should also be rejected.

We've got to keep driving this point, as it seems LGBT romance and fiction is getting a special explicit label, whether warranted or not.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Playster said:


> We can assure you that Playster is in absolutely no way discriminating against LGBTQ+ content. We've been receiving books with underage characters, and therefore put a temporary ban on all books labelled 'erotica' that are delivered from self-publishing platforms. We acknowledge that this is a cautious approach, but we're working diligently towards a long-term resolution. We're committed to providing authors with an alternative revenue stream but, as a small company, we don't yet have a QA team large enough to go through books at the rate we receive them.
> 
> We're taking all of your comments into consideration, and we're investigating the possibility that some books have been mislabeled. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this.


I appreciate your response, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that I did not categorize my title under erotica. There is definitely something amiss here.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Playster said:


> We can assure you that Playster is in absolutely no way discriminating against LGBTQ+ content. We've been receiving books with underage characters, and therefore put a temporary ban on all books labelled 'erotica' that are delivered from self-publishing platforms. We acknowledge that this is a cautious approach, but we're working diligently towards a long-term resolution. We're committed to providing authors with an alternative revenue stream but, as a small company, we don't yet have a QA team large enough to go through books at the rate we receive them.
> 
> We're taking all of your comments into consideration, and we're investigating the possibility that some books have been mislabeled. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this.


I'd also like to further clarify that none of the characters in my rejected title are minors.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Here are my current D2D BISAC categories, for reference:


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

I'm glad to see the message from Playster and to know it rejects discrimination and is trying to fix this problem. The difficulty for me comes in figuring out where and how the "mislabel[ing]" could have happened. An author submits _Book MM_ and _Book MF_ to D2D and chooses to distribute both to Playster. These books have similar content, and the author does not give either book an "erotica" label or category. _Book MM_ ends up banned by Playster as erotica and _Book MF_ doesn't. So ... when and how was the "erotica" label placed on _Book MM_ and why wasn't that label placed on the _Book MF_?


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Playster said:


> We can assure you that Playster is in absolutely no way discriminating against LGBTQ+ content. We've been receiving books with underage characters, and therefore put a temporary ban on all books labelled 'erotica' that are delivered from self-publishing platforms. We acknowledge that this is a cautious approach, but we're working diligently towards a long-term resolution. We're committed to providing authors with an alternative revenue stream but, as a small company, we don't yet have a QA team large enough to go through books at the rate we receive them.
> 
> We're taking all of your comments into consideration, and we're investigating the possibility that some books have been mislabeled. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this.


THIS is absolutely APPALLING. You are suggesting that the authors with books in this thread who have books rejected are because they have MINORS in sexual situations?!

(1) My books do NOT HAVE the erotica tag. They just have the gay stories and romance tag.

(2) I have NO UNDERAGE CHARACTERS.

So this is the biggest load of BS I have ever seen.

M/F books are getting through M/M books are NOT. You need to address this.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

elizabethbarone said:


> What's most troubling to me is that m/f romances at steamy/spicy heat levels are being accepted. Yet m/m and f/f romances are deemed too graphic.
> 
> This makes zero sense.
> 
> ...


I only write M/M so I have nothing to compare with.

I pushed as hard as I could, but D2D actually quoted sections of my book at me (as if I didn't know what was written there) and said: this makes your book erotica/erotic romance and that is the ONLY reason that Playster rejected you (which by the way, it DOESN'T. There's explicit sex in romance, it's if there's a story without it that makes it romance or one of the others). I had to laugh (bitterly). I pointed them to this thread and to the Playster store. Seeing Playster's incredible unbelievable response which suggests the only reason that they are barring books that are m/m is because of underaged characters (meaning we may be engaged in something deviant, I guess) is just appalling and makes clear that steam level is not why they aren't accepting certain books. It makes it appear they don't even KNOW WHY they aren't.


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## Playster (Aug 12, 2015)

X. Aratare said:


> THIS is absolutely APPALLING. You are suggesting that the authors with books in this thread who have books rejected are because they have MINORS in sexual situations?!
> 
> (1) My books do NOT HAVE the erotica tag. They just have the gay stories and romance tag.
> 
> ...


Sorry for the misunderstanding; we were not insinuating that at all. We were just clarifying that our refusal of 'erotica' was a cautious response to books with underage characters being delivered to Playster in the past. We were not at all suggesting that your books were refused for this reason.

We're investigating the labeling thoroughly, using some of the examples in this thread, to establish exactly what's happening. Thanks in advance for your patience with this.


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## 71202 (Jul 17, 2013)

Dear Playster:

Um, how about emailing this explanation directly to people whose books are not approved, with some idea of when you will have a system that will detect and approve compliant books.

Because right now you have a system is that_ in effect discriminatory_, whether that was your intent or not. I would suggest fixing that before a major gay rights organization decides to make your life even more difficult.

I know large systems are not easy to manage, but transparency would sure help.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

This is the kind of shake-out necessary. I've just about given up trying to label my non-erotica books as anything other than erotica, because I often get flagged. Most likely because 90% of my backlist is erotica.

But definitions that turn into policies need to be chewed, chewed over, and chewed again. Once we have a standard - whether we think it's fair or not - at least we know where the limits lie.

On another note, while I have no issues with M/M stories or sex, a publisher with Mormon owners might. We need to be prepared that some might find M/M interaction deviant, no matter how you or anyone else feels about it.

I don't think any of us would expect an Islamic publisher to publish books on bacon recipes.


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## Brian Olsen (Jan 13, 2013)

Mercia McMahon said:


> D2D have a track record here in that one of its other Smashwords-doesn't-have-it retailers is 24Symbols, who also provoked a kboards thread when LGBT books were taken down. The kboards search engine failed to bring up that thread (in which Dan of D2D also commented IIRC) and a general internet search only brought me a link to an author complaining about it:
> 
> http://www.brianolsenbooks.com/lgbt-discrimination-at-24symbols/


Hey, that's me! I just saw this thread and checked my own books - three of the four books in my wide series are still "Publishing" at Playster, and have been since 6/21, when I submitted them. Book three was published the very next day, 6/22.

Book three is "Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny," which is the only one of the three books that's NOT tagged "Gay and Lesbian." This is the exact same thing that happened at 24Symbols way back when - book three was the only book with an unblurred cover.

None of these books are tagged erotica. They're all sci-fi adventure. They're all in the same series. The only difference is the Gay and Lesbian tag.

I'll watch to see how this plays out, but I expect I'll be pulling my books from Playster. (I mean, apart from the discrimination, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to only make book three available...)


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

I've been keeping tabs on this thread just because I've been considering whether going wide with my eroms/erotica would be a good idea. IF other platforms like D2D is having trouble publishing what I write (ie, even Walmart is starting to have erotica on-line), than maybe it would be a good idea to stay in KU right now. So, this discussion has been interesting.

I mean, if m/m or f/f is considered deviant, what's to stop ffm or mmf as a deviant behavior too? Most erotica has kinks of some sort, and once there are labels assigned to things, that just starts getting way too into the censorship area. At least the Zon right now is allowing erotica because it definitely sells. And let's not forget, it's fantasy really. Made up sexual journeys that take the reader along with it. 

So, once lines start to be drawn, you wonder, where will it stop?


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Laran Mithras said:


> On another note, while I have no issues with M/M stories or sex, a publisher with Mormon owners might. We need to be prepared that some might find M/M interaction deviant, no matter how you or anyone else feels about it.
> 
> I don't think any of us would expect an Islamic publisher to publish books on bacon recipes.


I bet publishing companies/publications with observant Jewish owners have published bacon recipes. Not everyone applies their religious practices/beliefs to their business decisions in a directly prohibitive sort of way; rather, they see themselves as serving a community that includes people who are like them and not like them. But yeah, so far as I know you're correct that a retailer would be legally permitted to exclude LGBT+ books if it wanted to so for religious reasons, at least here in the U.S. I'm sure there are already a number of specialty bookstores around the country that do just that. But I would like retailers who do it to be publicly clear about what they're doing. That way those of us who don't like it can spend our money elsewhere.



Brian Olsen said:


> Book three is "Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny," which is the only one of the three books that's NOT tagged "Gay and Lesbian." This is the exact same thing that happened at 24Symbols way back when - book three was the only book with an unblurred cover.
> 
> None of these books are tagged erotica. They're all sci-fi adventure. They're all in the same series. The only difference is the Gay and Lesbian tag.


See, this is where Playster's explanation strikes me as problematic. If the "erotica" tag is what they're using to filter out submissions in an abundance of caution over that small percentage of erotica with underage stuff, how did Brian's sci-fi adventures end up with an "erotica" tag and get filtered out? EITHER books like Brian's are being caught through some other mechanism than an "erotica" tag OR they're having the "erotica" tag placed on them ... by Playster? ... because they're tagged "gay" or "lesbian"?


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Laran Mithras said:


> On another note, while I have no issues with M/M stories or sex, a publisher with Mormon owners might. We need to be prepared that some might find M/M interaction deviant, no matter how you or anyone else feels about it.


I don't have a problem with a publisher or distributor who won't handle something based on religious beliefs as long as they're willing to say that's why they're not handling the material. If, for example, the publishing guidelines included a statement that no material that offended the religious values of a particular group would be published, that would be clear.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

X. Aratare said:


> There's explicit sex in romance, it's if there's a story without it that makes it romance or one of the others).


This gets back to the definition point I was making earlier. What do you mean by explicit sex? I have to say that when someone says explicit sex to me, the classification that flashes through my mind is erotica--and I doubt I'm alone in that. As I said earlier, I don't write erotica or romance, so I've thought little about the issue in a practical sense. I tend to think of it as in movie ratings. If a very faithful film adaptation of the book was made, would the resulting movie be NC-17? Then I would have thought it was definitely erotica. If the movie were R but fairly close to NC-17, then it might be erotic romance. (By the way, is there a difference between erotic romance and romantica? How about between clean romance and sweet romance? Part of the problem in the industry is that we don't have universally agreed upon definitions.)

Distributors should have a clear definition of erotica to avoid exactly this kind of problem. I think here the issue is not so much where the line should be drawn as whether LGBT content has the line drawn in a different place than non-LGBT content does. If it is drawn in a different place, that's clearly discriminatory. On that much, I think we can all agree.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Bill Hiatt said:


> This gets back to the definition point I was making earlier. What do you mean by explicit sex? I have to say that when someone says explicit sex to me, the classification that flashes through my mind is erotica--and I doubt I'm alone in that. As I said earlier, I don't write erotica or romance, so I've thought little about the issue in a practical sense. I tend to think of it as in movie ratings. If a very faithful film adaptation of the book was made, would the resulting movie be NC-17? Then I would have thought it was definitely erotica. If the movie were R but fairly close to NC-17, then it might be erotic romance. (By the way, is there a difference between erotic romance and romantica? How about between clean romance and sweet romance? Part of the problem in the industry is that we don't have universally agreed upon definitions.)
> 
> Distributors should have a clear definition of erotica to avoid exactly this kind of problem. I think here the issue is not so much where the line should be drawn as whether LGBT content has the line drawn in a different place than non-LGBT content does. If it is drawn in a different place, that's clearly discriminatory. On that much, I think we can all agree.


It's very difficult to explain this if you're not a big romance reader (and I may be totally misreading this and you as a non-romance reader, forgive me if I'm wrong). But "normal" romance books would probably to a non-romance reader seem like erotica because of the sex being on the page and not fading to black, but there's an actual difference in the genres between romance, erotica and erotic romance.

Basically, if you strip out the sexy bits and there's an actual story there? That's romance. If you strip out the sexy bits and there's nothing much left? That's erotica.

It doesn't so much depend on the explicitness of the sex, but how much story to sex ratio there is.

Now is there a bright line between romance and erotic romance? It's a little fuzzier. What I would say, is that what's on Playster in the m/f arena IS the same level of heat as my book, but my book is barred. The only difference? I'm m/m.

D2D is claiming (though Playster isn't) that anything beyond KISSING is not allowed on Playster and that simply isn't true.

Playster is claiming its a BISAC thing with erotica tags and underage people having sex ... but really what's clear is that all Gay and Lesbian tags are considered erotica no matter whether they are or not.

As to the owners of Playster being Mormon, like I've said before: It's their site and they are allowed to sell or NOT sell anything. I wouldn't want to be on a platform where gay fiction is barred and I wouldn't buy from them. But that is their right. But they need to say that. Not hide behind what they feel is "acceptable" to say. It would save us all a lot of time and angst.

But Playster has said they have no problem with gay romance so ... There's a problem here and, hopefully, they'll sort it. But D2D has made clear to me that they won't even submit my work again, because of this misunderstanding about genres, too ... That's why I'm angry with them and feel they've done more harm than good in this situation. I hope that everything does work out for everyone else. But, ironically, my feelings about D2D may have soured more than on Playster.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Bill Hiatt said:


> This gets back to the definition point I was making earlier. What do you mean by explicit sex? I have to say that when someone says explicit sex to me, the classification that flashes through my mind is erotica--and I doubt I'm alone in that. As I said earlier, I don't write erotica or romance, so I've thought little about the issue in a practical sense. I tend to think of it as in movie ratings. If a very faithful film adaptation of the book was made, would the resulting movie be NC-17? Then I would have thought it was definitely erotica. If the movie were R but fairly close to NC-17, then it might be erotic romance. (By the way, is there a difference between erotic romance and romantica? How about between clean romance and sweet romance? Part of the problem in the industry is that we don't have universally agreed upon definitions.)


