Self-publishing

A friend of mine sent this report on the state of free expression and attempting to publish outside the guardians of acceptable political correctness.

Dear Chris,

As my publisher put it: "Amazon's thought police have finally caught up with you." Indeed they have.

In early summer, at Rebecca's urging, I created a Kindle Vella account and began uploading story episodes for my book "Cafe Kundalini." On Friday, I was informed that one of the episodes "failed to meet our community standards." But they could not tell me where or how my work "would disappoint our customers." There was no recourse or redress, and they simply deleted the episode. Apparently cutting one quarter of a story episode in the middle would not disappoint their customers.

I spent the weekend figuring out how I could work around their roadblocks, only to find out that their flying monkeys deleted more episodes over that same weekend. There was not a single story left intact: all had large chunks missing. Today, I took my publisher's advice and deleted my Amazon account. They have not yet gone after my books in print, but we figure it is only a matter of time.

My question is this: why would anyone forge ahead as a writer knowing that the firing squad (still a figurative expression) has already been assembled to shoot him down? Answer: because I must.

Cheers,
Brian