Content policy
One line, drawn around harm — not around opinions.
Direct Press exists so people can share what they know. That requires publishing arguments other people find wrong, so we do not screen for viewpoint. We screen for content that harms readers.
Every manuscript is read automatically when it is submitted, rather than joining a queue for the next business day, so most books go on sale the same day. Books that sit near the line publish with limited distribution and wait for a person; books that clearly cross it are declined with the specific passages quoted, and you can appeal.
What we decline
Sexual content
Erotica or sexual depiction of any kind. Clinical discussion of anatomy, sexual health, and sexuality as a subject is fine.
Graphic violence
Gore and cruelty written to be savored. Violence described to inform — history, medicine, forensics, true crime — is fine.
Incitement or dehumanization
Calls to violence against real people or groups, or framing a group as less than human. Criticism of governments, institutions, ideologies, and religions is not incitement.
Dangerous instructions
Actionable instructions for weapons, explosives, drug synthesis, or attacking real systems. Security research explaining vulnerabilities, and medical texts written for practitioners, are fine.
Harmful false claims
Health and safety claims that would injure a reader who followed them. Contested scientific positions argued in good faith are fine.
Harassment of a private individual
Content targeting a specific private individual. Criticism of public figures in their public role is fine.
What is explicitly welcome
- Political, economic, and religious argument, from any position.
- Difficult history: war, genocide, slavery, atrocity, examined honestly.
- Heterodox or minority positions in science, medicine, economics, and philosophy.
- Practitioner texts: security research, clinical medicine, law, forensics.
- Fiction containing conflict, moral complexity, and unsympathetic characters.
- Frank discussion of drugs, addiction, mental illness, and abuse in an educational or recovery context.
- Translation and reissue of work you hold the rights to, in any language.
AI-assisted books
Welcome, with no penalty of any kind: the same royalty, the same ranking, the same review time. We ask you to disclose it and we show that label to readers, because it is something a reader deserves to know rather than a mark against you. Disclosure is the requirement. The tool is not.
Appeals
Every decision records which passages triggered it and which version of the policy was applied. If a book is declined, that record is shown to you, and a person will read it on request. Automated screening makes publishing fast; it does not get the last word.