Explicit sex crops up in quite a few genres. It's not uncommon in urban fantasy, for instance. I don't know if there's a clear definition of the phrase everyone would accept. Personally, I think of "explicit sex" as substantial descriptions of sexual activity that include references to specific body parts, rather than relying on generalities. If you replaced the words with filmed images, it'd definitely be NC-17. But that doesn't mean all works containing that kind of material are erotica. In UF, the story isn't about someone's erotic journey. It's about saving the world from the vampire apocalypse (or whatever). There just happens to be sex along the way. So if Playster wanted to expunge explicit sex from its catalog entirely, I don't think there's a quick-and-easy way to do it via genre categories. Just banning erotica wouldn't do the trick at all.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> I'm glad to see the message from Playster and to know it rejects discrimination and is trying to fix this problem. The difficulty for me comes in figuring out where and how the "mislabel[ing]" could have happened. An author submits _Book MM_ and _Book MF_ to D2D and chooses to distribute both to Playster. These books have similar content, and the author does not give either book an "erotica" label or category. _Book MM_ ends up banned by Playster as erotica and _Book MF_ doesn't. So &#8230; when and how was the "erotica" label placed on _Book MM_ and why wasn't that label placed on the _Book MF_?


This is what I'm having trouble understanding, too. Somewhere along the line, LGBT books seem to be getting an erotica tag, whether they actually contain sexual content or not.



X. Aratare said:


> I only write M/M so I have nothing to compare with.
> 
> I pushed as hard as I could, but D2D actually quoted sections of my book at me (as if I didn't know what was written there) and said: this makes your book erotica/erotic romance and that is the ONLY reason that Playster rejected you (which by the way, it DOESN'T. There's explicit sex in romance, it's if there's a story without it that makes it romance or one of the others). I had to laugh (bitterly). I pointed them to this thread and to the Playster store. Seeing Playster's incredible unbelievable response which suggests the only reason that they are barring books that are m/m is because of underaged characters (meaning we may be engaged in something deviant, I guess) is just appalling and makes clear that steam level is not why they aren't accepting certain books. It makes it appear they don't even KNOW WHY they aren't.


I'm sorry, X. I know exactly how frustrated you are!

There's long been a misunderstanding of the differences between romance, erotic romance, and erotica. I think your explanation sums it up perfectly:



X. Aratare said:


> It's very difficult to explain this if you're not a big romance reader (and I may be totally misreading this and you as a non-romance reader, forgive me if I'm wrong). But "normal" romance books would probably to a non-romance reader seem like erotica because of the sex being on the page and not fading to black, but there's an actual difference in the genres between romance, erotica and erotic romance.
> 
> *Basically, if you strip out the sexy bits and there's an actual story there? That's romance. If you strip out the sexy bits and there's nothing much left? That's erotica.*
> 
> ...


I was already considering putting _Any Other Love_ in KU after it'd been wide for a couple of weeks. This issue has made the decision for me. While I appreciate D2D and Playster's efforts to look into things and realize their exclusion may not be intentional, something is still amiss. I have a background in programming and, while I wouldn't call myself an expert, I do know that it is possible to filter out erotica without throwing out the baby (LGBT fiction) with the bathwater (LGBT and other erotica). I would really like for Playster's tagging process to be more transparent and for their content guidelines to be more clear.

If Playster's system is automatically tagging LGBT fiction as erotica, then I believe more finessed functions should be written. The way that BISAC is organized, erotica appears as its own category (http://bisg.org/page/Fiction).

FIC005000 FICTION / Erotica / General
FIC005010 FICTION / Erotica / BDSM
FIC005020 FICTION / Erotica / Collections & Anthologies
*FIC005030 FICTION / Erotica / Gay
FIC005040 FICTION / Erotica / Lesbian*
FIC005050 FICTION / Erotica / Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror
FIC005060 FICTION / Erotica / Traditional Victorian

LGBT fiction is its own, very separate category:

FIC068000 FICTION / LGBT / General *
FIC011000 FICTION / LGBT / Gay
FIC018000 FICTION / LGBT / Lesbian

Romance has its own erotica and LGBT subcategories, but they are definitely not the same thing:

FIC027000 FICTION / Romance / General
FIC027260 FICTION / Romance / Action & Adventure
FIC049060 FICTION / Romance / African American
FIC027270 FICTION / Romance / Clean & Wholesome
FIC027080 FICTION / Romance / Collections & Anthologies
FIC027020 FICTION / Romance / Contemporary
*FIC027010 FICTION / Romance / Erotica*
FIC027030 FICTION / Romance / Fantasy
FIC027050 FICTION / Romance / Historical / General
FIC027140 FICTION / Romance / Historical / Ancient World
FIC027150 FICTION / Romance / Historical / Medieval
FIC027070 FICTION / Romance / Historical / Regency
FIC027160 FICTION / Romance / Historical / Scottish
FIC027280 FICTION / Romance / Historical / Tudor
FIC027200 FICTION / Romance / Historical / 20th Century
FIC027170 FICTION / Romance / Historical / Victorian
FIC027180 FICTION / Romance / Historical / Viking
FIC027290 FICTION / Romance / Holiday
*FIC027300 FICTION / Romance / LGBT / General
FIC027190 FICTION / Romance / LGBT / Gay
FIC027210 FICTION / Romance / LGBT / Lesbian*
FIC027220 FICTION / Romance / Military
FIC027230 FICTION / Romance / Multicultural & Interracial
FIC027240 FICTION / Romance / New Adult
FIC027120 FICTION / Romance / Paranormal / General
FIC027310 FICTION / Romance / Paranormal / Shifters
FIC027320 FICTION / Romance / Paranormal / Vampires
FIC027250 FICTION / Romance / Romantic Comedy
FIC027130 FICTION / Romance / Science Fiction
FIC027330 FICTION / Romance / Sports
FIC027110 FICTION / Romance / Suspense
FIC027090 FICTION / Romance / Time Travel
FIC027100 FICTION / Romance / Western

Now, BISAC's website notes that codes with asterisks were added in 2016. So this _may_ be an issue of category confusion, because they're new. Still, it should be possible for Playster's team to parse erotica from LGBT general fiction and romance.

It's worth noting, also, that romance has its own "Clean & Wholesome" category.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

PS: I'm not presuming to tell Playster how to do their jobs or run their company; just offering some suggestions that I think may be helpful for solving the issue. I'm a believer of attempting to be part of the solution rather than just complaining about the problem. I apologize if my post is a bit too forward.


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## hjordisa (Sep 4, 2017)

elizabethbarone said:


> Here are my current D2D BISAC categories, for reference:


I might understand if the New Adult category was getting conflated with erotica. It seems to have a reputation for explicit sex, at least in some circles (Deserved or not, I have no idea. I don't read or write it or even think about it much except when it's brought up in a discussion about something else.), and the books in question may be being tagged not "erotica" the genre, but "erotica" as some sort of placeholder for "erotic content: please review."

But I don't think that's what's happening here. Surely some of the many books in question are not labelled New Adult, and even if so, some of the authors have mentioned their books are pretty similar aside from the hetero/homosexual relationship divide and I assume therefore have similar tags other than the LGBT ones.

And LGBT labelled books being flagged for erotic content over heterosexual ones? Even though those heterosexual ones are in the romance category so there's reason to suspect erotic content? Not acceptable.

I don't even know where the pedophilia concerns are supposed to come in. If all books tagged romance were being put under extra scrutiny that's one thing, but that's clearly not the case. Pedophilia isn't inherently associated with same sex relationships, nor is LGBT fiction inherently erotic, so.

As much as I want to think that this is a case of an overzealous automated flagging system, I still can't think of any reason such a system would be singling out mostly LGBT books without some human bias being programmed into it in the first place.


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## 91831 (Jul 18, 2016)

Laran Mithras said:


> On another note, while I have no issues with M/M stories or sex, a publisher with Mormon owners might. We need to be prepared that some might find M/M interaction deviant, no matter how you or anyone else feels about it.
> 
> I don't think any of us would expect an Islamic publisher to publish books on bacon recipes.


*waves* Mormon Romance writer here, who has STEAM in her comtemp romance novels and also involves same sex couples in her books. While not focused on LGBT, I'm certainly not going to avoid that segment of society. I like my books to be set in the real world (even if I make places up!) and have a real feel. Same reason I'm not going to ignore POC in my works; just because I'm a straight white Mormon woman, doesn't mean I'm going to write only straight white Mormon people!

FFS, Steph Meyer can write about sparkly vampires, bonding babies with werewolves, and all that sorta stuff, as a mormon, I think we LDS can be a little open-minded every now and again 

The world is diverse, that's what makes it interesting!

ETA: Is Playster owned by LDS? Is that why this came up?


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Lorri Moulton said:


> X. Aratare
> 
> Totally off topic, but your covers are great! Especially the bodyguard.


Sylvia Frost made them! She's making me some slammin vampire covers. I can't say enough good things about her.

I want to thank Elizabeth again for her bringing this issue to the fore. Really good stuff, because even if it wasn't intentional, the effect has been quite ... definite.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

> Sorry for the misunderstanding; we were not insinuating that at all. We were just clarifying that our refusal of 'erotica' was a cautious response to books with underage characters being delivered to Playster in the past. We were not at all suggesting that your books were refused for this reason.


I might accept that you did not mean to imply that, but as someone who makes money by writing, I would like to assure you that this is exactly what the statement above implied.

I say "might" because making an implied, if not directly stated, connection between child molestation and LGBT issues is one of the classic old saws of every anti-gay hate group in history. The history behind that implication makes it very hard to believe that it was purely accidental. It also makes any claims that you're not intentionally discriminating against LGBT literature extremely difficult to accept.

Time to stop being nice and get the LGBT media and organizations involved.


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## J Bridger (Jan 29, 2013)

Wait I got confused. Is Playster related or owned by the LDS?


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## Sam B (Mar 28, 2017)

J Bridger said:


> Wait I got confused. Is Playster related or owned by the LDS?


I gave it a quick search and didn't find any information that indicated as such. I think it was an example that got out of hand.

Gotta say, though, just reading the complaint and Playster's response to the most cishet dude I know, and he said "Wait, did they just say that LGBT is the same as pedophilia?" If that was his first thought, other people can hardly be blamed for thinking that was the intent of the comments from the company.

I'm in KU, so this won't affect my current choices, but it's already affected any future changes I might make.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Becca Mills said:


> I bet publishing companies/publications with observant Jewish owners have published bacon recipes. Not everyone applies their religious practices/beliefs to their business decisions in a directly prohibitive sort of way; rather, they see themselves as serving a community that includes people who are like them and not like them. But yeah, so far as I know you're correct that a retailer would be legally permitted to exclude LGBT+ books if it wanted to so for religious reasons, at least here in the U.S. I'm sure there are already a number of specialty bookstores around the country that do just that. But I would like retailers who do it to be publicly clear about what they're doing. That way those of us who don't like it can spend our money elsewhere.


Really, Becca? Since when does a retailer in a free country need any kind of reason not to sell something? Did you ask Costco or, for that matter, Home Depot, to justify to you why they don't sell gay romance? By your reasoning, Toys R Us should publicly justify why it doesn't sell sex toys because sex toys are toys and the retailer "claims" to sell toys.

And if retailers have to justify themselves, why not suppliers? Would you please explain to us why you don't write gay romances? I'd like to know so I can buy someone else's books if I don't like your answer. Or maybe I'll follow your lead and wonder out loud on my blog why you don't, along with little insinuations about your motives. As you say, the best way to get a response is to cause a fuss.



> See, this is where Playster's explanation strikes me as problematic. If the "erotica" tag is what they're using to filter out submissions in an abundance of caution over that small percentage of erotica with underage stuff, how did Brian's sci-fi adventures end up with an "erotica" tag and get filtered out? EITHER books like Brian's are being caught through some other mechanism than an "erotica" tag OR they're having the "erotica" tag placed on them ... by Playster? ... because they're tagged "gay" or "lesbian"?


If you'd bothered to search Playster for the terms "lesbian" and "gay," you'd know that a whole lot of stuff that goes a whole lot further than kissy romance is on sale there. How does that fit your conspiracy charge? They're selling lesbian porn, but not lesbian romance because they're...what, exactly? The firm obviously has a curation problem that they're trying to fix in the same hamfisted way Amazon does. Seems to me like you're throwing gas on the fire.


