Amazon.com Fail!

[such_heights]

Via rydra_wong:

About two days ago, gay and lesbian books started to lose their Amazon sales rankings on their profile pages. Each Amazon product gets a sales ranking after at least one sale, which affects where the book will appear in some searches, bestseller lists, etc.

markprobst emails in and gets this 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.

[source: here]

Hmm. Okay. Trouble is, Amazon's version of 'adult' seems to be anything that's either categorised as 'erotica' or 'gay/lesbian', leaving gaping discrepencies in what has and hasn't been spirited away. To wit, via rwday:

Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet? Adult. No rankings.

Alan Moore's Lost Girls? Not adult. Ranking. (This is an adult graphic novel. Trust me on this one.)

Mark Probst's The Filly, a YA novel dealing with gay themes? Adult. No ranking.

Rosemary Rogers' Sweet Savage Love, Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Wolf and the Dove, Bertrice Small's Skye O'Malley? Explicit heterosexual romances. Not adult. Ranking.

Alex Beecroft's False Colours and Erastes' Transgressions? Explicit gay romances. Adult. No ranking.

Nookii: The Grownup Game for Playful Couples? Not adult. Ranking.

The Dildo Master DVD? Not adult. Ranking.

Realistic White Boy Vibrating Dildo. Not adult. Ranking.

[source: here]

There's an updating links collection going on here, a stream of Twitters here and a list of affected authors is being collated here.

So far, amazon.co.uk and other branches don't seem to have enacted the same changes. I'll edit if I find out otherwise.

(I really would try and stay up to the minute on this today, but I've got to finish my springtime_gen entry, so help me. *runs back to writing*)

ETA: Targeted books now include children's lit (Heather Has Two Mommies) and anything dealing with 'alternative' sexuality, like books with sex tips for people with disabilities. Playboy remains unharmed, while titles such as -- oh god, I can hardly type this without weeping TEARS OF RAGE -- Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape are ushered away from the public eye.

Also, word on the street is that .co.uk's been affected too, I'm off to investigate.

ETA2: Yep, as the list here continues to grow (STEPHEN FRY, GUYS), UK listings are most certainly there, though weirdly not in any sort of consistent fashion. What the hell is going on?!

ETA3: Amazon Rank

ETA4: Wait, this happened back in February? WTF.

ETA5: (oh hell oh hell this fic will never get written!) Here's an example of what the direct impact of Amazon's shenanigans is - the top two results on amazon.co.uk for 'homosexuality' are now Can Homosexuality be Healed? and A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality - and .com is even worse.

ETA6: !!! The Amazon Rank link is already the second result on Google. Internet, ilu sometimes.

ETA7: LA Times covers the story. #amazonfail is the top trending topic on Twitter, Amazon Rank is the top search result on Google, holy hell.

ETA8: I'll be poking through the amazonfail tag on delicious. In the meantime, off to sleep for me! New post tomorrow, probably.

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Comments

[eponymous]

Tropic of Cancer still has its ranking, although, from what I understand, it's a lot more adult in content than Heather Has Two Mommies. Ugh. The notion of censoring books is just so last century to me.

[eponymous]

And I guess I should follow up by saying that I understand that it's not precisely "censorship"... but it is a subtle blacklisting of literature that is very troubling.

[such_heights]

Exactly - I can't believe this idea got to the stage where it was implemented. The hypocrisy of what's been hit is mind-boggling - blacklisting's a great phrase actually, that's just it.

[eponymous]

I also noticed that Fun Home by Bechdel hasn't been removed from the rankings--presumably because it's not categorized as gay literature. I also tried searching for Entries From a Hot Pink Notebook, which I loved in high school, but it took some extra footwork to find it (because simply typing into the main search resulted in fail).

If they are truly worried about restricting access to "adult content" there are better ways to go about it than completely removing books from the search and rankings.