It seems as though Apple has been doing this sort of thing so often that it’s hard to call it “news” anymore, but a Telegraph article reports that four erotica titles mysteriously vanished from the iBookstore best-seller chart after The Times asked how the chart was compiled.

Erotica titles have been among the e-book industry’s best-sellers ever since they were being read on 160×160 LCD Palm Pilot screens.

Philip Stone, charts editor for The Bookseller magazine, told The Times: “The embarrassment factor of being caught reading something like that in print is not there. If it’s on your iPad then no one can tell what you’re reading. You could be reading Plato.”

In February, Apple purged over 5,000 explicit apps from its app store, under a pretext of not wanting that kind of content in its walled garden. This led to some speculation on how the company would treat e-book erotica. I guess now we know.

(Found via The Bookseller.)

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