In a strange move, Nook Press has started to terminate the accounts of authors that have published in the erotica or romance categories.

Last week Nook Press updated their content policy, which now states that any of the following content will lead to accounts being terminated:

– Obscene or Pornographic material: This may include content that graphically portrays sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.
– Libellous Material: False defamatory statements that intentionally harm or have the potential to harm an individual or a third party.
– Infringing Material: Any content to which you do not own the copyright or otherwise control the right to distribute. Additionally, content that may violate any other intellectual property rights, such as trademark and trade dress, and/or content that may infringe upon a party’s proprietary rights, such as the right of privacy or the right of publicity
– Illegal Content or Other Offensive Material: As we may determine in our sole discretion, content that is illegal, content that violates the laws of any jurisdiction, whether or not we sell in such jurisdiction, or other content we deem offensive in the exercise of our sole discretion including but not limited to works portraying or encouraging incest, rape, bestiality, necrophilia, paedophilia or content that encourages hate or violence.
– Material Violating Privacy: Any content that violates an individual’s privacy.
– Advertisements: Content contained within your eBook or other content that primarily seeks to sell a product other than the eBook or content itself.

Along with this new content policy, they started to remove authors’ books for sale and terminate their accounts. It looks like authors were not given notice prior to their books being removed, and only found out about the content policy revisions after the fact.

Obviously, this has left authors scratching their heads trying to figure out why the sudden change was made. And for some, they’re still not sure how exactly they violated the terms.

This also seems like an odd move for Nook to make, given that romance authors thrive with eBook sales. Presumably, they’ve set themselves up to lose money for no good reason.

It appears that some authors have been able to straighten out the issue with Nook Press and get their accounts re-activated. Which begs the questions, why were they terminated in the first place? And why isn’t Nook Press being more careful with the accounts they’re terminating before taking such drastic measures?

Hypable has reached out to Nook Press for comment on the story and has yet to hear back as of the time of this article being published.