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## ivyquinn (Mar 23, 2017)

> Really, Becca? Since when does a retailer in a free country need any kind of reason not to sell something? Did you ask Costco or, for that matter, Home Depot, to justify to you why they don't sell gay romance? By your reasoning, Toys R Us should publicly justify why it doesn't sell sex toys because sex toys are toys and the retailer "claims" to sell toys.


This seems a bit like a slippery slope. No one was talking about sex toys at Toys 'R Us. We were talking about stories that don't contain explicit erotica being rejected by that metric. We're also talking about a reasoning related to underaged erotica issues that don't seem relevant to submitted books that had no underage protagonists in them. Also Home Depot doesn't even sell books. Costco, it would be an interesting question to ask them, to be honest.

My feeling is this. If you as a business refuse to sell items that have lgbt characters or are friendly to lgbt people, then, yeah, that needs to be questioned. If we were asking why you excluded handicapped people, people of color, or people of uncommon faiths, it wouldn't even be about "pouring gas on a fire." People would be upset because of violations in the 14th amendment and equal protection clause and public decency. But when it's excluding LGBT or equating that in the excuses, perhaps inadvertantly, with child pornography. Yeah. That's a problem for me.

It's like the podcast, The Scathing Atheist says, if you can substitute in "person of color" for "Lgbt individual" and it would make you cringed and think back to segregation days, then it's probably wrong. Somehow, it seems to me, when gay or lesbian or other LGBT+ discrimination happens it can often be seen as an "agenda" or "making a fuss" or a "witch hunt," etc. But discrimination is wrong. I do hope that Playster is working really, really hard to fix this and never have this glitch again, but the reasons they've offered so far seem confusing and contradictory and it's very hurtful ot LGBT writers and those who write LGBT stories, and it makes us feel like rejected, second class citizens.


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## 71202 (Jul 17, 2013)

There is stuff that "goes further" because these rules apply to new and revised material only.  So that material existing does not prove that the approval rules are unbiased.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

elizabethbarone said:


> This is what I'm having trouble understanding, too. Somewhere along the line, LGBT books seem to be getting an erotica tag, whether they actually contain sexual content or not.
> 
> I'm sorry, X. I know exactly how frustrated you are!
> 
> ...


And let's remember that not all novels with LGBT characters are romances at all. All genres may have LGBT characters.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Playster said:


> We can assure you that Playster is in absolutely no way discriminating against LGBTQ+ content. We've been receiving books with underage characters, and therefore put a temporary ban on all books labelled 'erotica' that are delivered from self-publishing platforms. We acknowledge that this is a cautious approach, but we're working diligently towards a long-term resolution. We're committed to providing authors with an alternative revenue stream but, as a small company, we don't yet have a QA team large enough to go through books at the rate we receive them.
> 
> We're taking all of your comments into consideration, and we're investigating the possibility that some books have been mislabeled. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this.


Nope. That has nothing to do with excluding novels in other genres such as SFF with LGBT characters. You would have to explain how those with no sexual content got into 'erotica'.

That is a huge FAIL as an excuse.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

WHDean said:


> Really, Becca? Since when does a retailer in a free country need any kind of reason not to sell something? Did you ask Costco or, for that matter, Home Depot, to justify to you why they don't sell gay romance? By your reasoning, Toys R Us should publicly justify why it doesn't sell sex toys because sex toys are toys and the retailer "claims" to sell toys.
> 
> -snip-


A retailed doesn't have to supply a reason. However, I can certainly choose not to do business with them and suggest others do the same (just as I do with certain other LBGT-hostile companies) and I certainly do not have to accept lame excuses.


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## J Bridger (Jan 29, 2013)

Exactly JR Tomlin = well said.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

JRTomlin said:


> And let's remember that not all novels with LGBT characters are romances at all. All genres may have LGBT characters.


Absolutely, though I haven't heard from any authors whose books feature LGBT characters but aren't tagged as LGBT, yet have been rejected. It seems only books using LGBT BISAC codes were axed. I know of some authors whose m/f or LGBT erotica was rejected, too, but unfortunately Playster's written policy clearly states no erotica whatsoever, so I can understand that decision.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

ivyquinn said:


> This seems a bit like a slippery slope. No one was talking about sex toys at Toys 'R Us. We were talking about stories that don't contain explicit erotica being rejected by that metric. We're also talking about a reasoning related to underaged erotica issues that don't seem relevant to submitted books that had no underage protagonists in them. Also Home Depot doesn't even sell books. Costco, it would be an interesting question to ask them, to be honest.
> 
> My feeling is this. If you as a business refuse to sell items that have lgbt characters or are friendly to lgbt people, then, yeah, that needs to be questioned. If we were asking why you excluded handicapped people, people of color, or people of uncommon faiths, it wouldn't even be about "pouring gas on a fire." People would be upset because of violations in the 14th amendment and equal protection clause and public decency. But when it's excluding LGBT or equating that in the excuses, perhaps inadvertantly, with child pornography. Yeah. That's a problem for me.
> 
> It's like the podcast, The Scathing Atheist says, if you can substitute in "person of color" for "Lgbt individual" and it would make you cringed and think back to segregation days, then it's probably wrong. Somehow, it seems to me, when gay or lesbian or other LGBT+ discrimination happens it can often be seen as an "agenda" or "making a fuss" or a "witch hunt," etc. But discrimination is wrong. I do hope that Playster is working really, really hard to fix this and never have this glitch again, but the reasons they've offered so far seem confusing and contradictory and it's very hurtful ot LGBT writers and those who write LGBT stories, and it makes us feel like rejected, second class citizens.


The OP informs us about a problem for anyone doing business with Playster. Even if you don't sell LGBT-themed books, you now know the retailer has a curation problem. Maybe they're solving the problem by getting rid of all such books. Maybe there's another more sinister motive. Either way, all we know is who's being targeted for now. I can't fault Elizabeth for raising this.

I can also understand the people affected being upset, and I can sympathize as a small business person trying to make a buck. But this thread has degenerated into a witch hunt. The only explanation accepted is that Playster is evil and must be denounced. Playster's explanations were rejected because everyone knows the "real reason" is they're evil. Everything they said was turned into an insult or treated as a transparent lie. You seem reflective to me, but even you've bought into the "Playster equated LGBT people with pedophiles!" interpretation.

If Playster follows the usual PR script, they won't be back here. I don't blame them. Anyone can see that people here have made up their minds and nothing Playster says will be believed. All they can do is make things worse. And that's why public justifications don't work. Anyone whose mind is made up can twist the justification into an indictment, and there's no way to prove your innocence. That's the point of the Toys R Us example. Just think it through: There's no way the firm can justify not selling sex toys. The slippery slope comes from putting the onus on others to justify what they don't do.

(By the way, Home Depot does sell books.)


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## 71202 (Jul 17, 2013)

I think people have made up their mind that Playster pushed a button that rejected gay content but not equivalent straight content, because that's what happened.  They need to fix it and be transparent about fixing it.  That is what counts as PR these days--not vague and inaccurate statements.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

evdarcy said:


> *waves* Mormon Romance writer here, who has STEAM in her comtemp romance novels and also involves same sex couples in her books. While not focused on LGBT, I'm certainly not going to avoid that segment of society. I like my books to be set in the real world (even if I make places up!) and have a real feel. Same reason I'm not going to ignore POC in my works; just because I'm a straight white Mormon woman, doesn't mean I'm going to write only straight white Mormon people!
> 
> FFS, Steph Meyer can write about sparkly vampires, bonding babies with werewolves, and all that sorta stuff, as a mormon, I think we LDS can be a little open-minded every now and again
> 
> ...


I don't know if Playster is owned by Mormons. I might have caused someone to believe it is, but I was just using Mormons off the top of my head without trying to connect them to the industry or even in being too straight to accept MM. It was just the first religion I picked. Insert any religion/denomination in their place.

I'm a Jesus freak and write all kinds of steamy erotica. While I have yet to dance into the MM or FF niches, I have written plenty of stories with bisexual elements in them; Making a Menage, for one.

I have some Mormon relatives; that's probably why they popped into my head first.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

WHDean said:


> Playster's explanations were rejected because everyone knows the "real reason" is they're evil.


I think Playster's explanation was rejected because it doesn't fit the facts. "We were having a problem with erotica, so we're rejecting all erotica while we clean house" doesn't really cover why they're also rejecting non-erotica with the LGBT tag.


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## 71202 (Jul 17, 2013)

I think the suggestion that they coded GLBT as erotica fits the information that we have--and is a common error.  That puts it under someone's implicit bias rather than top level explicit discrimination.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

Isn't this the same outfit that was using misleading ads that claimed they had books available that they didn't, leading people to think they were a pirate crew?


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Dragovian said:


> I think Playster's explanation was rejected because it doesn't fit the facts. "We were having a problem with erotica, so we're rejecting all erotica while we clean house" doesn't really cover why they're also rejecting non-erotica with the LGBT tag.


People took some facts and jumped to an anti-LGBT motive. Once they assumed bad faith on Playster's behalf, they dismissed all facts inconsistent with this conclusion as lies. Even the fact that Playster didn't instantly dispatch someone to explain to everyone what was going on was cited as evidence of malfeasance, instead of simple incompetence or limitations. I can understand why, but it doesn't change the fact that it's jumping to conclusions.

As I pointed out above, a search for "gay" and "lesbian" a few days ago turned up a bunch of romance and erotica. Judging by the titles, some of the latter crosses legal lines in some U.S. states and Canada (can't say for sure, though, and I don't know whether it's still there). Second, your conclusion that Playster's explanation "doesn't really cover why they're also rejecting non-erotica with the LGBT tag" assumes all those books were categorized properly, that Playster's spokesperson got the facts right and complete, and that Playster has a handle on what they're doing. How often do any of these things happen in something as convoluted as this? Unless you assume bad faith and interpret this as more lies, everything is still up in the air.

By the way, I'm not defending--let alone endorsing--Playster. I have no business with them and only heard of the outfit recently. I'm only arguing against the witch-hunt mentality because it's not helping anyone.


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## AnnaB (May 14, 2016)

Speaker-To-Animals said:


> Isn't this the same outfit that was using misleading ads that claimed they had books available that they didn't, leading people to think they were a pirate crew?


Yes, they had truckloads of fly-by-night apparently largely Russian affiliate sites trying to funnel subscribers by pretending Playster had whatever books you were searching for, that they didn't in fact have.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

WHDean said:


> Really, Becca? Since when does a retailer in a free country need any kind of reason not to sell something? Did you ask Costco or, for that matter, Home Depot, to justify to you why they don't sell gay romance? By your reasoning, Toys R Us should publicly justify why it doesn't sell sex toys because sex toys are toys and the retailer "claims" to sell toys.


If you present yourself as a specialist retailer within a category, then you're letting shoppers know that you only carry a limited subset of that category. For instance, if you call your business a "feminist bookstore" or a "Christian bookstore," then you're publicly owning the fact that you only sell certain types of books and exclude other types. That seems fine to me. If there's a consumer out there who thinks feminism is evil, they can direct their dollars elsewhere, even if they have to buy _The Beauty Myth_ or _Backlash_ for a class they're taking. But if you present yourself as a general bookstore with an unlimited catalog while excluding a subset of books someone might reasonably expect to find in a general bookstore, given the time and culture in which your store is operating, that's more problematic. A helpful analogy would not be Toys-R-Us refusing to sell sex toys -- because despite the word "toys" appearing in both labels, the average person would not put children's toys and sex toys in the same retail category -- but rather Toys-R-Us refusing to sell a potentially controversial subcategory of children's toys. Barbies, for instance, or baby dolls with dark skin.



WHDean said:


> And if retailers have to justify themselves, why not suppliers? Would you please explain to us why you don't write gay romances? I'd like to know so I can buy someone else's books if I don't like your answer. Or maybe I'll follow your lead and wonder out loud on my blog why you don't, along with little insinuations about your motives. As you say, the best way to get a response is to cause a fuss.


I don't write romance because I'd totally stink at it.

My books do include LGBT characters. If they didn't include LGBT characters in settings where one might reasonably expect to find LGBT people (i.e., any sizable gathering of people and a reasonable percentage of small gatherings), it'd be perfectly fair to ask why. If you were to read my books and decide there's not enough representation of LGBT people, and you'd rather support authors who do a better job in that area and/or tell me I've done a bad job, fair enough. You could do it in a blog post. Again, fair enough. I'd read it and think about it.



WHDean said:


> If you'd bothered to search Playster for the terms "lesbian" and "gay," you'd know that a whole lot of stuff that goes a whole lot further than kissy romance is on sale there. How does that fit your conspiracy charge? They're selling lesbian porn, but not lesbian romance because they're...what, exactly? The firm obviously has a curation problem that they're trying to fix in the same hamfisted way Amazon does. Seems to me like you're throwing gas on the fire.


I don't recall saying there was a conspiracy. I think you're probably right that Playster "has a curation problem that they're trying to fix in the same hamfisted way Amazon does," and I think they would've kept right on doing it the way they've been doing it -- by excluding newly submitted/updated books with LGBT tags -- if we and D2D hadn't focused their attention on the problem. Making dumb decisions and having those decisions called to their attention, sometimes angrily, is how companies -- and the other companies that watch them -- learn to make smarter decisions.

