Kobo's Response

In case you're new to Donuts and Desires, here's the score:

Over the past month or two, I've blogged a few times about the fact that Kobo has been declining (ie. refusing to publish) ebooks in my Transgender and Genderqueer Erotic Romance series--five to date, including the re-release of My Mistress' Thighs: Erotic Transgender Fiction and Poetry.

Many of you have expressed your outrage at the perceived censorship of transgender fiction. You advised me to write to Mark Lefebvre, Kobo's director of self-publishing and author relations.

I didn't.

He wrote to me.

Rather than paraphrase his response, I'm sharing his communication, with permission:

I noticed your recent blog post (below) regarding having titles rejected at Kobo and wanted to clear up some confusion.

http://donutsdesires.blogspot.ca/2013/12/kobo-declines-another-transgender-title.html

When we have to reject titles for publication, we denote a reason.  So, if you go into your account and click on the the title in question it will take you to the PUBLISHING screen and you’ll see a reason for the rejection.

In the case of several of your titles you should see something along the lines of the following reason (ie, there was an issue with the sub-title field)

The sub-title field is meant to be used for the actual subtitle of a book and not for what appears to be “tag lines” or the type of info that one might enter into the synopsis field (ie, potentially text that might appear at the top on the back cover of a print book.

All you need to do is modify the subtitle (ie, remove the “tag lines”) and republish, and the books should flow through the system.

I wanted to ensure you that the rejection has nothing to do with the topic matter and everything to do with the metadata.

Due to the manner by which this can be misunderstood, my team is in the process of revising the process in such a way that we can be more clear on what needs to be fixed whenever we have to reject a book.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Sincerely,

Mark

I'm not going to editorialize.  I'm not.  Except that I'm reminded of Wednesday's little censorship experiment. Particularly the paragraph where I compare the metadata from my trans series to my Paranormal Erotic Shorts series. Because I also concluded it was the metadata and not the content that was getting my work "declined."

Here it is, in case you missed it: http://donutsdesires.blogspot.ca/2013/12/a-censorship-experiment-youll-find-this.html 

Thanks for your encouragement and support, everyone.
Hugs,
Giselle