British books retailer WHSmith reopened its website on Thursday after it was engulfed in a scandal selling themed pornographic e-books on its website.
The site was suspended by the company after it was revealed last weekend by British newspaper The Mail on Sunday that it has been selling e-books featuring rape, incest and bestiality.
Retailers including Amazon and US chain Barnes & Noble were also found selling the books. WHSmith suspended the site on Monday - two days after it was alerted to the issue.
WHSmith takes its e-book content from its e-reader partner Kobo. The supplier has suspended all self-published e-books as a result of the scandal.
WHSmith had issued a notice on its suspended site reading: 'We sincerely apologise for any offence caused.'
The statement also read the site 'will become live again once all self-published e-books have been removed and we are totally sure there are no offending titles available.'
The scandal broke among online news sites such as The Kernal in the days leading up to the weekend and by Saturday 12th the BBC's online site featured the story. That evening Amazon and Barnes & Noble had already begun removing the titles but many still remained, the BBC said.
It appears the titles had been filed on the sites automatically, in part because of the ability of writers to self-publish e-books.
Barnes & Noble, who sells e-books through its Nook online business, said: 'When there are violations to the content policy that are brought to our attention, either through our internal process or from a customer or external source, we have a rapid response team in place to appropriately categorise or remove the content in accordance with our policy.'
The Mail on Sunday and the BBC pointed out that the titles were easily available by searching with seemingly innocuous words. The books were apparently appearing alongside children's titles and often with suggestive or pornographic covers.
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