From The Fiction Circus via Slashdot
A few days ago, this guy Mark Probst who publishes gay books and is a gay writer himself, suddenly noticed that the Amazon rank on his gay romance novel called "The Filly" plummeted to nothing, and he was all like: "Huh? What in the hay? People love my book!"
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Surely Amazon had not suddenly entered the culture wars and declared war on an entire book-buying subset of the American population? Surely Amazon was a for-profit company that was neutral on the subject of human rights and would just as willingly sell books to dick-dipping dudes and clit-licking ladies just as fast as it would sell self-help books to leather-loving Nazis?
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So, because Probst is a publisher and has an Amazon Advantage account, he sent Amazon a letter saying "whafa" and he got this in response:"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage"
So! Probst was wrong! He WAS being persecuted!
At this point in time the cordoning of materials only appears to be affecting "adult" material. Not something I would normally buy from Amazon anyway, but if Amazon as a company feels comfortable making this decision how long until they decide that maybe Adam Smith or Milton Friedman, Mark Twain or J.D. Salinger are objectionable?
Miracle Jones at The Fiction Circus says he finds everything by Stephenie Meyer objectionable, that actually isn't a bad example since a lot of Vampire literature is centered around a core of erotica. Are vampire books going to disappear from the (electronic) shelves?
I am not a big subscriber to slippery slope theories but this is definitely a development that needs to be nipped in the bud.
add: I may be a little more sensitive than others because of experiences I have had in local Seattle book stores. Most recently I have been trying to find a copy of War and Decision by Douglas Feith. I called all the Barnes and Nobles and Borders and quite a few other stores in the area. Not one carried it. When I asked about it at one store I was asked why would we carry that it's nothing but a bunch of lies. This about a book by one of the architects of one of the major national policy decisions of the last half century.
Update: The LA Times has more:
One of these books has been removed from Amazon's sales rankings because of "adult" content; the other has not.
"American Psycho" is Bret Easton Ellis' story of a sadistic murderer. "Unfriendly Fire" is a well-reviewed empirical analysis of military policy. But it's "Unfriendly Fire" that does not have a sales rank -- which means it would not show up in Amazon's bestseller lists, even if it sold more copies than the Twilight series. In some cases, being de-ranked also means being removed from Amazon's search results.
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When book critic Bethanne Patrick came across the news, she posted in on Twitter, where it circulated rapidly. Sunday afternoon it took just an hour for the hashtag #amazonfail to become the top trending topic on the site. An online petition was created. A site run by romance writers started an effort to redefine the phrase "Amazon rank" as "To censor and exclude on the basis of adult content in literature (except for Playboy, Penthouse, dogfighting and graphic novels depicting incest orgies)."
But as troubling as the unevenness of the policy of un-ranking and de-searching certain titles might be, it's a bit beside the point. It's the action itself that is troubling: making books harder to find, or keeping them off bestseller lists on the basis of their content can't be a good idea.
The Times piece lists some of the books that have been dropped and notes that in some cases the same novel by different publishers may be delisted for one and listed for the other. How is that for consistency?
Update II: An Amazon rep has told Publishers Weekly that this is a software glitch. Mark Probst, whose inquiry started this firestorm, wonders why, if that's the case, his caselog is still open with the original explanation and why the same explanation was given to another author back in February.
Update III: Instapundit is more willing to accept the glitch explanation than I am. Based on Craig Seymour's account (linked above) of his issues back in Feb and Amazon's response, if I was testing this system I would call this working as designed. That assumes of course that Seymour's account is accurate. I don't have any reason to assume otherwise but it's always wise to keep in mind that everyone has an agenda. Mine is the fact I hate the idea of hiding books even if I don't want to buy that book.
Follow up post
books, censorship, Amazon.com
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