Given what both D2D and Playster have said here, my *guess* would be that Playster noticed some underage erotica in its catalog, freaked the heck out about it, and decided to stamp out the problem quickly by banning everything tagged as erotica or LGBT, based on the incorrect but unfortunately not uncommon belief that gay people are more likely be pedophiles than straight people. It's a quick jump from that belief to the idea that pedophilia must be disproportionately common in books tagged LGBT.

But I agree that we don't yet know the "why" and "how" of what happened here. Guesses are just that.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

One person's "witch hunt" is another person's "publicity campaign," so we'll probably have to agree to disagree on that. But just out of curiosity ...



WHDean said:


> because it's not helping anyone.


Evidence?

We have both D2D's and Playster's attention on the problem now. Before, we didn't.


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## 71202 (Jul 17, 2013)

x


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

elizabethbarone said:


> I've never had anything like this happen to me. It's not a nice feeling. I wrote this book because there isn't a lot of f/f romance. I also wrote it because there are no books -- that I know of -- with LGBT+ characters who have chronic illnesses. I'm somewhere between angry and sad on this one.


Don't be! Playster did that to me the other day, maybe the same day. I laughed so hard that now I don't even remember what book it was. Erotic? Perhaps, the way the Bible is erotic.

It's not as if Playster is going to make you or me rich. They don't even register on my July sales by distributor. Tolino is streets ahead. So is Overdrive!


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

I really, really don't want this thread to get locked...


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Becca Mills said:


> If you present yourself as a specialist retailer within a category, then you're letting shoppers know that you only carry a limited subset of that category. For instance, if you call your business a "feminist bookstore" or a "Christian bookstore," then you're publicly owning the fact that you only sell certain types of books and exclude other types. That seems fine to me. If there's a consumer out there who thinks feminism is evil, they can direct their dollars elsewhere, even if they have to buy _The Beauty Myth_ or _Backlash_ for a class they're taking. But if you present yourself as a general bookstore with an unlimited catalog while excluding a subset of books someone might reasonably expect to find in a general bookstore, given the time and culture in which your store is operating, that's more problematic. A helpful analogy would not be Toys-R-Us refusing to sell sex toys -- because despite the word "toys" appearing in both labels, the average person would not put children's toys and sex toys in the same retail category -- but rather Toys-R-Us refusing to sell a potentially controversial subcategory of children's toys. Barbies, for instance, or baby dolls with dark skin.


If the CEO of Toys R Us states that the company won't sell brown Babies because he doesn't like brown people, you'd be right to get out the pitchforks. But the problem is the motive, not the action. You can't jump from the action alone to one and only one motive. Toys R Us might stop selling brown Barbies because no one is buying them, because an asteroid hit the brown Barbie factory--any number of a bazillion reasons. The Playster case is even weaker than the Barbie one because, as I have pointed out, Playster is still selling LGBT books.

As for your claim that a retailer billing itself as a general bookseller should carry LGBT romance, well, that's a matter of customer expectations, not morals. Your choice of words,"problematic," glosses this fact. If someone sets up a retailer that claims to sell "all the best books ever written," but doesn't sell Saul Bellow or Philip Roth, this might be called "problematic" in some sense of that vague word. But can we infer the owner is anti-Semitic?



> I don't write romance because I'd totally stink at it.


So you say. But how can we be sure there's not a darker motivation? That's what's "problematic" with imputing motives. You can't prove you don't have the ones I dream up for you.



> if we and D2D hadn't focused their attention on the problem. Making dumb decisions and having those decisions called to their attention, sometimes angrily, is how companies -- and the other companies that watch them -- learn to make smarter decisions.
> 
> Given what both D2D and Playster have said here, my *guess* would be that Playster noticed some underage erotica in its catalog, freaked the heck out about it, and decided to stamp out the problem quickly by banning everything tagged as erotica or LGBT, based on the incorrect but unfortunately not uncommon belief that gay people are more likely be pedophiles than straight people. It's a quick jump from that belief to the idea that pedophilia must be disproportionately common in books tagged LGBT.
> 
> But I agree that we don't yet know the "why" and "how" of what happened here. Guesses are just that.


Bullying people with an anti-LGBT smear in order to get them to fix a technical problem is still bullying.

Second, you don't know their motives, and it's completely unfair to attribute that thinking to them, even if you're just "guessing." If the books appeared in that category, then it makes sense (at least from a hamfisted standpoint) to clear out that category.



Becca Mills said:


> One person's "witch hunt" is another person's "publicity campaign," so we'll probably have to agree to disagree on that. But just out of curiosity ...
> 
> Evidence?
> 
> We have both D2D's and Playster's attention on the problem now. Before, we didn't.


Maybe I'm wrong, but this is the second time you sound as though you're invoking an ends-justify-the-means defence--that threatening Playster with the anti-LGBT smear was justified because it got their attention. That would be unethical. As for it working, well, if you think small fish whipping out guns in business negotiations works, you're as mixed up as this metaphor. You've created an adversarial relationship where you might have had a cooperative one. You've also drained part of the well of sympathy from outsiders because now it looks like you've used a real problem that people sympathize with as leverage in a business negotiation. So, yeah, working great.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Mark Gardner said:


> One of my books does have LGBT characters in it, but I didn't label it LGBT. That book was accepted by Playster. I've since removed my titles from Playster, so it's a moot point.


Maybe, but it's still an interesting point.



Dragovian said:


> I think Playster's explanation was rejected because it doesn't fit the facts. "We were having a problem with erotica, so we're rejecting all erotica while we clean house" doesn't really cover why they're also rejecting non-erotica with the LGBT tag.


Precisely.

I can't speak for everyone here, but I do hope Playster is still reading this thread and working on improving their guidelines or program.



veinglory said:


> I think the suggestion that they coded GLBT as erotica fits the information that we have--and is a common error. That puts it under someone's implicit bias rather than top level explicit discrimination.


Agreed -- I don't think Playster is some nefarious entity, twirling its mustache. But something is definitely off here, and I'm glad they're looking into it.



Becca Mills said:


> One person's "witch hunt" is another person's "publicity campaign," so we'll probably have to agree to disagree on that. But just out of curiosity ...
> 
> Evidence?
> 
> We have both D2D's and Playster's attention on the problem now. Before, we didn't.


Yep -- my objective here was to get answers for people, because previously it appeared that we were being ignored.

I think people are upset because -- and I can only speak for myself as a bisexual woman -- LGBT+ people have a long history of being discriminated against. When the U.S. passed gay marriage, our struggles didn't magically end. We are passively aggressively oppressed every day.

I'm not saying that's the case here, but unless you've walked in those shoes, you can't understand.

It's my hope that Playster will resolve the issue or, if they don't want to sell LGBT fiction -- which is absolutely their prerogative -- their guidelines become more clear. However, I avoid any business that excludes queer people, because I am queer. So it's important to me to create awareness.

This is both a business and personal issue, and some folks may feel very passionately. I can only speak for myself and conduct myself accordingly. But I absolutely understand why some people are very, very upset.



notjohn said:


> Don't be! Playster did that to me the other day, maybe the same day. I laughed so hard that now I don't even remember what book it was. Erotic? Perhaps, the way the Bible is erotic.
> 
> It's not as if Playster is going to make you or me rich. They don't even register on my July sales by distributor. Tolino is streets ahead. So is Overdrive!


Playster is definitely not my biggest honeypot. I still felt it was an important issue to raise.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

WHDean said:


> ...
> 
> Maybe I'm wrong, but this is the second time you sound as though you're invoking an ends-justify-the-means defence--that threatening Playster with the anti-LGBT smear was justified because it got their attention. That would be unethical. As for it working, well, if you think small fish whipping out guns in business negotiations works, you're as mixed up as this metaphor. You've created an adversarial relationship where you might have had a cooperative one. You've also drained part of the well of sympathy from outsiders because now it looks like you've used a real problem that people sympathize with as leverage in a business negotiation. So, yeah, working great.


I don't think that's what anyone in this thread is trying to do. Nor is anyone threatening Playster.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

WHDean said:


> If the CEO of Toys R Us states that the company won't sell brown Babies because he doesn't like brown people, you'd be right to get out the pitchforks. But the problem is the motive, not the action. You can't jump from the action alone to one and only one motive. Toys R Us might stop selling brown Barbies because no one is buying them, because an asteroid hit the brown Barbie factory--any number of a bazillion reasons. The Playster case is even weaker than the Barbie one because, as I have pointed out, Playster is still selling LGBT books.
> 
> As for your claim that a retailer billing itself as a general bookseller should carry LGBT romance, well, that's a matter of customer expectations, not morals. Your choice of words,"problematic," glosses this fact. If someone sets up a retailer that claims to sell "all the best books ever written," but doesn't sell Saul Bellow or Philip Roth, this might be called "problematic" in some sense of that vague word. But can we infer the owner is anti-Semitic?
> 
> ...


Motives are what we're trying to uncover here. I agree that we don't have a full picture, and as I said in my blog post, hopefully the LGBT book rejections will turn out to have been caused by a mistake of some sort. Or next best, a boneheaded decision by a single person who didn't think things through very well. It seems okay to me to lay out clearly labeled guesses as to what happened. By their nature, guesses may prove correct or incorrect. We're all grownups, so we understand about guesses. And hopefully Playster is the kind of company that is glad to have been told their business partners perceive its behavior as discriminatory (because now they can fix it). Beyond that, I'm not going to get drawn into a long intellectual debate about it, WH, though you know I do enjoy engaging in those with you. This really doesn't seem the place for it. But I do look forward to reading your savage take-down of my romance-free oeuvre. At the very least, I'll finally get to read some of your off-forum writing, after all these years of knowing you but never having seen a lick of it.


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## linda reeves (Sep 6, 2017)

Markus Croft said:


> Firstly, thanks everyone for the thoughtful posts. Coming to a thread like this, I don't usually expect to see measured, thoughtful responses. I didn't see pitchforks, I saw real talk. Moving on...
> 
> Where is the smear? First of all, you give one thread on kboards and a few blog posts an awful lot of credit if you're going to equate it with a smear campaign. For someone who keeps arguing we can't know the motives of this vendor based on their actions and first hand accounts of the authors who submit to them, it's interesting you continue to characterize the motives of people in this thread in a similar manner. From what I've seen, you're way off base. People want answers, they see patterns and they've spoken out. They are speaking to their experiences, and while it's critical at times, it's not bullying.
> 
> ...


THIS! THIS! THIS!

I registered so I could say THIS, and that's all I have to say because you said everything else for me. Loved the bit at the end about allies. So true and well put!


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Putting on my moderator hat ... I recognize that the situation with Playster touches on many other areas of LGBT+ rights and resistance thereto, but due to KBoards' no-politics policy, we need to keep our focus on Playster. A couple posts that were getting too far afield have been removed.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> ...
> 
> And hopefully Playster is the kind of company that is glad to have been told their business partners perceive its behavior as discriminatory (because now they can fix it).
> 
> ...


Put much more succinctly than I could've.



Markus Croft said:


> Firstly, thanks everyone for the thoughtful posts. Coming to a thread like this, I don't usually expect to see measured, thoughtful responses. I didn't see pitchforks, I saw real talk. Moving on...
> 
> ...
> 
> Marginalized communities get stomped on and undercut all the time. People are not drawing conclusions that that may be happening here for no reason. While it may or may not be true in this case, and we may never know for sure, allies are certainly not the problem and I question anyone who would frame a narrative that would cast them as such.


Echoing Linda here: THIS.



linda reeves said:


> THIS! THIS! THIS!
> 
> I registered so I could say THIS, and that's all I have to say because you said everything else for me. Loved the bit at the end about allies. So true and well put!


Possibly OT, but: Welcome to Kboards!



Becca Mills said:


> Putting on my moderator hat ... I recognize that the situation with Playster touches on many other areas of LGBT+ rights and resistance thereto, but due to KBoards' no-politics policy, we need to keep our focus on Playster. A couple posts that were getting too far afield have been removed.


Understood!


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Markus Croft said:


> Firstly, thanks everyone for the thoughtful posts. Coming to a thread like this, I don't usually expect to see measured, thoughtful responses. I didn't see pitchforks, I saw real talk. Moving on...
> 
> Where is the smear? First of all, you give one thread on kboards and a few blog posts an awful lot of credit if you're going to equate it with a smear campaign. For someone who keeps arguing we can't know the motives of this vendor based on their actions and first hand accounts of the authors who submit to them, it's interesting you continue to characterize the motives of people in this thread in a similar manner. From what I've seen, you're way off base. People want answers, they see patterns and they've spoken out. They are speaking to their experiences, and while it's critical at times, it's not bullying.
> 
> ...


It will probably come as a surprise, but I don't disagree with you on most of what you said. The big difference between us is perspective. You seem to see it as a justice issue and a community issue where the reactions on this thread are the voices of allies and should not be questioned. I understand that stance. But I look at this is as a business problem in need of a business strategy, where the aim is to get the books back on Playster.

I think you have to choose one objective or the other. I'd be willing to contribute to the business solution, if I can, but it's now clear to me that this has become about getting justice, and I don't see what I can do, especially when it's not obvious that an injustice has been committed. So all I can say is good luck, but I'm walking away from this.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> But I look at this is as a business problem in need of a business strategy, where the aim is to get the books back on Playster.


More than one person has said this, in essence. No one has brought out the tar and feathers, no one has been bullied, or threatened in any way. If we decide we no longer want to do business with this company, that's what the much-vaunted free market is about, right?

All anyone is asking for is a clear, honest explanation and potential clarification of intent of not only this company, but D2D as well. Is someone adding an erotica tag to certain types of books? That needs to stop. Is someone only targeting LGBT books for removal/further review? Then that needs to stop. If a company doesn't have enough trained staff to handle this issue, then that's their issue, not their vendors. Hire and train more people (hey, Amazon, get a clue) so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. Make policies crystal clear (Amazon, are you listening?). Enforce them evenly.

For the record, when D2D announced they would distribute to Playster, there was a pretty big thread about the companies practices (I believe they may have had some name changes along the line?), and I decided not to have my work go to them. I have books with sexual content, non-white characters, non-straight characters and the like, so I'm glad I don't have to deal with this. I have a SF novel in the works that is just filled with people who are not white, straight, cis-gendered, Christian and so on. It doesn't have explicit sex in it (not yet, anyway, but who knows what the muse has been working on), but going by the uneven removal of books, it likely wouldn't fly on some sites.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

WHDean said:


> It will probably come as a surprise, but I don't disagree with you on most of what you said. The big difference between us is perspective. You seem to see it as a justice issue and a community issue where the reactions on this thread are the voices of allies and should not be questioned. I understand that stance. But I look at this is as a business problem in need of a business strategy, where the aim is to get the books back on Playster.
> 
> I think you have to choose one objective or the other. I'd be willing to contribute to the business solution, if I can, but it's now clear to me that this has become about getting justice, and I don't see what I can do, especially when it's not obvious that an injustice has been committed. So all I can say is good luck, but I'm walking away from this.





she-la-ti-da said:


> More than one person has said this, in essence. No one has brought out the tar and feathers, no one has been bullied, or threatened in any way. If we decide we no longer want to do business with this company, that's what the much-vaunted free market is about, right?
> 
> All anyone is asking for is a clear, honest explanation and potential clarification of intent of not only this company, but D2D as well. Is someone adding an erotica tag to certain types of books? That needs to stop. Is someone only targeting LGBT books for removal/further review? Then that needs to stop. If a company doesn't have enough trained staff to handle this issue, then that's their issue, not their vendors. Hire and train more people (hey, Amazon, get a clue) so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. Make policies crystal clear (Amazon, are you listening?). Enforce them evenly.
> 
> For the record, when D2D announced they would distribute to Playster, there was a pretty big thread about the companies practices (I believe they may have had some name changes along the line?), and I decided not to have my work go to them. I have books with sexual content, non-white characters, non-straight characters and the like, so I'm glad I don't have to deal with this. I have a SF novel in the works that is just filled with people who are not white, straight, cis-gendered, Christian and so on. It doesn't have explicit sex in it (not yet, anyway, but who knows what the muse has been working on), but going by the uneven removal of books, it likely wouldn't fly on some sites.


WHDean, what solutions might you have? Because I've tried to direct discussion that way and you've continued to accuse authors with complaint of bringing out the pitchforks. Nothing is really getting accomplished if we keep going around and around this.


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## Playster (Aug 12, 2015)

After careful investigation of each step of our content ingestion process for self-publishing platforms, we discovered that our restriction on the 'erotica' category had unintentionally affected other tags and genres, including LGBTQ+ fiction.  We are extremely sorry for our mistake and any hurt it may have caused - it was never our intention to block these titles. 

What happens now?  The books that were wrongfully declined are currently being added to the Playster catalog where they will join our existing collection of LGBTQ+ titles previously delivered by our other major publishing partners.

Playster takes an extra cautious approach when it comes to self-published fiction because we do not have a large in-house team that is able to thoroughly read and review all titles that are submitted.  However, we accept that, in this case, our efforts to solve one problem inadvertently caused another.

We strongly encourage authors to contact us if they have any further problems submitting books to Playster or notice that any titles that should be present are missing.  They can do so by emailing us directly at [email protected]


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

I'm glad to hear LGBT+ fiction wasn't intentionally banned and will now be accepted. I have to admit, I remain curious about exactly _how_ Playster's restriction on erotica came to affect other tags and genres.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Becca Mills said:


> I'm glad to hear LGBT+ fiction wasn't intentionally banned and will now be accepted. I have to admit, I remain curious about exactly _how_ Playster's restriction on erotica came to affect other tags and genres.


I think that's a very easy answer.

Erotica has tags containing LGBT. So, they stomped on tags with LGBT. It's simple. Unfortunately, that also effected genres outside of erotica that included the LGBT tag. I've held my peace on it, but I saw this a couple days ago when people were wondering how it could have happened.

Is it really that hard to see?


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Laran Mithras said:


> I think that's a very easy answer.
> 
> Erotica has tags containing LGBT. So, they stomped on tags with LGBT. It's simple. Unfortunately, that also effected genres outside of erotica that included the LGBT tag. I've held my peace on it, but I saw this a couple days ago when people were wondering how it could have happened.
> 
> Is it really that hard to see?


I guess an automated process could glitch that way, but it could also have been a manual error involving some kind of bias. Regardless, it sounds as if Playster will rectify the situation. If the books in question do in fact get added to the catalog, that will show that the company is acting in good faith.


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## Sam B (Mar 28, 2017)

Bill Hiatt said:


> I guess an automated process could glitch that way, but it could also have been a manual error involving some kind of bias. Regardless, it sounds as if Playster will rectify the situation. If the books in question do in fact get added to the catalog, that will show that the company is acting in good faith.


My thoughts exactly. How it all happened may still feel skeevy to me, but if they're taking action to fix it, that says something important. I'll be tracking this thread to see if those books do get retroactively accepted.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

Good lord, I totally missed this.

Nice to hear the company say they will rectify. Now, does anyone know if we have to do anything on our end?

Like others, my books have been "publishing" since June. Should I soon expect them to be accepted on their own? Do I need to contact D2D to resubmit them? 

And yeah, to be clear, no underage characters. No erotica.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

I wanted to let people know that my book was published to Playster without me doing anything. Hopefully others will too. 

Thank you to Playster for coming to a thread that wasn't happy with them and fixing things. That couldn't have been easy or comfortable. 

I wanted to thank Elizabeth again for this thread. Raising awareness of what was happening confirmed that gay and lesbian books were being excluded based on their tags. I know that some people called this a witch hunt. It wasn't. It was an accident but it was real. Without her bringing this out though it wouldn't have been caught.


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## 91831 (Jul 18, 2016)

Laran Mithras said:


> I don't know if Playster is owned by Mormons. I might have caused someone to believe it is, but I was just using Mormons off the top of my head without trying to connect them to the industry or even in being too straight to accept MM. It was just the first religion I picked. Insert any religion/denomination in their place.[...]


Ahahahaha! I see! I got mightily confused for a moment thinking I missed something earlier in the thread! TBH tho, I'm not a 'good' mormon. I don't live in the 'bubble' and I won't condemn those that love the same sex -- or gender... or non-gender... asexual? How about, as long as you love and you love with a pure heart it can't be evil. That's what I live by anyway.  Luckily, as a Mormon, I don't believe in hell with fire and brimstone, so I can't go there for my opinions on this hahahaha!


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

My missing books published as well. Glad to see the issue resolved.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Playster said:


> After careful investigation of each step of our content ingestion process for self-publishing platforms, we discovered that our restriction on the 'erotica' category had unintentionally affected other tags and genres, including LGBTQ+ fiction. We are extremely sorry for our mistake and any hurt it may have caused - it was never our intention to block these titles.
> 
> What happens now? The books that were wrongfully declined are currently being added to the Playster catalog where they will join our existing collection of LGBTQ+ titles previously delivered by our other major publishing partners.
> 
> ...


Playster, I really appreciate you looking into this and fixing the issue. Thank you so much!

My book was automatically published to the Playster store, and a few other books that had apparently been in limbo were published, too (they hadn't been rejected but hadn't been accepted, either). Incidentally, one of the titles in limbo has LGBT characters. The other is a m/f rockstar romance.

I'm glad to see that other authors' LGBT titles that were rejected are now back in Playster's catalog, too. This is an outcome that I'd hoped for, but wasn't sure we'd receive. Thank you to everyone who came forward and worked with me to reach a solution. I know sometimes it's not easy to speak up, but when we all work together, our voices can be heard and we can make a positive impact.

For the sake of full disclosure, I do have to mention that in the midst of this I decided to enroll AOL in KU; I just unpublished it on Playster until my KU term ends, but fully intend to re-publish there in December. I'd already been considering going into KU after having been wide for a couple of weeks. It just seemed like a good time to do it.

I can't stress enough how very pleased I am with this outcome.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

IreneP said:


> Good lord, I totally missed this.
> 
> Nice to hear the company say they will rectify. Now, does anyone know if we have to do anything on our end?
> 
> ...


I'd reach out to D2D and just let them know your books have been in limbo. If they're LGBT, it may be more efficient to contact Playster directly at [email protected]


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## 71202 (Jul 17, 2013)

x


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

veinglory said:


> Equating non-straight content with sex or kink content (based on implicit bias) is a common enough error that my blog has a tag for it. It comes in the forms of retail coding, publisher "hotness" scales, reader expectation bias leading to bad reviews, school libraries banning kids books with gay content on they assumption that the content is "adult"--it's pretty pervasive. I think this potential cause became the front runner very quickly in this thread.


Yeah, agreed. I see it in how some of my kids' classmates' parents talk nervously about introducing the existence of LGB people to their kids. It's like because the issue of _sexual orientation_ is involved, they're going to have to talk to their kids about _having sex_.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

WHDean said:


> You've created an adversarial relationship where you might have had a cooperative one. You've also drained part of the well of sympathy from outsiders because now it looks like you've used a real problem that people sympathize with as leverage in a business negotiation. So, yeah, working great.


To piggyback, this is also "crying wolf" before the wolf is sighted. It exhausts the general pool of good will and ends up leaving those with proven discrimination problems with fewer resources, less sympathy, and less help. Those opposed to, say, LGBT+ rights get free ammunition "proving" that group will "smear the innocent to advance their agenda."

If you want to watch mob mentality form in realtime, keep reading KBoards--but remember, next time the mob may be coming after your "tribe."

(this is in no way a threat--just a caution).


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

As to how it happens, right or wrong, we have a default to "straight" in the categorization of things. Nobody labels romance "straight" or "cis" or whatever, but they do label everything else that's not the default, just like we don't have (in most western countries, in English) "white" or "Caucasian" fiction, but we do have "black" of "African-American" descriptors in some categories.

I'm not saying this is right, but it is how things are currently done--and that gives rise to situations like this, where the Venn diagram of categorization creates some unexpected overlaps and connections--but those will only ever happen when there is a positive (non-absent) descriptor. It's always the difference that is spotted, even by machine algorithms.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

David VanDyke said:


> As to how it happens, right or wrong, we have a default to "straight" in the categorization of things. Nobody labels romance "straight" or "cis" or whatever, but they do label everything else that's not the default, just like we don't have (in most western countries, in English) "white" or "Caucasian" fiction, but we do have "black" of "African-American" descriptors in some categories.
> 
> I'm not saying this is right, but it is how things are currently done--and that gives rise to situations like this, where the Venn diagram of categorization creates some unexpected overlaps and connections--but those will only ever happen when there is a positive (non-absent) descriptor. It's always the difference that is spotted, even by machine algorithms.


I think you're misunderstanding what happened here.

There IS actually an erotica/gay or erotica/lesbian tag, but there is ALSO a romance/gay and romance/lesbian or just a plain fiction/gay. Playster took these latter ones and treated them like the former SIMPLY because they were gay or lesbian. They claimed to be evaluating or eliminating erotica altogether because of minors engaged in sex in erotica. What this means is that someone at Playster determined that ANY book that contained gay or lesbian characters, no matter erotica or not, was AT RISK for having underaged sex in them. This is, as Speaker To Animals said an old canard that homosexuals are more likely to be pedophiles. That Playster looked into this and "fixed" it to not be discriminatory against gay and lesbian fiction is to their credit, but it DID happen.

