As the publishing world knows in altogether too much detail, WH Smith (the UK bookseller) has closed its website because it has discovered some self-published erotica books that were classified as children's books.
There's no word on when Smith estimates re-opening. As it is, they are losing millions of dollars in lost sales. But it turns out the problem runs even deeper than one of bad metadata. It seems that many of these self-published authors were deliberately mis-categorizing their books.
Given the massive scale that book publishing has achieved in recent years (Bowker's own Books in Print lists 28 million titles), it's no surprise that ebook retailers can't watch over the accuracy of every single piece of metadata. A certain amount of trust has been invested in the publisher's reporting accurate information.
But just as "black hat" SEO tactics are rampant in website development, we're starting to see more of that sort of behavior in book marketing as well. This is just the latest rendition of it.
Update: Aaron Stanton of Booklamp has a fascinating look at "the literary darknet" here.
Update #2: WH Smith has re-opened its website, although without any books by self-published authors.
