A founder of the “all-inclusive” online bookstore Allstora, which launched last week with the promise to “carry all books,” admitted to removing titles and apologized for previously selling “harmful books.”
“We’ve already removed the titles that visitors have called to our attention, and you can continue to report any instances of hateful material on our site,” reads the apology by Eric Cervini, who co-founded Allstora alongside drag performers RuPaul and Adam Powell. “While other online bookstores will continue selling hate-filled books, Allstora will not. We will be a community, a home, for all.”
Allstora launched last week in response to “book bans” across the country. Initially, the Allstora website stated in a subsection about “offensive books” that it would “carry all books.”
“We cannot fight the ideologies of hate if we lack the ability to study, understand, and react to them. We do that by reading books,” the Allstora website previously stated. Allstora further said that “censorship of any book, perspective, or story is incompatible with the survival of democracy,” and “banning books is never the answer.”
The bookstore faced backlash for selling “homophobic,” “transphobic,” “anti-woke,” and “Nazi” material.
Drag performer “Lady Bunny,” who has appeared on RuPaul’s drag-themed television shows, condemned the bookstore for selling books by Adolf Hitler, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and “the extremely transphobic” Chaya Raichik. The performer further accused RuPaul of “rainbow capitalism” and asked, “Why not just stop selling what many on the left consider to be hate speech?”
In response to criticism, Allstora revised its policy and would “mitigate the potential harm of specific book” by “creating a community-led flagging system for titles that are contrary to our core values” and “donating all proceeds from these titles to fight book bans.”
National Review was the first to report that Allstora reversed its policy on “offensive” books just three days after its launch and removed titles by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Matt Walsh, Riley Gaines, and Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik. Allstora also removed works by the conservative publisher Brave Books, such as the Christian book Little Lives Matter about the “sanctity of life.”
In his apology, Cervini explained that Allstora had emerged from his “LGBTQ+ bookshop” called ShopQueer, which was founded to split its profits with authors and “to promote and protect queer literature” given the “book bans that were sweeping the country.”
When developing ShopQueer into Allstora, the founders wanted a bookstore that split its profits with authors, “not just queer and trans storytellers, but also Black, Brown, disabled, neurodiverse, everyone.” The founders intended to counter “book bans” with a policy of “radical inclusivity.”
“As a historian, I understood that even the most hateful of books can have educational value. I knew that to dismantle prejudice, we must examine its illogic,” Cervini wrote. “We must study history so as not to repeat it, and we must understand hatred if we are to destroy it. So I directed my team to add all ten million books available for sale in the English language, no matter their contents, to our library.”
Cervini took “full-responsibility” for this “mistake,” saying that he has now “re-learned the difference between a library and a bookstore.”
“I’m horrified by the thought of a queer or trans youth accidentally stumbling upon a harmful book on our platform,” reads Cervini’s apology. “I confused my duties as an academic and a bookseller, and I brought pain instead of joy into the world. And for that, I am sorry.”
Allstora continues its “philanthropic initiative” called the “Rainbow Book Bus.”
“We were gonna fight against the book bans that are sweeping the country — the forces of hate that are removing our stories, our humanity, from bookshelves and libraries and universities — first with our Rainbow Book Bus,” Cervini said in a video. “We converted a 22-foot school bus into a traveling queer book fair and are giving away 10,000 books across the South.”