Stephen Colbert pointed out an interesting fad to me on his show on Monday: dinosaur erotica. Turns out, it’s a thing.

Searching for the genre on Amazon returns approximately 90 results. These books consist mainly of plots that weren’t quite right for traditional publishing, but thanks to the Internet, were able to find a home on Amazon for electronic download, available for $2.99 or less.

The collection of books contains a number of interesting titles such as: “Taken by the T-Rex” and “Fifty Shades of Paleontology.”

This represents a revolution in book publishing. Now, instead of having to be one of the lucky few manuscripts selected by a major publisher in a given year, anybody with a little initiative can get their work published online.

At first, the notion of expanding the power of the pen to more aspiring authors is an appealing idea. However, the freedom is starting to backfire.

A new survey by Aaron Stanton of Digital Book World found that self-published e-books contain more extreme sexual content than their traditionally published counterparts by a nearly 10 to 1 ratio. Also interesting is the fact that erotica makes up 28.57 percent of all self-published e-books whereas it only makes up 1.11 percent of the catalogs from traditional publishers.

While I fully support freedom of expression, this context, where e-books are available to individuals of all ages, requires that something be done to maintain the quality and integrity of books available for purchase online.

As Stanton wrote in regard to his study: “This tremendous volume of content is far greater than any current social-based review system can handle, not only from a sexual content standpoint, but from a review and discovery standpoint … This creates a problem. Online retailers like Amazon, Google and B&N end up putting books on their shelves without content oversight.”

Amazon’s policy states that they “don’t accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts.” However, if you take one quick browse through the Kindle store, you will find that this vague policy is not very restrictive.

U.K. self-publisher Kobo recently pulled all erotic and pornographic self-published titles from its site after it was discovered that such titles were being found alongside children’s books.

WHSmith, whose e-books are supplied by Kobo, initially shut down its entire website over the issue and decided to conduct a full review of all self-published titles before allowing any of them back on the site. In response, 13,000 erotic fiction authors signed a petition against the ban, claiming that it was an overreaction.

While I understand the authors’ frustration, I think the steps taken by WHSmith and Kobo were adequate to bring attention to this issue. As a result, other sellers such as Amazon and Smashwords have begun to reevaluate their oversight policies. According to The Drum magazine, in the days following the incident, Amazon began quietly removing such titles from its site.

This wake-up call is the step in the right direction. While it is important to remember that many very successful books began as self-published titles (such as “What Color is Your Parachute?” and “Fifty Shades of Grey”), the online stores need to be better monitored to prevent them from becoming overwhelmed with poor quality and obscene content.

Granted, regulating self-published material is no easy task. In 2011 alone, 87,201 self-published e-books were released, and that number has been growing substantially over the past decade. While it may be impossible to personally monitor every new title, at least the fallout from this event should encourage e-book providers to look into implementing new technologies to address the concern.

Looking forward, it may be relevant to remember the downfall of Chatroulette — the site which began as a cool new way to start a spontaneous video chat with someone from anywhere around the world but soon became just a bunch of dudes displaying their junk.

Online content enables tremendous opportunities for people to spread ideas. However, without proper oversight, the perverted intentions of some can ruin it for everyone.

Andrew is a junior in Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected].