From: EREC ~ Paypal Prudery Strikes Bookstrand
Have you ever actually been to Bookstrand and looked at their New Arrivals in the erotica section? It seems to be a predominant category for them too.
My Kinky Family
My Daddy The Sub
My Daughter The Domme
Gangbanged By Wolves
Add that to all the slapped together K-Mart special “lots of skin” photoshop covers and give me a fucking break you are selling porn. If Bookstrand had a floor it would be sticky and smelly. I even read where one author was like “I won’t be uploading stories no more”. No editing from these freaks they were just letting authors upload their latest daddy/daughter incest stories and excerpts however cheesy and sleazy they wanted right into the store front, no limits, no review, no nothing.
You and Nifty Erotic Archive are like this close. At least Nifty is fucking free. You know why it is free? Because it is very hard to sell the type of stories found there through regular honest publishers.
So no, Paypal has a TOS and no, you do not have a “right” to use Paypal a private company outside of their TOS. They do have a “right” as explained by their TOS to withdraw their services if they catch you fair and square selling or even just advertising porn. From what I can see by quickly reading your web site. You sell porn you idiots and you are absolutely clueless in how to hide that fact.
Oh and kids by the way… It’s not a morals thing. You want to know why Paypal does this? They have to use various card processing systems like the one owned by my bank. Paypal is like one of those cheap cell phone services they do not own the equipment they rent it for a period of time at a price from like AT&T and such. Think of Paypal as a front that simply finds the best processing deal from different banks.
Guess what type of transactions my bank and most mainstream banks will not insure? Yeah, online porn!
Why you ask? Because time and again online porn web sites are where the most credit card fraud problems occur. So no mainstream bank transaction insurance for you and if you find a card processor who will take on your porn web site you will be paying through the nose and for some very well documented reasons. Porn is expensive and no one is stopping you from selling Porn online just do not expect to break various rules regarding age restrictions and appropriate labels on your smut.
No, I do not buy Bookstrand was shocked, shocked I say! They read the Paypal TOS when they signed the dotted line and they knew the story because this ongoing porn versus Paypal wank has been written about on the web for years now (Google says at least since 2003 if not earlier.) and they ignored the consequences of selling this in your face crap on purpose. They need to put on their big girl panties and pay the price and go find a credit card processor that will do business with them knowing full well they sell incest stories and rape fic and the rest of that unedited porn they want to hock because I guess their romances suck.
No tears from me for a bunch of fucking cheap amateurs. Cheap Erotic Romance is one thing and there are several companies doing it the right way without a total lack of taste so they get to use Paypal but blatant incest fic and rape fic well that’s an entirely different hard core game there. No excuses, cut the bull, go find someone else to give a shit.
Tags: Wank
Merrian wrote,
Well All Romance ebooks (ARe) better look at the TOS for Paypal then. They have a pretty similar content to the type of titles you note, I see them all the time on the new releases bar that comes up when you visit their site – lot’s of psuedo incest with step daddie and daughter, etc.
I hope they are legal with Paypal because they are easy to deal with and I can buy nonDRM epub without having to visit lots of publisher websites. They even had RA Macavoy’s new book and getting ebooks of mainstream fantasy is hard outside the Amazon world and USA world.
Link | February 17th, 2012 at 12:46 am
TeddyPig wrote,
Yeah I saw that going on too. It is noticeable and they are not fooling anyone. That is why Amazon does not let that stuff hit the front page anywhere on their web site you have to go looking for it. It is there but they know better than to promote it like a total idiot.
All Romance is letting that stuff show up in their bestseller listings.
I buy porn, I watch porn. I have several memberships to different porn web sites. I know porn when I see it.
BUT… business is business and fuck the stupid self pub kiddies if they try to go around your rules and get all smart like this is not “really” incest blah blah blah. Ban their fucking sleazy perv asses and never let them sell through your web site again. You do not need two faced jerks like that. Writers know what they are doing when they title shit so blatantly that it needs a freaking paragraph of explanation to say it’s “really” not like that… but it is.
Call them on it and ban them for trying to sell crap like that despite the rules. Call them the names they deserve to be called. Fucking opportunistic sacks of shit.
Link | February 17th, 2012 at 12:52 am
KB/KT Grant wrote,
I have noticed ARe has an increase in step-daughter/step-daddy we well as some fetish stories, but most of them are self-published. Does Bookstrand allow self-published books to be sold on their site?
Link | February 17th, 2012 at 7:22 am
TeddyPig wrote,
That’s exactly what I got from reading this…
http://fionaflorence.blogspot.com/2012/02/bookstrand-are-tightening-up-lewd-pun.html?zx=feb6b8123120568b
Link | February 17th, 2012 at 7:37 am
v wrote,
Bookstrand is also stomping out the border around the forbidden zone–barely legal etc.
Link | February 17th, 2012 at 12:56 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Well AND…
Remember Siren/Bookstrand was also the publisher of Christine Phoenix the cut and paste author.
This all falls into that same area of them not caring what the hell their authors are doing. They don’t edit anything. They don’t provide any real services. They just take a cut of the profits for running the web site and everything is peachy. Another fly by night junk vendor.
It’s a free for all and Bookstrand is pretty much a big old pile of sleaze that leeches off the authors it gets to play along and obviously some authors who have no idea who Siren/Bookstrand is but are having their hard work sold by them from what we have seen so far.
We have got identified plagiarist and kiddie incest porn… great company to keep. Yeah, that’s the type of place I want to have publishing my books.
I say find something with a bit more class before standing your ground over some private business saying no to you breaking their fully documented and agreed upon rules.
Link | February 17th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
Erastes wrote,
Yes. This. You have said with your usual erudition what I’ve been sitting on my hands and not saying. Too many people click on the TOSs that you are given without reading ‘em (I’m one) so you can’t whine about the meanies afterwards! When this story first broke i went over and had a look at Bookstrand (to be perfectly frank I’d not heard of them before) and thought “god – i’d never publish with them ANYWAY” and am quite thankful that only two of my books can be found there.
Link | February 19th, 2012 at 4:35 am
Dear All Romance eBooks… | The Naughty Bits wrote,
[...] dump this thinly veiled incest junk it will only get you in trouble with Paypal as seen with the latest Siren/Bookstrand bruhaha and the self pubbed authors doing it are a bunch of crazy self entitled juveniles to say the least [...]
Link | February 20th, 2012 at 9:05 am