The Fuss With Paypal

I held my tongue for a long time when it came to the Paypal mess, even though I was one of the authors who had their self-published titles yanked from Bookstrand without warning. None of my titles violated Paypal's terms of service, but they were still pulled from that site.

At first I didn't know what to think. I was pissed off and rightfully so. Who the hell does this company think they are to decided what's sold on a third party vendors site, right?

I don't agree with what's happened, but I can't say that I was surprised that it did happened. The major influx of pseudo incest stories had been happening for some time and often when I logged into a seller's site, they dominated the new release lists with their sometimes explicit covers and titles. Knowing the history of Paypal from their past actions with other sites, it was only a matter of time before they became involved, and they did in a huge way when they started threatening to withdraw their services from many sites if certain titles were not removed within a week.

Incest titles aren't my cup of tea. I'll be the first to admit that, but I do repect the rights of people who want to buy those books. If they somehow violate the terms of service for a particular site, I think it should be up to the site itself to deal with it and not some outside company that comes out of nowhere with their guns a'blazin!

Now, on to the next bit.

Beastiality has always been a no no for most publishers. That's nothing new. But where do shifter stories fit into this you might ask yourself? Apparently, Paypal has their own opinion on that and if you write these stories you might be affected. So, where will all this end?

I've actively decided to no longer support Paypal. In the grand scheme of things it's about all I can do to protest. Unfortunately, the third party vendors won't get my money when I go to purchase books if they use Paypal as a payment system. I refuse to be told what I can or cannot buy. I encourage others to do the same.