Attention M/M readers who use Barnes and Noble

You may go looking for an M/M book and not find it.

What B&N has done is silently installed a new erotica filter, and put a lot of randomly chosen M/M behind it (like Lucy Lennox’s Borrowing Blue ebook or several of mine, Finn Dixon, and many others). As well as a random assortment of M/F erotic romance – indie only. (Not 50 Shades, because this is a performance, not a real filter.)

To see those books, or even know they exist, you have to be signed in to your B&N account.

Then go to “Manage Account”

And turn off the filter under “content settings” (see the photo)

Make sure you SAVE your change with the green button immediately below the filter.

Once this is set to allow erotic content, all the books reappear, but ONLY when you are signed in.

Note that backmatter links (like Books2Read) will make it appear the book does not exist by going to the main B&N page or deadend. If you click on a book link anywhere and end up deadending on B&N, check under the filter.

And if you are a B&N customer and so inclined, you might contact them to say:
1) this filter should be announced to every customer on whom it has been imposed without notice
2) if they want to pretend it has a moral basis, it should be applied equally and include publisher erotica like Fifty Shades
3) there should be a prominent button on the main page that says “Erotica filter on” or “Erotica filter off” – it would be lovely to be able to switch it directly with the button, but if they want to make it harder, they at least owe customers the clear information of what status they are searching under.

A filter per se is not an unacceptable idea, but it should be clearly visible, announced to all customers, and easy to find and turn off.

A lot of us authors were relieved to find they had not removed our books completely, as it first appeared, but this secret filter will damage reader experience as well as the authors who haven’t heard and don’t even know where their books have gone.