So this idea that we don't have a STRAIGHT tag is actually wrong. Romance by itself is considered the "straight" tag and "gay romance" or "lesbian romance" is not. So the "romance" tag, i.e., straight people, WASN'T barred, but all gay and lesbian romance was.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

X. Aratare said:


> I think you're misunderstanding what happened here.
> 
> There IS actually an erotica/gay or erotica/lesbian tag, but there is ALSO a romance/gay and romance/lesbian or just a plain fiction/gay. Playster took these latter ones and treated them like the former SIMPLY because they were gay or lesbian. They claimed to be evaluating or eliminating erotica altogether because of minors engaged in sex in erotica. What this means is that someone at Playster determined that ANY book that contained gay or lesbian characters, no matter erotica or not, was AT RISK for having underaged sex in them. This is, as Speaker To Animals said an old canard that homosexuals are more likely to be pedophiles. That Playster looked into this and "fixed" it to not be discriminatory against gay and lesbian fiction is to their credit, but it DID happen.
> 
> So this idea that we don't have a STRAIGHT tag is actually wrong. Romance by itself is considered the "straight" tag and "gay romance" or "lesbian romance" is not. So the "romance" tag, i.e., straight people, WASN'T barred, but all gay and lesbian romance was.


I can't tell if I'm misunderstanding what happened here--and neither can you. I'm reserving judgment. You're making assumptions in the absence of information, it seems to me.

Somehow, whether by one misguided employee or by algorithm or innocent error, the LBGT+ tag seems to have been equated with the forbidden kind of erotica. We simply don't know how or why that happened. I totally get how this can seem like "enemy action," but we simply don't know. I've been involved in enough "where there's smoke, there's fire" situations where the smoke turned out to be, yes, just smoke, no fire, to instantly believe the worst. Playster seems to be taking action to correct the mistake. Good on them.

Instantly believing the worst is, precisely, what leads to the mob mentality. Secondary and circumstantial evidence, absent primary sources, is not good enough. If it were, then hundreds of people wouldn't have been exonerated and removed from death row by the Innocence Project.

And as far as the "straight" tag, I was talking about literally, as a computer thinks. There is no literal "straight" tag in most categorization, therefore a computer, or a poorly trained employee, one who very well may have been hired and given a task beyond his or her knowledge, is faced with only positive tags (in a Boolean sense--the presence rather than the absence, a "true" rather than a "false") to work with. Long ago, I used to code, and my wife did as well, and we've both seen situations where an algorithm did something we didn't expect. Heck, NASA has crashed spacecraft because of such errors, and I'm, pretty sure Playster has nowhere near NASA's number and expertise of coders.

Again, this boils down to: do you (general you) deliberately withhold judgment and insist on "innocent until proven guilty," or do you presume guilt and try to make the target prove their innocence? Because the latter what I see happening far too much in our society, and it gets reflected on KBoards.

In fact, it's EXACTLY what we're complaining about--Playster and Amazon and others who hold our careers in their hands declared a certain category of authors guilty until proven innocent. It's fundamentally hypocritical to complain about being judged guilty without proof, then to likewise judge others guilty without proof.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

David VanDyke said:


> To piggyback, this is also "crying wolf" before the wolf is sighted. It exhausts the general pool of good will and ends up leaving those with proven discrimination problems with fewer resources, less sympathy, and less help. Those opposed to, say, LGBT+ rights get free ammunition "proving" that group will "smear the innocent to advance their agenda."
> 
> If you want to watch mob mentality form in realtime, keep reading KBoards--but remember, next time the mob may be coming after your "tribe."
> 
> (this is in no way a threat--just a caution).


So, to sum up: some KBoarders noticed what appeared to be discrimination; called out the company involved; were informed they were correct; were apologized to and told it was an accident; and were offered remedy ... and this is your example of how horrible KBoards is?

I think many of us who've become involved with this *don't* think it was a case of "crying wolf" and *do* see it as a case of "proven discrimination." Just because the discrimination was caused by some sort of mistake on Playster's part doesn't mean it wasn't real. Conducting yourself responsibly in a position of power means, among many other things, checking to make sure you're not being discriminatory. If you're careless (in designing your algorithms, for instance) and end up discriminating accidentally, that's a wrong -- one you need to admit to and fix, as Playster has done. Discriminating through carelessness may not be as bad as setting out with the desire to do harm, but it's still bad, and it's still discrimination. Smaller acts of discrimination do have an impact, and there's nothing wrong with insisting they be addressed.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Becca, you're a moderator. Did I say "horrible"? 

And KBoards is the medium, not the message--but this is where I am, watching the mob mentality form. You're stripping out all the heated rhetoric in your summation, deliberately ignoring the repeated implications that this was an intentional assault on LGBT+ when we still don't know anything about intentions.

And really, as a moderator holding the power, you should not be taking sides in public. "Conducting yourself responsibly in a position of power means, among many other things, checking to make sure you're not being discriminatory." Exactly. You've just crossed that line, in public, as a person with the power.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

The notion that this could have been some completely accidental database quirk is ludicrously farfetched. If it was a CSR who didn't know what they were doing, bringing it to the attention of Playster should have been enough to solve the issue, but instead we got an explanation that invoked one of the classic hateful stereotypes used by anti-gay hate groups. 

But yeah, let's not jump to conclusions. It's not like any of us who are gay have any experience in this...

As far as I'm concerned, this was a textbook example of exactly how it's supposed to work. Discrimination was discovered, pressure was brought, the company backed down. If they want to save face and make an excuse, that I don't care about. The structural problem is fixed.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

David VanDyke said:


> Becca, you're a moderator. Did I say "horrible"?
> 
> And KBoards is the medium, not the message--but this is where I am, watching the mob mentality form. You're stripping out all the heated rhetoric in your summation, deliberately ignoring the repeated implications that this was an intentional assault on LGBT+ when we still don't know anything about intentions.
> 
> And really, as a moderator holding the power, you should not be taking sides in public. "Conducting yourself responsibly in a position of power means, among many other things, checking to make sure you're not being discriminatory." Exactly. You've just crossed that line, in public, as a person with the power.


So ... being in a position of power at KBoards means I can't advocate for authors I think are being discriminated against? I don't think that's right, David. I'm still a person, and I still get to take positions on issues I feel strongly about. Yes, I try not to take wade into threads where KBoarders are actively pitted against one another, but this really didn't strike me as such a situation. Advocating for authors of the excluded LGBT books didn't entail advocating _against _some other group of KBoards members. A KBoarder's book with straight characters is not going to get dropped from Playster's catalog in order to make room for a book with gay characters. It didn't occur to me that there would be an opposing "side" to this situation.

Personally, I'm willing to take Playster at its word that there was no "intentional assault" here. I'd still like more explanation of what went wrong, but I think the quickness with which the company responded and fixed things supports the idea that the exclusion was accidental. But as I said in my last post, I also don't think _intentions _are the be-all and end-all of situations like this one. Intentionality matters a lot, but it's not the whole story, IMO. When it takes over as the whole story, it quickly becomes a way to dismiss events and situations as not significant, not worth addressing, etc.


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## IreneP (Jun 19, 2012)

FYI: All my LGBT books published to Playster today. I have two D2D accounts and only reached out on one. All books on both accounts published.

I'm assuming that means we need do nothing as far as re-subbing? Although D2D could have pushed all my books from both accounts... I have not heard back from them on my support request yet.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

David VanDyke said:


> And really, as a moderator holding the power, you should not be taking sides in public. "Conducting yourself responsibly in a position of power means, among many other things, checking to make sure you're not being discriminatory." Exactly. You've just crossed that line, in public, as a person with the power.


At the risk of stirring fresh controversy, moderators are also Kboards members. As moderators, the only statements the mods make are cautions about people getting too close to the edge of what's allowed, announcements regarding locked threads, etc. As Kboards members, I see no reason why they can't enter into discussions, as long as they don't violate the very rules they are enforcing, which I don't think is what happened here. (I'll admit that's a difficult line to draw, but if we didn't, I suspect we'd have no moderators. Is someone who isn't an author going to be willing to spend so much time reading posts on this forum? I think not.)

Your point about lynch mobs is well taken. I didn't really feel that was the tone of the thread, though. The bottom line is that Playster made a rather dramatic error. I say error, because there is no evidence it was deliberate. I'm inclined to agree, though, that discrimination by accident is still discrimination. In such a case, however, it is easier to make up for it, and Playster did its best to do just that. No lynch mob, but some pressure, problem resolved. I think we need to take the win and move on.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Mob mentality? Really? I guess we see what we want to see. I saw a company discriminating against LGBT books simply for having gay characters. Not erotica, normal, every day sorts of books. With no explanation, no warning, no clarification of content rules. It wasn't wrong to bring that to people's attention, as we are all thinking of our livelihood which is affected by having books summarily unpublished.

Now the company has said there was an error made, and they are fixing it. Problem solved. No one was hurt, or threatened, or accused of doing something they didn't -- because it did happen, no one imagined it. It's not wrong to question things that don't look right, and I for one won't be shamed into keeping quiet when I see it.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Is someone who isn't an author going to be willing to spend so much time reading posts on this forum? I think not.)


*ahem*Ann&Betsy*ahem*

Pretty amazing, isn't it? 

_and Atunah and crebel, among others..... --Betsy_


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> So ... being in a position of power at KBoards means I can't advocate for authors I think are being discriminated against? I don't think that's right, David. I'm still a person, and I still get to take positions on issues I feel strongly about. Yes, I try not to take wade into threads where KBoarders are actively pitted against one another, but this really didn't strike me as such a situation. Advocating for authors of the excluded LGBT books didn't entail advocating _against _some other group of KBoards members. A KBoarder's book with straight characters is not going to get dropped from Playster's catalog in order to make room for a book with gay characters. It didn't occur to me that there would be an opposing "side" to this situation.
> 
> Personally, I'm willing to take Playster at its word that there was no "intentional assault" here. I'd still like more explanation of what went wrong, but I think the quickness with which the company responded and fixed things supports the idea that the exclusion was accidental. But as I said in my last post, I also don't think _intentions _are the be-all and end-all of situations like this one. Intentionality matters a lot, but it's not the whole story, IMO. When it takes over as the whole story, it quickly becomes a way to dismiss events and situations as not significant, not worth addressing, etc.


I think you can't be both judge and jury. You have been elevated to being a judge. It's wrong for you to adjudicate the merits of arguments as well as to judge how they're conducted. It's a conflict of interest--or at best, the perception of one.

It's like a sports referee choosing who wins a game based on which team is "better" in your subjective measure--you like their stance of social issues, or their uniforms, or their arguments better.

No. That's wrong. It's wrong on the face of it. It's not that you aren't entitled to your opinion--but you expressing it on these boards from your position of privilege skews the free expression we have here.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

she-la-ti-da said:


> Mob mentality? Really? I guess we see what we want to see. I saw a company discriminating against LGBT books simply for having gay characters. Not erotica, normal, every day sorts of books. With no explanation, no warning, no clarification of content rules. It wasn't wrong to bring that to people's attention, as we are all thinking of our livelihood which is affected by having books summarily unpublished.
> 
> Now the company has said there was an error made, and they are fixing it. Problem solved. No one was hurt, or threatened, or accused of doing something they didn't -- because it did happen, no one imagined it. It's not wrong to question things that don't look right, and I for one won't be shamed into keeping quiet when I see it.


If we see what we want to see, then we ALL see what we want to see--the "guilty until proven innocent" crowd as well.

I prefer to think we see what we're sensitive to. I'm sensitive to misuse of power and privilege, whether it's appointed power, elected power, popular power or mob opinion power. That's what I'm concerned about at a meta level. Restrict and regulate that--ensure the rule of law rather than of persons--and much of the rest will fall into place. But if it's the rule of persons--no matter how much we like them at the moment, no matter that they're "our tribe", it always goes wrong eventually, even if only after the good person finally departs or retires.

It's been said that if you want to know someone's character, give them a little power and see what happens. Cops, city councillors, CEOs, drill sergeants, prison guards, it's all the same.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

David VanDyke said:


> I think you can't be both judge and jury. You have been elevated to being a judge. It's wrong for you to adjudicate the merits of arguments as well as to judge how they're conducted. It's a conflict of interest--or at best, the perception of one.
> 
> It's like a sports referee choosing who wins a game based on which team is "better" in your subjective measure--you like their stance of social issues, or their uniforms, or their arguments better.
> 
> No. That's wrong. It's wrong on the face of it. It's not that you aren't entitled to your opinion--but you expressing it on these boards from your position of privilege skews the free expression we have here.


David, the moderators here are also members and do participate as such. You can see me navigating the distinction in posts like this one, from earlier in this thread:



Becca Mills said:


> Putting on my moderator hat ... I recognize that the situation with Playster touches on many other areas of LGBT+ rights and resistance thereto, but due to KBoards' no-politics policy, we need to keep our focus on Playster. A couple posts that were getting too far afield have been removed.


So far as I know, the above was the only moderation action taken in this thread.

Obviously, a certain level of trust is required -- trust that moderators won't abuse their office by maliciously deleting or altering the posts of people they disagree with, or other such malfeasance. That's the case whether moderators articulate their views or not. I would hope we've earned that trust. If I'm too new at moderating to have earned your trust yet, I hope I will over time.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Markus Croft said:


> I repeat, quote where you saw this happening. I'll wait. All I saw was authors trying to inform each other of what might be happening based on their experiences/first hand knowledge and get answers, but I'm curious what you can come up with that I missed.


