Amazon blocking books based on content

Is anyone else's books missing from online sites? On some sites my paperbacks are not listed as out of stock. Ebooks are listed as unavailable. Only showing for sale on Amazon U.S. , Barnes, and Apple. On non U.S. Amazon sites only my paperbacks are for sell. One of them did show my newest book there. But it's listed unavailable and published 4/15/2020. No where else for sale. This would explain the low sales

I agree with B&G that it is disturbing to think that Lulu (and similar companies) may filter books based on its own standards of what seems appropriate.

To say that they are free to do whatever they like leads one really fast into a quandary: what about the bakery that refuses to provide a cake for a same-sex wedding? Why would that be wrong and Lulu be right in refusing to publish a book?

I think there is a fundamental difference between the two...the only problem is that Lulu finds itself balancing on a narrow tightrope. There are some things that would clearly be questionable: Books supporting pedophilia, for instance, or books promulgating racism or antisemitism, or books advocating violence. Both the Southern Poverty Law Center* and the FBI** have pretty clear guidelines as to what constitutes "hate." But it would be easy to slip too far and refuse to publish a book simply because Lulu disagrees with it and not because it advocates, say, rape, child molestation or the eradication of a religion or race. For instance, if Lulu refused to publish a book about Wicca because its CEO is an evangelical Christian, that would put it squarely in the position of the bakery. On the other hand, I think it would be right in refusing to publish a how-to manual on child pornography.

The decision of the bakery to refuse service on the basis of a customer's sexual orientation would put it clearly on the FBI's radar as a hate crime...just as an anti-gay book might be refused publication by Lulu. For example, books like "The Negro: What is His Ethnological Status?" and "The Negro a Beast" attempted to prove that blacks were, literally, soulless animals created for no other purpose than to serve whites. Or "The Mongol in Our Midst," that argued that blacks were closely related to gorillas. Or "The New Elements of Race Investigation," which claimed that "the blood particles of a Jew are completely different from those of a Nordic man." Or "Jews Must Live" (subtitled "An Account of the Persecution of the World by Israel on all the Frontiers of Civilization") that contained an appendix that asked "Do the Jews emit a peculiar odor?" (The author said "yes.") I think that Lulu would be perfectly justified in refusing to print and distribute books like these.

I think it is both disingenuous and naive to say, "Let the reader decide for themselves what is right and wrong." Books like these and countless others work very hard at sounding plausible and even scientific. They can be---as intended---very convincing, especially to a reader who has no reason to doubt what they say. "Oh, sure!" says the gun dealer who sold a loaded weapon to an angry drunk. "It was entirely up to him what he did with it."


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*The SPLC defines "hate group" as "an organization that---based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities---has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics...The organizations on our hate group list vilify others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity."

**The FBI defines a "hate crime" "as a committed criminal offense which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias(es) against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity." In fact, the FBI has a very specific list of biases on which hate crimes are committed (and it is a pretty long list, too).

Ron,

I basically agree with your points but I need to point out that promotion of certain ideas or acts in a book isn't the same as what a particular reader may think a book is promoting. For that matter, the number of people who actually comprehend legal definitions versus those who think a law says something it doesn't is disconcerting.

One book that comes to mind is "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, published back in 1977. It is conceivable someone could interpret parts of the text as promoting cannibalism, underage sex, as well as pedophilia, when it doesn't. If that book were published today it doesn't take much stretching of the imagination to see someone wanting it banned due to its purported lack of basic human decency.

FBI and SPLC definitions on hate speech can be very useful guidelines but those guidelines aren't universally accepted around the world, and with writers and the audience of same living in varying polities at times with different standards of what constitutes hate speech Lulu Press needs to be very cautious on its tightrope.

As per the themes in the Delirium series and, of course, Nineteen Eighty-Four, love might be considered indecent in a hundred years. And, if I recall correctly, The Giver.

I think there would be a considerable difference between what might be contained in bits and pieces of a novel---there are huge chunks of "Moby-Dick" that are pretty clearly homosexual---and a book that is overtly devoted to a specific topic. I think, too, some consideration should be given to the intent of a book. For instance, there is a pretty embarrassing caricature of a Jew in Jules Verne's "Off on a Comet," but the book itself is not remotely about antisemitism. The N-word appears throughout "Tom Sawyer" and "To Kill a Mockingbird," which has given a number of people pause for thought in recent years---but neither book is remotely racist. To the contrary, in fact. 

On the other hand, a book such as "The Turner Diaries" was so explicitly racist and antisemitic that it was labeled the "bible of the racist right" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The book was influential in shaping white nationalism since the late 1970s as well as the development of the white genocide theory. It has also inspired numerous hate crimes and acts of terrorism, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1999 London nail bombings, and the 1984 assassination of Alan Berg. John William King was convicted of dragging African-American James Byrd to his death in Jasper, Texas in 1998. As King shackled Byrd's legs to his truck, he was reported to have said, "We're going to start 'The Turner Diaries' early."

The book was originally published by a white nationalist organization, National Alliance which---in its present incarnation as National Vanguard---keeps it in print to this day. National Vanguard is on the SPLC list of hate groups and the Canada Border Services Agency has classified "The Turner Diaries" as hate-propaganda literature that cannot be imported into the country.

Among other books National Vanguard has published are "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews," "Favored Races," and "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century," which attempts to disprove the Holocaust. It might be worth pointing out that National Vanguard publishes these books themselves. As I said before, Lulu is not the only game in town. If someone wants to publish a book promoting hate, sexism and racism there are plenty of ways to do that. No one is stopping them from doing that.

You can find "The Turner Diaries" on Amazon with no disclaimers.

One Amazon reader made an interesting and valid point in their review of the book: "It was a really tough read though. There were days where I could only read a page or two due to the vile rhetoric, because it made me nauseous and my eyes hurt from rolling...I think it's in the best interests of any person who isn't an anarchist or white supremacist nationalist to read this book and understand what goes on in their thought processes." Which is certainly a valid observation.

That being said, most of the reviews were glowing ones posted by people who lauded the book's themes of racism, white supremacy and violence against blacks. 

So it goes...

"My Struggle: Potty Training a Two-year-old" reminds me of Spike Milligan's "Hitler, My Part In His Downfall."

Speaking of Hitler, I did a book cover recently for Baen Books. The novel was "Earthdoom!" and one of the plot elements involved was a small English town in which everyone, man, woman and child, was a Hitler clone. Unfortunately, the publisher loathes anything Nazi and refuses to have any sort of reference to Hitler or the Nazis on their book covers... So I had to come up with something different.



I think that one guideline for Lulu might be the organizations on the SPLC's list and to refuse to publish anything that comes from them or their members. That would at least cover racism and antisemitism as well as give Lulu a semblance of objectivity. Other things such as pedophilia, pornography, etc. might be a little more subjective but there still could be some standards set.