(ETA, before the post even starts! Yow!)…you know, I went and just changed the title of this post from the more humorous “ladies and gentlemen” to Amazonfail, because that’s what it is, without a doubt. The more I read about this, the angrier I’m getting.
Amazon went nuts while we were all egg-hunting, it seems. And by nuts I mean they decided to make themselves “family friendly”….by removing the sales rankings from any books deemed to possess “adult” material.
“Adult material”, according to Amazon, includes erotica or explicit romance books… but the hammer seems to be falling particularly hard on GLBT —whether or not these books have sex in them at all, they seem to be losing their sales rankings. Several people have blogged about this already, and it’s now being picked up by the media as well. I’m sure by Monday Amazon will have something to say about it –they’re going to have to, since, well, whatever they intended by doing this, they look like a bunch of bigoted idiots right now. You can’t find a PG rated YA book with a queer character by searching, but you can still find sex toys and Mein Kampf, no problemo. What a set of priorities!
Smells unpleasantly like agenda to me. Particularly since it was done in absolute silence on a holiday weekend, when it could be reasonably expected that people had other things on their minds.
Much of the Twitterverse, where #amazonfail is in full swing, seems to feel the same.I would prefer to be wrong, but I’m definitely buying my books from Barnes & Noble from now until they explain themselves, apologize profusely and publicly, and reverse this idiocy.
So, if this pisses you off as much as it does me, do us all a favor and click the link below:
Amazon Rank.
(The ladies over at SmartBitches came up with this one, and I’m just doing my part.)
Also, if you think these things have any effect (my jury’s still out, but hell, it can’t hurt) you can sign a petition protesting it here.
I’m also, I say with a certain amount of disappointment, NOT going to be buying a Kindle this year.
Ugh.
ETA: there’s a very good piece on this here, with interesting links at the bottom.
ETA again, since I’m stil getting hits on this….there’s an updated post with my thoughts on Amazon’s response here.
the purple patch 
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Hi Amy,
I’ve been trying to follow all the tweets and blogs, but I’m still a bit confused. For instance, I searched for The Color Purple (Walker) and Me Talk Pretty One Day (Sedaris), and they still had their sales ranking. But Running with Scissors (by Augusten Burroughs) didn’t. Hmm…interesting.
Makes me sad to think any kind of censorship is going on. Sigh. I don’t buy anything from Amazon but mp3’s. Guess I’ll have to stop that now too….
Hey Nancy,
I’m still trying to catch up myself (and it’s a losing battle, since this is spreading with the same speed FB’s epic -and quickly retracted- TOS changes did a while back) but my impression right now is that Amazon may be removing items they’ve had customer complaints about.
Which, if true, makes this all the more dumbass, IMO.
I’ve had a major dislike for Amazon for awhile now. This is the final nail in the coffin.
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