LGBT Discrimination at 24symbols

UPDATE 12/23, 11:00AM: 24symbols has ceased their automatic blurring of all LGBT covers. You can see my comments on this at the bottom of the post.

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24symbols is a new ebook vendor. It uses the subscription model – readers pay a monthly fee and can then read an unlimited number of any of the ebooks they offer. They’re based in Spain, and their big hook seems to be that they have business agreements with telecom companies worldwide to bring their service to people’s phones. This is potentially huge – in a lot of countries, a smartphone may be the only electronic device that someone owns, and so bringing ebooks cheaply and easily to those devices is pretty smart.

I use a service called Draft2Digital to distribute my books to many vendors. Some smaller vendors don’t allow indie authors to distribute to them directly, so a business like Draft2Digital allows me access to those readers. They recently added 24symbols as one of their clients, and I signed up immediately – why not? It cost me nothing.

On December 18 I got the email from Draft2Digital that my books were now available on 24symbols. I went to the site, just to see how they were being displayed and make sure all the information was correct. I noticed that the cover to Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom was blurry, but I didn’t think much of it. I figured I had only just gotten the email, maybe the page was still being set up. I set it aside to come back and check the rest later.

On December 19 I went back and checked all my books. Three of my four books had blurred covers – and when I say blurred, I mean they’re completely illegible and unrecognizable. You can get a sense of the color scheme of the image, and that’s it – no title, no picture, nothing is visible. Only Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny was presented normally.

I assumed this was a technical glitch and emailed Draft2Digital to alert them to the problem. Yesterday, December 21, I received this response from Steed at D2D:

“24Symbols blurs out cover art for certain adult content unless a user is signed in and has their age settings set up appropriately. Since your books have gay/lesbian subject matter, 24Symbols has elected to keep those books in an adult content section. However, any adult users who are signed into their site will see the covers in full.”

Oh. Okay. Well, that explains the discrepancy – I don’t have “gay and lesbian” as a tag on Mark Park and the Flume of Destiny, but I do on the other three books.

I responded with this:

“Oh, wow! They consider any and all books labeled gay/lesbian as “adult?” That’s pretty offensive. My books aren’t erotica. Is there anyone I could talk to about this policy? I’m not sure I want to keep my books at that vendor if that’s the case.”

And Steed responded:

“We haven’t fully confirmed that, but it is a pattern we’ve noticed. There may be many reasons for that choice, or it may simply be a coincidence. I’ve contacted their support team and am awaiting a response for more information. ”

I asked them to keep me posted. In the meantime, I sent this email directly to 24symbols:

“Hi,
I’m an author, I distribute to 24symbols through Draft2Digital. Why do books labeled “Gay and Lesbian” have blurred covers for anyone who isn’t logged in? The only other category I see this happening for is “Erotica.” Three of my covers are blurred – they’re Gay and Lesbian, but they’re not Erotica.

thanks,
Brian Olsen”

Today, December 22, I got this response from David at 24symbols:

“Brian,

our distribution agreements with some telcos (they sell 24symbols subscriptions to their customer base in some countries) obligue us to do so. We know that your books are not erotica but they asked us to blur every book in some categories that they consider not suitable for every reader. Take into account that once you are registered and we know you are above 18, books appear normally. We will hope you understand it…

Kind regards,
David”

From what I’ve learned from poking around the 24symbols site, “Gay and Lesbian” and “Erotica” are the only categories in which the covers are blurred. “Romance,” “Crime and Thriller,” “Horror,” none of the others. The results aren’t just offensive, they’re absurd – there are multiple versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray on the site, from different publishers, but only the one tagged “Gay and Lesbian” is blurred.

LGBT lives are not “adult content,” and neither our literature nor our existence should be censored to protect the sensibilities of the bigoted. No child will be damaged by accidentally stumbling across the covers of works by Mary Renault, Edmund White, or Michael Chabon (all of whom have books with blurred covers at 24symbols).

24symbols’ policy is blatant discrimination. I’m sure the reasoning I was provided is true – that there are markets they could not serve if they didn’t blur the LGBT covers. I don’t care. Making money isn’t an excuse for prejudice.

I’ve pulled all my books from 24symbols and I encourage other authors with books there to consider doing the same until this policy is changed.

UPDATE 11:00am EST:

After emailing 24symbols to let them know I would be pulling my book and encouraging others to do the same, I received this response from David:

“Brian,

I completely agree with you, but just believe me that for a small company like ours is very difficult to negotiate with huge multinational companies like telcos (with huge and unfair prejudices). I would like to ask you a little time to see if there is a technical way to discriminate books inside that category.

Thank you very much in advance,

David”

This was my reply:

“Hi David,

I understand that this was a business decision, and I’m sure it is difficult. But your company decided to go live with this discriminatory practice in place. The telcos insisting that you take on their prejudices doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for going along with them.

I’ve written a blog post about the issue, which you can find here: (link)

I’ll update it with your response – if your company has an official statement to make on this policy, I’d be happy to include that as well.

thanks,
Brian”

UPDATE 3:30PM EST: Please see the comments below for responses from Justo Hidalgo of 24symbols, and my response in turn.

UPDATE 12/23 10:00AM EST: I haven’t heard anything from anyone at 24symbols, but a look at their site shows that all of the Gay and Lesbian covers are now showing unblurred, except for those which are also tagged as Erotica. I’m withholding final judgment until I’m sure that this is an actual change in policy, and that they’re not still adjusting their settings, but it’s a good sign.

UPDATE 12/23, 11:00AM EST: Please see the comment from Justo Hidalgo below. 24symbols moved very quickly to respond, which I’m happy to see. Assuming that an LGBT tag is just a type of Erotica tag (as opposed to one with overlap, like Romance and Erotica) was, frankly, a dumb and worrying mistake to make for a company in the ebook industry, especially one with, they say, people with publishing experience involved from day one. But that aside, I’m impressed with how seriously they took this, and that their final solution wasn’t some watered-down compromise but rather to just stop the discriminatory practice. I’m going to give it until after the holidays, just to be sure that this is a stable solution and no other information comes to light, but assuming all is as it appears, I expect I will put my books back in 24symbols.