Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Is Gumroad Discriminating against Gay Erotic Writer Dale Lazarov?


Hey gay comic fans, I got some foolishness to tell you about. A buddy of mine, Dale Lazarov is a profound writer of gay erotica. Some of you may know of his works, but if you don't, please check him out.

Anywho, here's the story. Dale was selling his graphic novel, STICKY on a comic site called Gumroad. Days later, Dale received this letter…
hey,
i’m sahil – i work at gumroad.
i just wanted to reach out and say that i don’t think the stuff you’re selling on gumroad is a good fit for us at the moment. we’re a small, early company and we have to stay on the safe side in terms of the things that we allow on our platform. as we work with banks and other partners, we have to be pretty conservative, as they are.
we’ll keep your account going for 14 days so you get paid out fully. that should be enough time for you to find another provider.
hopefully our short terms losses lead to long term gains and we become a really good fit for you again.
best and sorry about all of this,
i hope you understand,
Sahil @ Gumroadgumroad.com // @gumroad // on Facebook”
Interesting, as if bankers and other partners are not gay or enjoy some skin from time to time. Dale called them out over selling another erotic book called Smut Peddler.
He said:
Dear Gumroad:

Why, if you have been selling SMUT PEDDLER for months, which is as explicit and often as gay as my comics, did you cancel distribution of mine in less than a month?
If you sell SMUT PEDLER for months but you dump mine in weeks, even after you tell me I am a big seller and pester me with marketing questions days earlier... What do I make of you dumping my comic?
EXPLAIN TO ME: How is SMUT PEDDLER a "good fit" but my comics aren't?
Sincerely, Dale Lazarov
Once they were put on blast, Gumroad responded with:
We do not discriminate in any way based on orientation of content on Gumroad, our TOS is purely based on restricting sales of illicit content because we do not have an age-restriction feature, which is required to protect sellers from minors purchasing content of this type.
Well, Gumroad, can you explain why this happened? Why single out STICKY and claim it wasn't a good fit? And what's a GOOD FIT?

However once the smoke (somewhat) cleared, SMUT PEDLER was removed from their list.

Very interesting trail of events. I think this story is just getting started.

3 comments:

Immanuel said...

Please let us know how this turns out. Also if his comic finds a landing place let us know how to get it so we can support him

Immanuel at www.dlconfessionssequel.com

Anonymous said...

"Smut Peddler" is not a "straight erotic" book, considering its heavy inclusion of m/m and f/f sex scenes, and considering the many gay, bi, and gq creators involved in creating it.

Dale Lazarov said...

Anonymous -- the fact that it has plenty of gay content was something I mentioned in my letter to Gumroad. Bleeding Cool is just not very good at fact-checking. :-/

Immanuel -- we're with Ribbon, now: https://ribbon.co/users/5209655612 :)

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Viktor is a small town southern boy living in Los Angeles. You can find him on Twitter, writing about pop culture, politics, and comics. He’s the creator of the graphic novel StrangeLore and currently getting back into screenwriting.