Blowback from #Kobogeddon

The facts of Kobo's knee-jerk reaction to WH Smith's claim that pornographic books featuring incest, rape, etc. were being sold in its outlets is well documented, thanks in large part to indie writers such as Rayne Hall, who began a massive #kobogeddon campaign on Twitter this past Saturday.

For those of you living under a rock or unfamiliar with the world of publishing, Kobo, the European equivalent to Amazon, not only removed erotica, they swept their coffers clean of ANY inde-published book, regardless of subject matter, genre, or audience. This includes romance, scifi, historical and literary fiction, children's books, you name it. If it was independently published, it was removed from the catalog. Think about that for a minute.

Ironically, traditionally published books, REGARDLESS OF GENRE, were unaffected by the move. Meaning any pornographic material that had been traditionally published, regardless of subject matter, was left untouched.

Is this an indictment against indie writers and publishers? Well, here's Kobo's statement on the move:

"Our website will become live again once all self published e-books have been removed and we are totally sure that there are no offending titles available. We sincerely apologise for any offence caused....our goal was not to negatively impact the freedom of expression and the work of the amazing self-published community that has been created at Kobo.com."

Huh? Really? Damn, it sure sounds that way to me. And I'm not alone in that interpretation judgjng by the uproar of indie writers worldwide on Twitter this weekend. Here's a clue--the expression "there's no such thing as bad publicity" doesn't apply to retail. Kobo, you pissed off a massive number of writers and readers, and we're not just talking indies, either. Traditionally published writers sympathetic to the indie cause also joined in the protest.

Now, I hate to judge an entire company by the extremely bad business decision of whoever in charge thought this would be a good idea, but this clusterfuck of a faux pas could have easily been avoided had Kobo and WH Smith established some sort of gateway on their sites. You know--provide the authors a way to categorize their books, along with guidelines as to what they will or will not allow in their catalog. Instead, what they've done is not only throw the baby out with the bathwater, they have caused irreparable damage to their relationship with a rapidly growing facet of the publishing world.

Here's a clue: you are in the business of selling books. You need books to sell to make money. You just dumped a huge proportion of your writers (aka, your product) with no forewarning and for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON other than, "That apple is bad, let's throw the whole cart away."

Hey Kobo, just because indie writers are independent, doesn't mean they don't have power. For instance, in April of this year, Barnes & Noble released figures stating that over 25% of Nook sales were from self-published ebooks. That number climbs to 30% for Kindle. In fact, the growing number of independently written and published books lead Amazon to establish the Kindle Indie Store in 2011. And for distribution networks like Smashwords, those figures are exponentially higher.

Think about that. A giant like Amazon, who markets worldwide, and 30% of the books they sell are SELF-PUBLISHED.  In this economic market, can any business afford to alienate roughly one-third of its marketshare?

As a consumer, I have a LOOOONG memory and I don't forget slights and evil politics. For instance, I don't buy gas at BP. I don't eat at Chik-Fil-A. And now, thanks to this, I will not be offering my books to Kobo for distribution.