The Paypal problem
Feb. 27th, 2012 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
floAfter reading this post about Paypal coming down on certain types of erotica at Smashwords, All Romance Ebooks and Bookstrand at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ebooks over the weekend, I went hunting for more information. I found a giant roundup of links to internet chatter about the issue (somewhat helpful), and this morning, Jane at Dear Author posted an interesting roundup(*) of the facts associated with the situation, including a valuable little bit about the history of Paypal's exception regarding erotic ebooks. That answered a question I've been asking myself since I saw anything about this story-- namely, why on earth anyone publishing erotica online would keep doing business with Paypal.
So far, from what I've seen, the answer has been convenience, with a hefty side of "they'll probably turn a blind eye". Which seems to have been true for bigger ebook stores like Smashwords et al, at least until now.
It all makes me wonder what exactly is going on at Paypal. I'm inclined to think that part of what prompted them to impose these new rules was the growing visibility of obviously prurient titles at the ebook stores in question, but I have no idea if that's the whole picture. Still, I can't help imagining that they're happy to profit off the sales of edgy erotica, but only if it's not very visible and if it doesn't look like porn.
There's a lot to be said about that line of thinking, especially when you consider that there's tons of books in other genres that include what Paypal is trying to ban from its customers' stores. There's the censorship angle, which has been talked to death, and which seems to be the biggest interest for people talking about this.
However, what really concerns me is the realization I had after doing research on Paypal alternatives. Right now, if you want to sell 'adult content'-- i.e. any erotica that Paypal deems too out there-- you have about one Paypal competitor that doesn't prohibit doing so. I looked through the TOSes of all the commonly recced alternatives (Dwolla, WePay, Google Checkout, etc), and all of them either state that they won't process payments for adult content, or are so vague about what they won't process that I wouldn't feel comfortable suggesting them as an alternative.
What that means for a supernoob ebook author like me is essentially that I am better off avoiding trying to publish certain categories of erotica until I'm sure my sales can support a more costly payments solution. Which, on the face of it, isn't too bad. I didn't plan on writing material like that even before this situation blew up, and I doubt that I will want to in the future.
What is really bad is the newly reinforced knowledge that Smashwords is heavily reliant on Paypal, since they do a lot of distribution to ebook stores that are too costly to reach as a new indie author. Now, all I can think is that the first thing I'll be doing when I get any significant sales volume from the stores they distribute to is finding a way to supply those stores directly myself.
Of course, the real bottom line here is that I'm going to have to learn as much about online payments as I can. In an environment where ebook compatibility is still a problem, and the biggest players are fighting to have their format and ebook store end up as the only effective place for authors to sell their ebooks, the ability to handle ebook sales with your own setup is looking more and more important.
(*) Jane's post was overwritten by mistake at about the time I posted this, so you might have seen a handful of small book reviews when you checked this link yesterday. I let her know about the error, and the original post is back up in its entirety.
ebooks over the weekend, I went hunting for more information. I found a giant roundup of links to internet chatter about the issue (somewhat helpful), and this morning, Jane at Dear Author posted an interesting roundup(*) of the facts associated with the situation, including a valuable little bit about the history of Paypal's exception regarding erotic ebooks. That answered a question I've been asking myself since I saw anything about this story-- namely, why on earth anyone publishing erotica online would keep doing business with Paypal.So far, from what I've seen, the answer has been convenience, with a hefty side of "they'll probably turn a blind eye". Which seems to have been true for bigger ebook stores like Smashwords et al, at least until now.
It all makes me wonder what exactly is going on at Paypal. I'm inclined to think that part of what prompted them to impose these new rules was the growing visibility of obviously prurient titles at the ebook stores in question, but I have no idea if that's the whole picture. Still, I can't help imagining that they're happy to profit off the sales of edgy erotica, but only if it's not very visible and if it doesn't look like porn.
There's a lot to be said about that line of thinking, especially when you consider that there's tons of books in other genres that include what Paypal is trying to ban from its customers' stores. There's the censorship angle, which has been talked to death, and which seems to be the biggest interest for people talking about this.
However, what really concerns me is the realization I had after doing research on Paypal alternatives. Right now, if you want to sell 'adult content'-- i.e. any erotica that Paypal deems too out there-- you have about one Paypal competitor that doesn't prohibit doing so. I looked through the TOSes of all the commonly recced alternatives (Dwolla, WePay, Google Checkout, etc), and all of them either state that they won't process payments for adult content, or are so vague about what they won't process that I wouldn't feel comfortable suggesting them as an alternative.
What that means for a supernoob ebook author like me is essentially that I am better off avoiding trying to publish certain categories of erotica until I'm sure my sales can support a more costly payments solution. Which, on the face of it, isn't too bad. I didn't plan on writing material like that even before this situation blew up, and I doubt that I will want to in the future.
What is really bad is the newly reinforced knowledge that Smashwords is heavily reliant on Paypal, since they do a lot of distribution to ebook stores that are too costly to reach as a new indie author. Now, all I can think is that the first thing I'll be doing when I get any significant sales volume from the stores they distribute to is finding a way to supply those stores directly myself.
Of course, the real bottom line here is that I'm going to have to learn as much about online payments as I can. In an environment where ebook compatibility is still a problem, and the biggest players are fighting to have their format and ebook store end up as the only effective place for authors to sell their ebooks, the ability to handle ebook sales with your own setup is looking more and more important.
(*) Jane's post was overwritten by mistake at about the time I posted this, so you might have seen a handful of small book reviews when you checked this link yesterday. I let her know about the error, and the original post is back up in its entirety.