Here's your quotes:

_It's messed up that people are still doing stuff like this.  And not even up front about it either._ The latter strongly implies the "doing stuff like this" is attempting to be concealed.

Reply#7--a graphic I don't know how to copy--which says "Homophobes--homophobes everywhere." That's a declaration of intent and guilt. This post was not modded, therefore the mods are giving the accusations their implicit blessing.

_My LGBT content has gone, just the hetero content is left. This is unconscionable. I will email them and pull my entire catalogue with them._ Not "I will threaten to pull.." Not "I will insist they fix the situation." Again, declared guilty without a trial.

_IMO, doing what they seem to be doing is a lot worse than just out-and-out saying they don't accept those books. Doing it the way they are, it's like having their cake and eating it too._ Again, guilty until proven innocent, constantly implying this is intentional company policy. Or maybe it's just a mistake?

_
Sometimes companies only admit they won't sell something because of "those dirty gay cooties" when they get called on it..._ Using loaded terms to whip up emotions, highlighting only one aspect of things. No different from saying "Sometimes black people deal drugs..." which is technically true, but omits the fact that people of every race deals drugs and that highlighting one race is a smear campaign, not a reasoned argument. Note this response immediately after: "This is true Becca, which is why I am saying people need to stop with the immediate urge to 'raise awareness' *which is the usual code these days for get the crowd riled up and sic em on the company.*" (emphasis mine). So, it's clear to others, not just me, that this is trying to "whip up and sic 'em."

Okay, that's just the first two pages and the low-hanging fruit.

I was impressed, in the rereading, that so many people spoke up for not getting riled up (at least not until we hear something from the companies involved), and counseled a wait and see, measured-response attitude. Yet, there were some who continued to "whip 'em up" and to insist that rushing to judgment was justified.

I'm sure some will still argue that without agitation, there would be no resolution. That may be true--or it may not. But agitating by attributing evil motives is wrong, unless there is actual evidence of evil motives.

Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by mere stupidity.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> David, the moderators here are also members and do participate as such. You can see me navigating the distinction in posts like this one, from earlier in this thread:
> 
> So far as I know, the above was the only moderation action taken in this thread.
> 
> Obviously, a certain level of trust is required -- trust that moderators won't abuse their office by maliciously deleting or altering the posts of people they disagree with, or other such malfeasance. That's the case whether moderators articulate their views or not. I would hope we've earned that trust. If I'm too new at moderating to have earned your trust yet, I hope I will over time.


No, you haven't earned it. In fact, you've forfeited it by continuing to defend the practice of being both judge, juror and, now, attorney for the defense. I hate to sound like that's a personal attack, and I'm sure your intentions are good, but so are the intentions of the cop who, after separating two people having a mutual fistfight, proceeds to declare one guilty and one innocent. That's not a cop's role.

You cannot be both an impartial mod, and declare your partisanship within a thread. When you became a mod, IMO you gave up your privilege of taking sides. Sure you have the RIGHT to not follow this principle, but having the right doesn't mean it's right to do so.

Judges need to be impartial. A mod is, at root, a judge. You're being explicitly partial. That's conflict of interest. You could be my best friend and I'd say the same exact thing.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

David VanDyke said:


> _Sometimes companies only admit they won't sell something because of "those dirty gay cooties" when they get called on it..._ Using loaded terms to whip up emotions, highlighting only one aspect of things. No different from saying "Sometimes black people deal drugs..." which is technically true, but omits the fact that people of every race deals drugs and that highlighting one race is a smear campaign, not a reasoned argument. Note this response immediately after: "This is true Becca, which is why I am saying people need to stop with the immediate urge to 'raise awareness' *which is the usual code these days for get the crowd riled up and sic em on the company.*" (emphasis mine). So, it's clear to others, not just me, that this is trying to "whip up and sic 'em."


I do think it's important to be fair, even when tackling discrimination. I remain comfortable with what I wrote in that post, so long as it's read in the context of the larger paragraph:



Becca Mills said:


> Sometimes companies only admit they won't sell something because of "those dirty gay cooties" when they get called on it and have to make a choice to 1) be publicly honest about their practices, so that consumers can make informed choices, or 2) changing their practices. Until they're called on it, they try to have it both ways -- say nothing that sounds discriminatory so as not to push away Group A while hoping word quietly gets out within Group B that this is a site where their kids can't get a hold of LGBT+ content. I don't think we know yet whether Playster is actually trying to play both sides of the fence like that, but the only way to find out is to shed some light on the situation and see what the company says. (emphasis added)


I went on in that post to say this:



Becca Mills said:


> If you made me guess right now, I'd say this will turn out to be a dumb decision made by someone pretty far down Playster's food chain. I don't see any sign in the company's web presence that it's trying to focus on a very conservative market segment. Rather, all their imagery is young, young, young, and today's young folks support LGBT rights in very substantial majorities here in the U.S. If they've made a high-level choice to exclude LGBT+ books, well, it seems weird and self-sabotaging. (emphasis added)


In other words, when you say, "Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by mere stupidity," I think you're echoing my point.



David VanDyke said:


> No, you haven't earned it. In fact, you've forfeited it by continuing to defend the practice of being both judge, juror and, now, attorney for the defense. I hate to sound like that's a personal attack, and I'm sure your intentions are good, but so are the intentions of the cop who, after separating two people having a mutual fistfight, proceeds to declare one guilty and one innocent. That's not a cop's role.
> 
> You cannot be both an impartial mod, and declare your partisanship within a thread. When you became a mod, IMO you gave up your privilege of taking sides. Sure you have the RIGHT to not follow this principle, but having the right doesn't mean it's right to do so.
> 
> Judges need to be impartial. A mod is, at root, a judge. You're being explicitly partial. That's conflict of interest. You could be my best friend and I'd say the same exact thing.


Well, I'm sorry to hear that.

Just to be clear, the "position" I'm taking here is a pretty basic one: _Playster shouldn't exclude LGBT+ books, and it wasn't wrong to challenge that exclusion_. Given KBoards's culture of non-discrimination, that stance feels reasonable to me.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Becca Mills said:


> I do think it's important to be fair, even when tackling discrimination. I remain comfortable with what I wrote in that post, so long as it's read in the context of the larger paragraph:
> 
> I went on in that post to say this:
> 
> ...


It's great to see you now posting balanced, sensible things. Some things you said above were not so balanced and sensible. I'm going to choose to view this as a course correction by "the system" when someone speaks up firmly but politely when it strays.

It would be nice to see the mods here establish some kind of written policy on this issue and publish it, though. Leaders or judges without any accountability or written guidelines can be easily tempted to go beyond "the rules," even the unwritten ones, and they end up going with their instinct or opinion when they should be following policy.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Becca Mills said:


> So ... being in a position of power at KBoards means I can't advocate for authors I think are being discriminated against? I don't think that's right, David. I'm still a person, and I still get to take positions on issues I feel strongly about. Yes, I try not to take wade into threads where KBoarders are actively pitted against one another, but this really didn't strike me as such a situation. Advocating for authors of the excluded LGBT books didn't entail advocating _against _some other group of KBoards members. A KBoarder's book with straight characters is not going to get dropped from Playster's catalog in order to make room for a book with gay characters. It didn't occur to me that there would be an opposing "side" to this situation.
> 
> Personally, I'm willing to take Playster at its word that there was no "intentional assault" here. I'd still like more explanation of what went wrong, but I think the quickness with which the company responded and fixed things supports the idea that the exclusion was accidental. But as I said in my last post, I also don't think _intentions _are the be-all and end-all of situations like this one. Intentionality matters a lot, but it's not the whole story, IMO. When it takes over as the whole story, it quickly becomes a way to dismiss events and situations as not significant, not worth addressing, etc.


Thanks for standing up for us, Becca. I am glad to see the Playster problem resolved in a positive manner.


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## Sam B (Mar 28, 2017)

JRTomlin said:


> Thanks for standing up for us, Becca. I am glad to see the Playster problem resolved in a positive manner.


Agreed. Your advocacy on behalf of those of us who write LGBTQIA+ was helpful and appreciated.


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## lyndabelle (Feb 26, 2015)

Playster said:


> After careful investigation of each step of our content ingestion process for self-publishing platforms, we discovered that our restriction on the 'erotica' category had unintentionally affected other tags and genres, including LGBTQ+ fiction. We are extremely sorry for our mistake and any hurt it may have caused - it was never our intention to block these titles.
> 
> What happens now? The books that were wrongfully declined are currently being added to the Playster catalog where they will join our existing collection of LGBTQ+ titles previously delivered by our other major publishing partners.
> 
> ...


I'm happy to see this problem was solved, and that a mistake in trying to vet one thing lead to an unforeseen outcome that they are fixing now that it was pointed out to them. I think that was a great way for authors to work with a platform and keep it working for readers and authors alike. I think taking them at their word is fine. Mistakes happen. It was brought to their attention, they investigated, and are fixing the problem. Great to see something happened with this and it didn't just get let go. All you can ask of a company is to fix a problem if found.

Was it discrimination? I don't think it was initially done on purpose, and was working to separate without an intention to do so. It was, from what it sounds like in the explanation, an algro doing it's thing, and it needed to be tweeked. I think giving them the benefit of the doubt is really something that can be done. Companies that right mistakes instead of covering them up is the best way to do business.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

Thanks for 'splaining


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

David VanDyke said:


> It's great to see you now posting balanced, sensible things. Some things you said above were not so balanced and sensible. I'm going to choose to view this as a course correction by "the system" when someone speaks up firmly but politely when it strays.
> 
> It would be nice to see the mods here establish some kind of written policy on this issue and publish it, though. Leaders or judges without any accountability or written guidelines can be easily tempted to go beyond "the rules," even the unwritten ones, and they end up going with their instinct or opinion when they should be following policy.


I think the fact that we tend to work by consensus on major decisions helps with balance and accountability, though of course no one is perfect. Having a written policy or statement on moderatorhood and membership (how they go together, challenges, what it means to be both, etc.) is a great suggestion. Consider it forwarded into the bowels of the smoke-filled rooms!


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## kusanagi (Jan 27, 2017)

(snip)

It was a dark and stormy night...


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

David VanDyke said:


> It would be nice to see the mods here establish some kind of written policy on this issue and publish it, though. Leaders or judges without any accountability or written guidelines can be easily tempted to go beyond "the rules," even the unwritten ones, and they end up going with their instinct or opinion when they should be following policy.


Our site founder, Harvey, made it quite clear to us that he expected the moderators to take an active part in discussions as members of the community. I can't remember now if that was something he PM'd me or if there's a post somewhere, but I'll try to find it.

However, this topic has come up before in the WC; most notably in a thread started by former member MikeAngel, who also compared the role of moderator here to a cop on the beat, which I do not believe is a good fit. (I think that conversation is now in Forum Central as a general discussion, important to the community outside the WC.) It's more like being part of a Homeowner's Association. You might get a warning from the homeowner's association and then eat hotdogs together at the community picnic next to the pool and discuss the baseball game.

When a mod posts as a member, which we all have, you are welcome, encouraged, to agree or refute those comments *civilly* as you would any other member. People are not modded for disagreement with a moderator on issues--but they may be on tone. We will often ask another moderator to handle threads we've been actively a part of. We discuss issues quite a lot--there is a consensus on most major modding issues. We give each other feedback.

All of us who are mods were members here first, volunteered to be moderators or accepted an invitation after years of being members. We're not paid. We do not give up our membership in the forum. We are not the police. In fact, the forum here is largely policed by your fellow members. It is an active, busy forum and the mods do not read every post. We rely on reports from your peers for notice of problem posts. For example, David, you cited a post here:



David VanDyke said:


> Reply#7--a graphic I don't know how to copy--which says "Homophobes--homophobes everywhere." That's a declaration of intent and guilt. This post was not modded, therefore the mods are giving the accusations their implicit blessing.


An unmodded post is not the recipient of our "implicit blessing." We don't read every post, or often are skimming through a thread. I've been working on a quilt deadline and traveling, and so haven't been online much (am in England right now just getting over jet lag) and hadn't read this thread. There were no reports for the particular post you cite, so this is the first I've seen it. I agree that it Is not appropriate in this topic, which deserves serious thoughtful discussion, and I've removed it. Thank you for pointing it out.

Finally, this discussion is derailing the thread. If you'd like to discuss this further, please start a thread in the Suggestion and Comments area of Forum Central.

Betsy
KB Mod

Edit: I'm going to be at auto races in the south of England most of the day, so won't be back to see replies, reports or PMs until then. Y'all be nice to each other.

_Edited to fix typos I didn't have time to fix when originally posting. --Betsy_


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## Gwen Hayes (Apr 24, 2011)

I don't thinks it's quite as resolved as I thought--though i suspect it might be D2D issue. 

