Mrs Grudy, Book selling and me

Yes, Mrs. Grudy is alive and well. It is all well and good to make a little joke at her expense. But the issues raised are really no laughing matter.

As I mentioned yesterday, we put a great deal of time and energy into creating a family friendly site. We did a fair amount of research.

Did you know that if you go to Amazon (for an example) and look for an erotica section – you won’t find one. But if you type “erotica” into the search bar you come up with 8,813 titles in 29 categories from the expected (GLBT, Romance, Scifi/fantasy or Art/photography) to the really unexpected like cooking or outdoors/nature. There is plenty of erotica sold, it’s just not clearly marked.

As a book buyer I have, personally, have had the experience of stumbling into erotic material by accident. And I have to tell you, it is something of a shock to be looking for a history title about ancient Egypt and unto stumble upon Egyptian Erotica.

Now, as a parent, it is really important to me, that children and young adults do not have that same experience. And I believe that parents should have a modicum of control over what their children are exposed to.

So, we made a very conscious decision to clearly segregate the material for “mature adults” into an erotic section. At eBooks About you will find many of the same titles sold elsewhere under other seemingly innocuous sections, clearly labeled and separated into an erotica section. We also created a “gateway page” that can easily be blocked by parental controls. I do not want some kid to find erotica in categories like Teens, Biographies or Graphic Novels.

In doing this we have created a situation which makes it hard to actually sell books because these same self-appointed guardians of morality have deemed that they will not clear credit cards for any site that has items clearly marked as adult. I am left with an choice -- I can do what my competitors do, or I can stick with my guns and do what I believe is morally and ethically responsible.

But there is another more lingering concern for me : my fear that those same self appointed guardians of morality are creating a disingenuous and pernicious form of censorship and a corollary and very underhanded attack on civil liberties.

As an American citizen, I was raised with a reverence for the principles of the First Amendment. Freedom of speech and press are among my most sacred ideals. The idea that a commercial clearing operation can determine what I am allowed to sell or that someone is allowed to buy makes me really uncomfortable. And the surreptitious way it is done make me downright scared.

Censorship of this kind creates an environment everyone loses: the publisher, the distributor, the reader and the entrepreneurial bookseller.

"Yes Mrs Grundy is alive and well and managing several large commercial credit clearing operations. Her health and well being is not something I fear but the surreptitious way she pursues her agenda troubles me greatly.

It is important to be aware of our responsibilities to children . And I believe we should build ecommerce sites where access by the young can be limited. That is a clear agenda for us at eBooks About and the geniuses who have limited our credit clearing choices have made our task harder. They appear to be trying not only to save our young from erotic material but instead to limit everyone's access to that category of literature.

In trying and failing they have harmed the young in this society. Through their attempts to control what consenting adults can read they have reduced the market's capacity to control access, not increased it.

Thus it always has been, the busybodies overreach and ALL of us pay a price that is ultimately a lot higher than it needs to be. If only our morality monitors could simply leave the rest of us to our own generally moral responses to life the world would be a better place. We could all be living together in a community with responsibly drawn boundaries. Instead the largest booksellers hide their erotica in other categories and Mrs. Grundy wails on about the general immorality of our society. How convenient for her!

Mrs Grudy takes on eBooks - Part 1

In case you were wondering, Mrs. Grundy is alive and well in cyberspace. I know because I ran into her last week. And here lies the tale. . . .

eBooks About Everything (in fact the whole eBooks About family of stores) depends on our credit card/e-check clearing company. We have a classic e-commerce business. The standard operating procedure is that customers give us their credit card or banking information, the clearing company verifies and authorizes the information and holds the funds. The customer downloads the file(s) and then the clearing company transfers the money into our bank account.

Things have been going swimmingly. We opened the store, customers have found us and bought books and our credit card clearing company has been doing their job so that each day we end up with a deposit to our bank account. I was happy and I assumed, based on the fees they charge, that they were happy.

But not so fast. . . woke up the other morning with a message in my mail box:

Authorize.Net Corp. ("Authorize.Net") has determined that your business is in violation of Section 2.10 of the Authorize.Net Acceptable Use Guidelines . .. These sections include, but are not limited to, any form(s) of adult, sexually oriented, vulgar or obscene marketing materials, products or services (for example, the display of nude images, the sale of adult phone or escort services,fetishes, or the sale of adult media, entertainment and/or toys). Accordingly, your ability to access and use the Authorize.Net Services will be terminated on August 31, 2007 . . have any questions about this termination notice, please contact.

Huh?

I am serious about not selling inappropriate materials to minors. I am, after all a parent. So, unlike many of my competitors, I have clearly segregated all erotica and other information for “mature” audiences. In doing so, I have created a situation in which it has proven difficult to clear credit cards. Being the eternal optimist, I figured we had a simple failure to communicate, so I sent them back an email:

I am very puzzled by this letter. We do not sell, distribute or promote pornography. My understanding to the Service Agreement was that the policy covers pornography and other truly adult information and products. Our titles are not pornographic in nature but are considered erotica by major publishers (Harper Collins, Harlequin, Random House, Simon & Schuster), distributors (Ingram Micro, Baker &; Taylor, PGW, IPG) and retailers (Borders, Barnes & Nobles, Amazon). Please take a look (www.ebooksabouteverything.com) to see what we actually sell. We have put a “gateway” page on the erotica section of the bookstore, because we are a family friendly site and wish to make sure that we stay that way. Please reconsider your decision

Answer?

If you read the policy, we do not allow anything adult; this includes anything that is sexually orientated. For further information on our acceptable use policy see our website. Our decision stands, you will need to remove the adult orientated items as explained in our policy or we will be forced to terminate your Authorize.Net account on August 31, 2007.

All righty then. . .

We can just move over to Chase who has been soliciting business for a while. But better safe than sorry, so I called Chase and thoroughly explained our site to the sales guy. I had him look at the site and showed him the erotica gateway page. He assured me that there was “no problem”.

I filled out the application, faxed off 25 pages of financial info and answered five different emails from the underwriting department. Five days into the process I get the following email:

I have been reviewing the web site for the changes requested and do not see those yet. However, looking further at you site, I see that you are planning to open a section for over 18/Adult section on this site. We will not be able to process for this account with those products on the site. Those are prohibited by our credit policy.

I got the same answers from Payflow and a couple of other companies as well. Makes me wonder about how all those porn sites we keep hearing about actually do business. Ultimately, I did find a good and reputable company to do the clearing but I took some real effort and persistence on my part.

See I told you – Mrs. Grundy with her thin blue lips really IS alive and well in cyberspace!

So that is my sad tale – tomorrow in Part 2 I will explore the deeper meaning of this story.