Unfair?

A few years ago there was this girl at the high school where I teach.  When she was 15, she could write far better than I.  She graduated and went on to University, where she's studying.  Last fall, she asked if a few of us could proof-read her book for her.  It wasn't her first book or anything.  But it was personal.  She changed the names, but part of it was about being repeatedly sexually abused by her step-dad, and about moving away and trying to escape the man.  So we proof-read the book for her and stuff, and then a few months went by.

  Apparently she wasn't getting any immediate nibbles on her first attempts at publishing it (neither did most authors we've now heard of, I'm told) so I suggested she put it up on Lulu.com.  She did.  Paperback and hardcover.  A bunch of us got copies and read them and lent them to people.  It was pretty cool.

  But then her abuser found out and reported her to Lulu for defamation of character, even though she did not use his name.  What Lulu did was immediately take the book down, no questions asked.  Because how they make money is they are a printing and distribution company, and if anyone complains, rather than check out the complaint, they just stop distributing the book to stay out of it all.  Thing is, what they've done here is side with the abuser of a child.  Took the side of the pedophile over the victim.  I think a newspaper story or two may get published.  I sure hope so.  I have a headline or two in mind.

   I get that Lulu can't afford to hire more lawyers than they already employ, and set them loose to examine every single complaint they get.  But still.  This sucks.

  Here's the cover of the book.  No longer available in paperback and hardcover.  Available as an eBook in two formats, free of charge.

For Kindle e-Readers Click Here
For Kobo e-Readers Click Here

  I mean, if someone did this "tattling to Lulu" to me (one's thoughts fly instantly to one's self), little would change.  I would just move to blurb.com and then other presses such as Snowfall Press, and if I couldn't keep the book distributing online, anywhere at all, I'd print another hundred copies and have people PayPal me and I would mail it to them.  And I would call my publishing house Wasp Tent Publishers (Bee Teepee).

  But all in all, I hope that doesn't happen to me.  And I hope Em gets some kind of justice, somehow.
(here's a report of the events on a widely read online blog.)