&gt; I see a few people pointing out that the book wasn&#x27;t really banned, in the sense that it was not published as a direct result of government intervention. But is this really a meaningful distinction?<p>Yes, there is a meaningful distinction between a publisher deciding not to publish a book, and a book being banned. While there may certainly be conditions where private action is so powerful in a given marketplace it is substantially equivalent to a government prohibition and raises the same issues, this isn&#x27;t one. There are other publishers, and there has never been a time when self-publishing and bypassing major publishers -- especially for an already successful writer -- is easier.<p>The fact that this whole complaint is actually a promotional piece for the book, which is in fact being published through Amazon&#x27;s direct publishing offering, demonstrates exactly why the distinction between a publisher choosing not to publish a book and the book actually being banned is a meaningful -- night-and-day -- distinction.<p>&gt; The book was prevented from being published<p>No, it was, in fact, <i>not</i> prevented from being published. The first two sentences of the article are &quot;I launched a book this week and I went Indie with it. Indie means I released it on Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing.&quot;