OH HELL NO AMAZON
Amazon is apparently trying to remove sales rankings for books with "adult content." But the way they're going about that? Is to take them off of ALL THE GAY BOOKS.
Original post here and more here and here..
And ryda_wong has lots more links and commentary:
Fail, Amazon. GIGANTIC FUCKING FAIL.
How to Call and Email Amazon
also removed: The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability
ETA: Links being gathered here.
ETA2: I don't know if it's due to this policy (which also seems to be affecting search results) but how creepy is it that the first search hit for "homosexuality" on Amazon is "A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality"? *shudder*
ETA3: Another (big) reason why this is important:
To a bookseller, the Amazon.com sales rank is quite often correlated to how quickly a particular title might sell. A book with a very low number Amazon.com sales rank might be expected to sell within minutes or hours of listing, and a book with a sales rank of 4,000,000 might take several years to sell. The analogy is frequently used by booksellers when they are scouting for books to add to their inventory. If a bookseller finds a book that has an online value of $10, an Amazon.com sales rank of 2,105,878, and he/she is faced with buying it for $4, they are apt to pass, but if the sales rank were 45,017, it might suddenly be a book worth adding to their inventory.
from here
Original post here and more here and here..
And ryda_wong has lots more links and commentary:
Fail, Amazon. GIGANTIC FUCKING FAIL.
How to Call and Email Amazon
also removed: The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability
ETA: Links being gathered here.
ETA2: I don't know if it's due to this policy (which also seems to be affecting search results) but how creepy is it that the first search hit for "homosexuality" on Amazon is "A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality"? *shudder*
ETA3: Another (big) reason why this is important:
To a bookseller, the Amazon.com sales rank is quite often correlated to how quickly a particular title might sell. A book with a very low number Amazon.com sales rank might be expected to sell within minutes or hours of listing, and a book with a sales rank of 4,000,000 might take several years to sell. The analogy is frequently used by booksellers when they are scouting for books to add to their inventory. If a bookseller finds a book that has an online value of $10, an Amazon.com sales rank of 2,105,878, and he/she is faced with buying it for $4, they are apt to pass, but if the sales rank were 45,017, it might suddenly be a book worth adding to their inventory.
from here