Tuesday 21 February 2012

Bookstrand, Siren Publishing, Censorship, and Lies

The current big to-do in the independent erotica author world is that Bookstrand has recently closed all independent publishers' accounts, denying them the privelege of selling there. This is their perogative, of course, but as this comes less than a week after a TOS change regarding what works they allow to be sold there, one wonders why last week's debacle needed to occur at all.



If this were the only issue at stand here, it would merely be disappointing. As a mature woman in command of her own sexuality, I take absolute pride in producing and selling pornographic material. I make no attempt to deny that my works are pornographic, or that they are produced for any purposes other than titillation. I do not feel such works need to be textually bankrupt, but that being said, my works are no less pornographic and solely intended for the reader's arousal simply because I as a writer experiment with writing styles or perspective tricks within them. The marginalization of such authors and such works is troublesome, but not unexpected.

But, this isn't the only matter at play here. Bookstrand is the first home of books produced by Siren Publishing. They are an erotica publisher, and they would have you believe that rape fantasy is not a real or common fetish, that sex with a wolf that will eventually turn into a person is a gentle, beautiful thing and could in no way be confused with beastiality, that independent authors do nothing but write about people fucking pet goats, and that there is nothing arousing about taboo-breaking fantasies such as between brothers, step- or otherwise.

Funny that I say brothers. First, a bit of context.

This blog post has an email from a representative of Siren Publishing. In addition to being one of the most grossly unprofessional letters one could expect from someone who is theoretically a legitimate person of business, there are some interesting things said within.

Siren-Bookstrand has never produced works with themes of incest? I guess their number 2 best-seller, which talks about twins having the same 'mate' must not contain any sexual scenes involving the both of them. Let's just look down at the excerpt. Gee, the normal excerpt sure dwells on the fact that they're twins. Probably it won't come up in the adult excerpt.

Oh. Wait. Yes it does. They're both involved in the scene and the fact that they are brothers certainly arises.

Well, that must be an isolated incident, right?

Of course not. Bookstrand's bestseller list is filled with incest, twincest, and cousinfucking.

This is just from their bestseller list, and we haven't even gone halfway down. So either this woman who is speaking for Siren a) doesn't know the material they're producing, b) doesn't think it's incest if they're gay, or c) is lying.

Are any of these palatable? I think not.

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