Amazon fail

[Rhia]

I'm in the middle of play rehearsals, so I've been sort of absent here on the board, but I was wondering if ya'll had heard about Amazon's recent fail?

Apparently, they've decided to remove from their listings and sales rankings all LGBT books and all erotica. From what I've seen so far, the purge includes everything from Lady Chatterley's Lover to Heather with Two Mommies. As a result, now if you type the word "homosexuality" into Amazon's search engine, the first book to come up is A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, followed by a whole slew of similar titles.

Amazon's official statement is that they're removing from their search engines and sales rankings any books with adult material in them. This is a list compiled on LiveJournal of the books that have been purged:

http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html

If you'll scroll down, you'll see that this list includes not only books with explicit content but YA novels, as well as non-fiction books that... don't look particularly racy. (A college guide aimed at LGBT students? A book on military policy, as it pertains to homosexuality?) The impact of this is, basically, that if you're looking for a good gay romance on Amazon or want to know more about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military, you'd better know the author's name or the title of the book, because they won't be showing up on Amazon's search engines, or they'll be on the last page because they have no sales ranking. Imagine what that means to new authors in the genre, or to people who are looking for information without having a specific book in mind.

So, yeah. Amazon fails.

[JaeFire]

Yeah, heard about it on LJ some time ago.  (Both on Matthew's and someone else's I follow in my Friends list.)  It's totally amazon fail.  Especially since they blamed it on some sort of computer glitch, but despite that (last I heard) some books are still missing their sales rankings. 


- Jae

[LilacMajesty]

I believe that Vani is refraining from buying anything until they get it totally fixed.  And believe me - loss of her sales is gonna take a big bite out of them.

[Falconer]

Yeah, things have quieted down a bit since last week, but it's definitely not something people should forget or dismiss...

[Rhia]

I've been AWOL from the internet for over a week, which is probably why I didn't hear about it before this... I should have known that the lovely, book-savvy people on the board would know!

Yeah, they're saying that it was a computer glitch while they were removing adult content from the sales rankings and search engines, but... well, I think this about sums it up: (WARNING, this link is so not PG-13) http://community.livejournal.com/political_macro/238767.html. As one of the people on my f-list said, "at best, it's incompetence. At worst, Amazon is lying through it's teeth."

I'm with Vani on this one. I'm not even sure I'll go back after they fix it. I feel bad every time I buy from them anyway... too many of my friends work at or own independent bookstores, and somehow they always know when I've bought from Amazon. Maybe they can smell the guilt on me?

[LilacMajesty]

:::sniffs Rhia:::  I smell cinnamon and motor oil.  Is that what guilt smells like?

[SilverMoon28]

My problem is - Amazon is the only English bookstore I can go to aroun d here.  Well, there is an English bookstore in  Zurich, but books there cost 3 times as much so, who knows.  But yeah, I haven't bought anything from there since (and I usually get something 2-3 times a month from Amazon).

Computer glitch my hat.

Vani

[Rhia]

How about abebooks? Or even Barnes & Noble? Wouldn't want you to go into book withdrawal while waiting for Amazon to remove its head from... other parts of its anatomy.

...wait, motor oil? Did my guilt lead me to mug a mechanic?

[LilacMajesty]

You're blacking out because of your guilt?  That's not a good sign Rhia.

[Rhia]

No, no, the blacking out is because of the liquor.

(God, after tonight's performance I kind of wish. How much offstage drama can one group of people have, I ask you?  )

[anaskee]

Matthew alerted me about this and I'm still holding off from buying from Amazon.  They said it was unintentional, that someone was probably trying to separate all the "adult" books from everything else and somehow pushed the wrong button and all the LGBT books went "poof".  But still, I'm not comfortable that a company is trying to censor stuff from a consumer.  I feel that they are making a decision for me and I don't like that.  They'll start doing this, and then what are they gonna censor next?  On of my fave author will have her book out in a couple of months and she said she's trying to find another company to sell her books because she doesn't like what Amazon is doing.