In common with many people here, I first began self-publishing via a well-known online vendor which most of us are already quite familiar; I won't mention it by name as I've always had extremely good experiences with that particular dealer.

The problems began when I received 'solicitations' from rival distributor Draft2Digital. Evidently, it was common practice (at that time) for D2D to contact first-time rubes authors like myself and offer them alternative digital venues. This was most likely an automatic process involving bots and algorithms, I imagine it must've been quite successful in its heyday.

As I still had a number of unfinished stories lying around on the hard disk, I wove them all together as a kind of "fix-up" novella, adding interstitial passages to tie up all the loose ends and give the general narrative a common theme. While it couldn't be described as high art, it was no worse than anything else D2D had on its virtual news stand, which I'd made sure to research prior to submitting the content. As the stories dealt mainly with coming of age scenarios, I listed the book under the Young Readers GLBT, Transgender and GLBT Romance headings, none of which had raised any red flags with my original publishers.

And so things stood for a while. The book, which was titled "Bittersweet: Fragments and Memories" didn't set any sales records, though it apparently moved enough units to raise the ire of at least one self-proclaimed 'critic' who demanded not only its removal, but but the termination of my account with the online distributor.

Here's a copy of the email I received from D2D in April 2016:

We have been contacted by multiple vendor rep's letting us know that the content being uploaded on your account is considered objectionable. We've been asked to no longer submit titles from your account. As a result, your book has been delisted and your account terminated.

It further transpired that I had been blocked by D2D's affliliates Apple, Kobo and Scribd. The main reason given was that the book was considered unsuitable for minors. This came as something of a surprise for me, as there was literally nothing inappropriate in the stories themselves.

Yes, the content dealt with problems faced by transgendered youths adjusting to their status as outsiders, along with their rejection by the wider community. There was one scene in which an adolescent boy imagines wearing a girl's school uniform and another in which a preteen experiments with various items of clothing, but there was nothing lurid or exploitative about the descriptions, which were written to a level appropriate for the target audience.

I've read far worse scenarios in classic children's literature - Tom Brown's School Days being one of the prime examples - to say nothing of the more gruesome folk tales collected in Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Even now, nearly six years later, I find it odd that publishers are (apparently) fine with extremes of violence, cruelty and mutilation in children's fiction, but the mere expression of gender dysphoria is considered "prohibited and objectionable."

Has the market improved in the meantime? Can't be sure in the present climate, but I believe it's a good thing that we have so many alternatives in the present day...

Tracy (Transfemme).