Amazon Getting Teh Icky Gay Out Of Their Sales Rankings

[filkertom]

Peachy. All the terrible shit going down in the world, and everyone is still afraid of porn... or non-porn that makes them uncomfortable because it makes them think of porn. Or something. I don't know. I genuinely don't. I do know that, until this is resolved, I will not purchase from Amazon, nor link up to Amazon pages on this blog.

Stupid fucking Puritan heritage.

More info here, here, and here. As you can see from the links in the second one, Daily Kos and Neil Gaiman are on it, so that may help get it to the forefront more quickly. We'll see.

(nicked from just about everybody)

ETA: sazettel says that author Daniel Abraham talked to Amazon and heard, "It's a known issue, and they'll have an answer about it tomorrow." Stay tuned.

ETA2: Publisher's Weekly says Amazon says it's a glitch. Again, stay tuned.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Also, sign the net petition here. I just did, adding

What dreck. "In consideration of our entire customer base" is a lie; a significant chunk of your customer base doesn't care, and another significant chunk is offended that you discriminate. Count me among the latter, and count this as a request to amend your language to something more truthful, e.g., "because we don't want to offend a loud minority of our users, etc."

Please don't expect another sale from me or my family.

Borders and B&N, here am I.

[jss]

Signed, with similar commentary.

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

Oy. That's insane.

[saganth.livejournal.com]

Jesus Fucking Christ, is this the cyber equivalent of book burning?

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Well, no. It's the cyber equivalent of refusing to sell specific books unless asked for them by name; of saying, when asked if you stock a certain kind of book, "I don't know," and returning to your Game Boy or whatever.

As far as I understand it, Amazon would still be perfectly willing to sell these books and pocket their percentage. They just don't want people to know that they do. Except, well, they've blown that.

Of course, they will presumably have bought a number of copies of these books for stock, which would have been inaccessible to anyone who was just searching for something of that sort, and now won't get bought anyway because no-one who would want them will deal with Amazon. Hopefully there will be arrangements in place to allow them to be returned and resold.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Hopefully there will be arrangements in place to allow them to be returned and resold.

Unfortunately, at least in the US, there are arrangements that allow booksellers to report them to publishers as "unsold" and get refunds. Alas, these arrangements involve ripping off the front page and returning it, and throwing the rest of the book away. When you find the occasional beat-up paperback with no front cover, this is what happened to it. With hardbacks they strip off and return just the book jacket.

It's pretty hard on the publishers; they have to give refunds and never get the stock back to resell.

[gelfling-flys.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, they have removed the books from the amazon search engine. So you can not search for the book unless you already have the exact title.

Go to amazon and type in homosexuality. (I did) You get a slew of anti gay bible thumping madness.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Nope, more the equivalent of taking them out of the shop window and hiding them in the back room.

GLBT/erotica/etc books are still searchable in the Book or Kindle searches, just not in the big front page box.

It's not just the little guys. They've pulled Harlequin, Mary Renault, Kensington's Aphrodesia imprint, and Anne freakin' Rice. The GLBT blogosphere has gotten wind of this as well.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Not all of them are, though. I did a search for several GLBT books that showed up just last week, and do not show up today. I don't know WHAT the heck is going on over there, but my guess is it's some system gone wrong rather than malicious intent. We'll see, I suppose.

[kshandra]

Amazon's PR department can be reached at 206-266-7180. At least until the voicemail box explodes.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting until tomorrow in the hopes that someone from Amazon clarifies and has a reasonable explanation for this, such as a user-based recommendation system gone wrong. If no one from the Amazon higher ups has addressed it by tomorrow evening, though...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I've put it in my journal, with a link to "Smart Bitches Trashy Books" proposed Googlebomb. It's here: http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank/

(short version: "Amazon ranked" is now elected to be a verb meaning "prudishly penalized for having sex in it" or (alternate, intransitive usage) "being inconsistent.")

[ororo.livejournal.com]

Fine, I'll buy my porn elsewhere.

[gelfling-flys.livejournal.com]

It is worse than that. Lack of access will reduce sales. Reduced sales will prevent new titles from being published.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

I signed the petition. Amazon has not lost me as a customer (yet) because they've done good by me otherwise. We'll see if after all the attention brought to this issue whether Amazon takes a step back or forwards. On a whim I checked to see if Amazon still has the Watchman graphic novel (it has sex, rape, nudity, violence, etc). It does.

Another example of how the punch line to Monty Python's parrot sketch is on the money, "If you want anything done in this country you have to complain until you're blue in the face." The right is often loud, but being loud doesn't make you right.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

One of the early signers on the complaint noted that Amazon has not delisted materials such as Playboy or books on how to do dogfighting. If GLBT materials that aren't pornographic can be considered offensive enough to "save the children" over, so should those.
I took the liberty of point that out too.

[jenrose]

Also not delisted... "Sleeping Beauty" by Anne Roquelare, any of the Jean Auel Books Of Throbbing Manhood, Lady C's Lover. THAT pissed me off more than anything. They just picked a category and said, "BANZORS!"

Fucking Nonfucks.

[sazettel.livejournal.com]

This from Publisher's Weekly Online: "On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a glitch had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new adult policy."

[jenk]

Also, report of speaking with customer service and "we're fixing it" here.

[gelfling-flys.livejournal.com]

There are authors on the net posting weeks of letters from amazon stating that this is a new policy. No way to verify any of it, but glitch seems unlikely.

[zellion.livejournal.com]

Hm, we'll see if they respond to true customer opinion on this one, but this is pretty shitty of them.

I guess I'll remain a loyal customer of Ellora's Cave (http://www.ellorascave.com/)

[awfulhorrid.livejournal.com]

Um. Ok, I'm willing to lynch a major retailer as much as the next guy, but as of right now (21:44 CST 12-APR-09) a general search using "GLBT" turns up ... er ... looks like several hundred items, at least. I don't think Amazon is quite this stupid, so I'm willing to believe it's either a mistake or someone with their own idiotic agenda unless I have a bit more proof.

That said, I think I'll hold off a few days before placing another larger order.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Even if it is a glitch (which looks quite possible the way it's happening) it's good that we're getting riled up, signing petitions and ranting about it like this. Because if some fundy group starts making demands after this, the people running the business will shriek "Are you crazy? We can't ban those books! Just look what happened to Amazon during a two-day glitch. Quick, organize a special GLBT celebration or something so people won't think we're in cahoots with the fundies."

[phecda.livejournal.com]

While I'm not going to hold Amazon completely blameless, they appear to have created a system that some third party(s) have figured out how to game. This appears to have possibly been a major trolling exercise. (http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html) (Welcome to culture wars, the Fundies Strike Back).

[gelfling-flys.livejournal.com]

I was glad to read that.

On the other hand, they are discussing that this seems to have been happening for three months.

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

If this is what's happening, there is an easy solution:

Remove the customer's option to rank things as "offensive" unless they've actually bought that item. And name them by name. Because someone with an agenda WILL abuse an anonymous, free-to-join system to further their own goals.

It's rather like stuffing a ballot box, actually.

Consider the searches for the equally offensive-to-fundies concepts of "Athesim" and "Evolution"

No issues finding the "pro" sides of those issues there.

But look for "Homosexuality" and it's a whole lot of "God hates FAGS!" stuff

Sorry. This is on Amazon.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

It's appearing that it was more than a "glitch" - it was a targeted attack. Watch for more of this in the future, as the "War on the Weird" cranks up.