The 2024 elections in the United States are devastating to all who believe in freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
Censorship is coming to the United States. Censorship of the books you want to read. Prepare for the censorship apocalypse now.
Censorship is already here
Many retailers have decided to pre-emptively obey the coming autocracy:
– Barnes & Noble is throwing random books into its new “erotic content” designation.
– Amazon has been shoving random romance books in the restricted Erotica category for over a decade, and continues to do so.
– Google Play randomly determines which books have sexual content and bars free samples of those books.
– Kobo put books behind an erotic content filter, then pulled back. But they have the technical infrastructure to reinstate it at any time.
– Smashwords now has three erotica filters (didn’t it use to be two?).
– Draft2Digital, a major distributor of self-published works to libraries and smaller retailers, restricts ebooks sent to these clients. For example, Hadrian and Sabina: A Love Story is not available on Hoopla because Draft2Digital refuses to submit it to them. An author colleague had D2D refuse to push several of her historical romances to Libby/Overdrive.
– Pinterest has deleted two of my pins of book covers due to “adult content”.
– “Meta“, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other apps, is now restricting content from queer, BIPOC, and a whole host of other marginalized communities. So your favorite author of queer romance will not be able to advertise a book release or book discounts on Facebook.
What will be censored?
Meta’s restrictions on advertising and posting, plus school boards across the United States seeking to censor what books students read gives us an idea of where the censorship will be concentrated:
– romance books of all heat levels
– anything written by queer identified authors
– stories with queer characters
– erotica and erotic romance
– books with “taboo” themes and situations. But what will be deemed “taboo” will be up to the censors and whoever stands to benefit financially. Remember the movie Clueless? Essentially it’s a stepbrother-stepsister romance. Okay for a blockbuster movie in 1995, but want to get such a story from your favorite indie author in 2025? Good luck.
By the way, censorship is not being directed systematically at books featuring extreme violence or gore. Just the ones with romance or happy queer people.
Beyond censorship
The Republican agenda that the new presidential administration will be putting into effect, “Project 2025”, calls for the imprisonment of pornographers:
“Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”
Pornography, of course, is not defined at all in the Project 2025 document (I refuse to link to it). There will be a lot of test cases, and authors will have to defend their writing — and their livelihoods.
What can you do?
To prepare for the coming censorship apocalypse:
– If you are an American, buy queer books, erotic books, taboo books you want to read NOW. Back up your ebooks on a local device such as a desktop or laptop. Do not back up in the cloud.
– If you are a fan of an American author who writes queer stories or erotic stories, no matter where you live, buy those books from those authors now. Support erotica author Patreons.
– Review and recommend your favorite romance, erotica, and queer stories.
– Be part of the Reading Resistance. Stuff local Little Free Libraries or Friends-of-the-Library book sales with romance books you’ve read, even ones you didn’t like. Just get them out there.
– Purchase ebooks from book sellers who don’t censor, such as Eden Books and, once they get up and running, Theo Reads.
– If you are politically active, get involved at the local level, such as running for your local school board.
What about me?
To be honest, I am terrified about what the future holds. I’m a historian, so I know what has transpired in the past. I have no idea if I will be able to publish books in the future. If readers will be able to read my books. If I will be able to continue this blog and this website.
I’ll do what I can, until I can’t.