My 3rd in series M/M was blocked before it was submitted to Playster for being erotica, which I did not tag it as such. I asked for clarification so I could know in future and was told my the same rep dicussed upthread that: 

"I have reviewed the book and feel that the book is not erotica, but erotic romance, (romance category but with sexual scenes).  For that reason I have listed this book with Scribd again since they will accept most erotic romance. Playster will not accept the book as a erotic romance, so it will continue to be blocked at that vendor.  If Scribd reviews the book and feels the scenes are too racy, they may reject it directly. If that happens, we will not be able to overturn their decision."

So this means to me that anything with sex is erotic romance, but only sometimes. 
Like Sex Panther cologne.

Since my equally sexy hetero books and my other two M/M books were not flagged, I think part of the problem is who reviews your books on which day. This book never even got sent to Playster. The first email told me they held it back...so Playster didn't reject it. D2D did.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Gwen Hayes said:


> I don't thinks it's quite as resolved as I thought--though i suspect it might be D2D issue.
> 
> My 3rd in series M/M was blocked before it was submitted to Playster for being erotica, which I did not tag it as such. I asked for clarification so I could know in future and was told my the same rep dicussed upthread that:
> 
> ...


This makes me re-think working with D2D which I was considering. I hope they take care of it because it should not happen.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Maybe D2D needs to clarify with Playster just what is meant by its TOS prohibition on anything that "contains or depicts sexual activity," then make sure all its employees are operating on the same page. I mean, surely Playster doesn't *literally* mean all works _containing _sexual activity are banned, since that would mean any book wherein people do something sexual, even if it's totally off-page, would be rejected, and that's obviously not the case. So the dividing line between okay and not-okay sexual activity must be somewhere. If D2D's employees have to guess where the line is, that sounds difficult and, like Gwen suggested, a recipe for inconsistency.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Gwen Hayes said:


> I don't thinks it's quite as resolved as I thought--though i suspect it might be D2D issue.
> 
> My 3rd in series M/M was blocked before it was submitted to Playster for being erotica, which I did not tag it as such. I asked for clarification so I could know in future and was told my the same rep dicussed upthread that:
> 
> ...


When Playster first rejected my book b/c of the issue with the Gay/Lesbian tag being automatically bonged, Crystal at D2D went through my book and highlighted sections that she thought made them against the Playster TOS. She made a big deal of the fact that the ONLY reason I was being bonged was because I was erotica or erotic romance ...

After Playster fixed the issue, my book was approved and all books have gone through to Playster.

I really think that D2D is putting itself in the inappropriate role of censor.It's given me a really bad taste in my mouth and I'm thinking of pulling everything from them. A large task.

I would point them to this thread, remind that that books they thought were inappropriate were not, and to not step inbetween the review of Playster and its material.


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## Gwen Hayes (Apr 24, 2011)

Crystal is the rep I communicated with also.


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## YudronWangmo (Jul 8, 2015)

Hi, ya'll. I just thought I'd say that I had a quirky YA book with a young lesbian protagonist, clearly with a LGBT tag, accepted by Playster via D2D in June. It was not mainly romance, but it had a somewhat steamy dance scene and a romantic ending. Second, as an older lesbian, I want to say a big thank you to people who feature real lesbian characters that it is deeply appreciated. Lesbians have become a lot less visible than we used to be. Sadly, other than "lesbian romance," it is not easy to get lesbian reader's attention with a heroic lesbian protag because there is no specific Amazon or BISAC category for that.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

X. Aratare said:


> When Playster first rejected my book b/c of the issue with the Gay/Lesbian tag being automatically bonged, Crystal at D2D went through my book and highlighted sections that she thought made them against the Playster TOS. She made a big deal of the fact that the ONLY reason I was being bonged was because I was erotica or erotic romance ...
> 
> After Playster fixed the issue, my book was approved and all books have gone through to Playster.
> 
> ...


Obviously, something went wrong, but it's not clear to me that it's necessarily a global D2D problem. I think I said this upthread, but when you asked about your book, Crystal looked at your book and guessed at why Playster rejected it. Remember that it was Playster who made the original rejection, not D2D. It sounds as if Crystal was trying to figure out what was up. Asking Playster might have been faster. In any case, Crystal was looking at your book in isolation, not comparing it to steamy M/F books. Nothing in that exchange suggests that D2D necessarily makes a habit of censoring in the absence of really clear guidelines from one of its distribution outlets.


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## Gwen Hayes (Apr 24, 2011)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Obviously, something went wrong, but it's not clear to me that it's necessarily a global D2D problem. I think I said this upthread, but when you asked about your book, Crystal looked at your book and guessed at why Playster rejected it. Remember that it was Playster who made the original rejection, not D2D. It sounds as if Crystal was trying to figure out what was up. Asking Playster might have been faster. In any case, Crystal was looking at your book in isolation, not comparing it to steamy M/F books. Nothing in that exchange suggests that D2D necessarily makes a habit of censoring in the absence of really clear guidelines from one of its distribution outlets.


Actually, Playster never had the chance to see it to reject it. It was never sent to them. Sorry if that wasn't clear. The first email I was sent about the problem said this: "Our sales channels have asked us not to send certain material to them. Draft2Digital's automated content review has detected some of this declined material in your book"

So I asked what the automated review looks for so I know in the future and was then told that after another review, it was erotic romance because it had sexual content.

My confusion is that it's 3rd in a series and the other two were okay. So, when I asked for clarification, I was told than any romance with sexual content is erotic romance--but that cannot be true because most romance, unless categorized as sweet, clean, or inspirational, has sexual content. Whether it is het or same sex. And then there would be a lot fewer romances on Playster.


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## X. Aratare (Feb 5, 2013)

Bill Hiatt said:


> Obviously, something went wrong, but it's not clear to me that it's necessarily a global D2D problem. I think I said this upthread, but when you asked about your book, Crystal looked at your book and guessed at why Playster rejected it. Remember that it was Playster who made the original rejection, not D2D. It sounds as if Crystal was trying to figure out what was up. Asking Playster might have been faster. In any case, Crystal was looking at your book in isolation, not comparing it to steamy M/F books. Nothing in that exchange suggests that D2D necessarily makes a habit of censoring in the absence of really clear guidelines from one of its distribution outlets.


Bill, again you're being quite reasonable, but Crystal was not.

Her email explicitly stated that one reason for my book's failure to be accepted. She was way wrong. When I pointed her to this thread, she doubled down. Then Playster accepted all my books after they realized the issue with LGBT tags. So under other facts what you're saying is totally legit, but there's an additional problem here.

I don't know what "duties" D2D has when they ship books over to the third party retailers, but I highly doubt that reading the books to make sure they comply with TOS is one of them. If the cover, genre tags and description are in line with the TOS, that's really all that should be looked at, if anything by D2D. The retailer should then be reviewing the books itself. If there's a problem THEY make the decision.

In my case and in the other author's place, they aren't allowing Playster to do that review. Crystal didn't let me speak to Playster (which is what I wished - I spoke to them HERE instead, which was why this thread was so valuable as D2D would never have actually found out about this problem b/c it was too busy reading books and being monitor) nor did she let the other author. It's her judgment she's using. So D2D is becoming another layer of "review" that is, in my mind, inappropriate. Crystal does NOT understand the genres at all and is making a "gut" reaction. Most people's "gut" reactions is that anything with gay people in it automatically is more sexual, more risque and more porn-like than anything completely of the same heat level in straight romance. So they are becoming a gatekeeper that I didn't sign up for.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

I don't think any of the authors who were rejected by Playster need to justify their complaint to anyone. The fact of the matter is, the company responded to us, admitted error, apologized, and is working toward fixing it. I'm not going to justify standing up for myself and other LGBT authors. I'm quite proud of the resolution we came to, especially since -- from what I hear -- this is a common issue with smaller retailers and authors' complaints are usually completely ignored and never resolved. These authors' previous experiences compelled them to take this matter seriously. This is precisely why I reached out, because although the rejection seemed odd, I wasn't sure if anything of concern was actually happening. That we were able to come together and work with the company is especially wonderful. I hope other retailers will take note from how Playster handled the situation.

Does anyone remember when Xbox first released its Kinect movement sensor? It didn't recognize black people. It only recognized white people. Though it wasn't intentional, it was still discriminatory. People called out the company and Xbox apologized and fixed the problem.

Organizations easily dismiss complaints here and there. When a problem becomes widespread and people come together, though, companies can no longer file them away as isolated cases. If people hadn't come together and complained about the Kinect, Xbox might've ignored the issue -- or maybe would've been completely oblivious to it. There would be a whole lot of kids excluded from using it. It might not seem like a big deal to some people, especially those who don't play video games, but to the people being excluded, it's a huge deal.



Gwen Hayes said:


> I don't thinks it's quite as resolved as I thought--though i suspect it might be D2D issue.
> 
> My 3rd in series M/M was blocked before it was submitted to Playster for being erotica, which I did not tag it as such. I asked for clarification so I could know in future and was told my the same rep dicussed upthread that:
> 
> ...





X. Aratare said:


> When Playster first rejected my book b/c of the issue with the Gay/Lesbian tag being automatically bonged, Crystal at D2D went through my book and highlighted sections that she thought made them against the Playster TOS. She made a big deal of the fact that the ONLY reason I was being bonged was because I was erotica or erotic romance ...
> 
> After Playster fixed the issue, my book was approved and all books have gone through to Playster.
> 
> ...





Gwen Hayes said:


> Crystal is the rep I communicated with also.


I'd email Playster directly. This Crystal employee might not understand the differences between the genres, and as Bill said, might not even be aware of the bigger issue. D2D might need to inform its employees, but we can't control that. I'd definitely email [email protected] as they encouraged us to, should we have further issues.



YudronWangmo said:


> Hi, ya'll. I just thought I'd say that I had a quirky YA book with a young lesbian protagonist, clearly with a LGBT tag, accepted by Playster via D2D in June. It was not mainly romance, but it had a somewhat steamy dance scene and a romantic ending. Second, as an older lesbian, I want to say a big thank you to people who feature real lesbian characters that it is deeply appreciated. Lesbians have become a lot less visible than we used to be. Sadly, other than "lesbian romance," it is not easy to get lesbian reader's attention with a heroic lesbian protag because there is no specific Amazon or BISAC category for that.


I'm happy to see so much lesbian and LGBT+ fiction, too. <333


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

X. Aratare said:


> I don't know what "duties" D2D has when they ship books over to the third party retailers, but I highly doubt that reading the books to make sure they comply with TOS is one of them. If the cover, genre tags and description are in line with the TOS, that's really all that should be looked at, if anything by D2D. The retailer should then be reviewing the books itself. If there's a problem THEY make the decision.


From the email Gwen got, it seems clear D2D has agreed to vet books with an "automated content review" before submitting them to Playster. I can't think of any reason D2D wouldn't be free to make such an agreement with Playster or any other retailer, but it does shift some of the onus of responsibility: the basic rules might be Playster's, but the quality of implementation would depend on D2D.

I wonder if D2D has been vetting books before submitting them all along, or if it's a recent change. If it's a new thing, might D2D have made a _don't-worry-we'll-vet-everything_ agreement with Playster in an effort to stop the LGBT-tag filtering?


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Before Playster came along, some of my books were vetted in D2D.

Notably a book called Bourbon, Babysitter, and Blackmail. It was initially rejected and I had a short email exchange with Crystal about it. She said that many of the European sites had a very stern rule about no sex for blackmail storylines. I had to assure her the blackmailer did not coerce the person being blackmailed into sex, but rather to look the other way in regards to another character. the book went through.

I don't have a problem with D2D "vetting." So far, it has been a fairly smooth process.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> From the email Gwen got, it seems clear D2D has agreed to vet books with an "automated content review" before submitting them to Playster. I can't think of any reason D2D wouldn't be free to make such an agreement with Playster or any other retailer, but it does shift some of the onus of responsibility: the basic rules might be Playster's, but the quality of implementation would depend on D2D.
> 
> I wonder if D2D has been vetting books before submitting them all along, or if it's a recent change. If it's a new thing, might D2D have made a _don't-worry-we'll-vet-everything_ agreement with Playster in an effort to stop the LGBT-tag filtering?





Laran Mithras said:


> Before Playster came along, some of my books were vetted in D2D.
> 
> Notably a book called Bourbon, Babysitter, and Blackmail. It was initially rejected and I had a short email exchange with Crystal about it. She said that many of the European sites had a very stern rule about no sex for blackmail storylines. I had to assure her the blackmailer did not coerce the person being blackmailed into sex, but rather to look the other way in regards to another character. the book went through.
> 
> I don't have a problem with D2D "vetting." So far, it has been a fairly smooth process.


Maybe vetting was completely random. Could be that it depended on the day; when there were fewer titles to vet on a given day, employees might've had more time to review them line by line. Then, depending on the employee's knowledge of genre or personal stances, certain books might've been rejected before they even got to Playster.

I'm totally speculating here, but books that weren't vetted could've gotten caught in Playster's filter and rejected based on a set of specific qualities. That would explain why some LGBT titles were approved yet several were rejected.

It's possible that now D2D has to vet more carefully, which I can't imagine because that might slow down publication time. My guess is that Playster tweaked their filter, but D2D will watch closely at first to make sure everything's flowing smoothly.


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