For those who don’t know, last year Kobo UK removed most of the independently published books from their UK site because of problems with a few that were not labelled with adult sexual content. This was all put in motion by a major UK newspaper going after a major book retailer for books with what they considered offensive adult content coming back in searches next to children’s books. I won’t go into which newspaper or which retailer, but, let’s just say they panicked and ultimately caused this issue.
Kobo UK assured all independent authors they would reassess all the books and then re-list all those which did not break their terms of service.
All our books go through Smashwords and their rigorous checks, so we know they do not break the terms of service. However, after waiting for months, most of our books (including some YA titles which have not even a whiff of adult content) never came back. Yet, all new titles we published, including those with adult content, did show up, making us believe our books not being shown was an oversight. With Smashwords help, this issue is now resolved and all our books are now, once again, listed on Kobo UK as well as on their US site.
This is of great relief to us, especially since Kobo now supply books for Sony eReaders so two of our customer bases were affected. Many thanks to our readers for having patience with this issue.
Our thanks go to Smashwords and Kobo for their assistance in putting this to rights. It has taken some time, but we are grateful for everything they have done to sort out this issue and return our books to Kobo’s UK listings.
