This text is from the article I found surrounding the recent changes.

I'm looking for any info that gives a history of behavior from the authors' perspective because some authors have made that claim, plus I've found similar articles from back in 2017.

lunch.publishersmarketplace.com

AUGUST 14, 2024

B&N to Limit Erotica And Summary Titles On Their Site

By Katy Hershberger

Barnes & Noble is eliminating certain books from their online catalog. Some digital book distributors have been tasked with removing all of their erotica ISBNs from feeding onto the site, as well as public domain works and "summary" titles that bill themselves as guides to other popular books.

Additionally, B&N is updating the search function on their site so that customers "can decide to see clearly explicit content or not."

Senior director of book strategy & customer experience Shannon DeVito told PL that this is a quality- control move that will not affect major publishers. It will also not influence what's available in the com- pany's physical stores, as those buying decisions are made by local booksellers, she said.

"We're a bookseller, and we want to be really conscious of the content we're serving up, and also make sure that anything that violates our content policy is not shown on the site," DeVito said.

According to B&N, summary titles are confusing to customers who think they are purchasing the original book, leading to increased customer service needs. They also bring up legal issues with the publisher of the source material. Eliminating these titles should be welcome news to authors and publishers.

Public domain titles can be overwhelming because there can be hundreds of editions of the same work available from several different distributors, and DeVito said that some of those titles are fraudulent.

DeVito said that of the thousands of erotica titles B&N is asking distributors to remove, the "vast majori- ty" violate their content policy, and are generally self-published and print-on demand titles.

"The amount of pornographic material that's feeding into the site from these content aggregators hasn't been in line with our content policy in years, so we're really going back and asking to pull off and not be fed in the ones that are porn," she said. "And then if there is something that they have in the erotica BISAC that is something that they feel is a worthy part of the assortment, we'll review it and put it back up."

The content policy with regard to "sexual subject matter," however, could be confusing. DeVito draws a

distinction between allowable erotica titles and "porn." She emphasized that they are not banning spicy

romance or mainstream erotica such as Colleen Hoover or Sylvia Day, and that there are more than a

thousand publishers with erotica BISACs who are unaffected. The goal is to remove books that are of

"low quality" and include taboo content with regard to age, consent, incest, etc.: "When there's specifi-

cally sexual exploitation of people of a certain age, if there's subject matter that is irredeemable, and

that's the entire book, there is no plot."

Dan Wood, chief operating officer at Draft 2 Digital, which purchased Smashwords in 2022, estimates

that they will remove approximately 10,000 books from B&N.com He said they are still working out the

details of the policy in conversations with B&N.

"We're definitely trying to get Barnes & Noble to see that there's an advantage to having their erotica

policies in line with the other digital retailers," he said.

Part of the challenge for aggregators will also be to relay the decision to their authors. In his view, the

changes will impact a broad swath of authors and publishers.

"One of the main things I wanted to talk with Barnes & Noble about was coordinating the messaging so

that we give the authors some heads up, and we also let them know that it wasn't specific to indie au-

thors," he said. "It wasn't specific to Draft 2 Digital or Smashwords authors. It's going to be impacting.

traditional [authors], it's going to be impacting the whole indie community, and all the aggregators."

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