Why I will not buy books from Amazon (unless they fix this)
It has recently been brought to my attention that GLBT fiction has slowly been stripped of its Amazon.com sales rankings because it has been labeled "adult."
From Dear Author:
What’s going on?
For those who don’t know, Amazon has decided to derank and then remove from front page searches books labeled “erotic” and GLBT. For example, books that are about Lesbian parenting have been identified as “adult content” and deranked. Patti O’Shea’s book that is listed “erotic horror” despite having only one sex scene has been deranked and removed from front page search results. Amazon has deranked Annie Proulx, E.M. Forster, but not American Psycho. Mein Kampf and books about dog fighting are ranked and can be searched from the front page, but not books about gay love or books with erotic content.
You can track more of the deranked books on twitter.
Why is this is a big deal?
It’s not because customers put any stock into the Amazon Ranking number. It’s that the Amazon Rank affects a books’ visibility on the bestseller list, on the “If you Like ___, you might like __ feature” and so forth. It is akin to the bookstore removing the books from the shelves and requiring you to go to the Customer Service desk and ask for the book or author specifically. Visibility is a huge factor in sales and anyone who doesn’t believe that is kidding themselves.
More information from Dear Author can be found here, including a form letter you can send Amazon's customer service department expressing your disapproval. There is also a petition you can sign.
Mark R. Probst also has a discussion of how this de-ranking has affected him personally; his young adult novel The Filly, which he describes as a "gay western" and which, while it contains gay romance, contains no explicit content, has been removed from Amazon rankings. Similar removals include the
Another blog has initiated "google bombing" of the term Amazon Rank (click the link for a witty and appropriate definition of what Amazon rank has become).
This disgusts me. I firmly believe that it represents censorship, the limitations of the public -- everything Milton was writing against in Areopagitica, everything that our First Amendment was written to protect us against. I can understand not wanting truly adult material to show up in searches, but if that were Amazon.com's real intention, they could have made sure that all adult content is similarly blocked, straight erotica included. They could have done what LiveJournal does, and warned users that the content they are about to view may be unsuitable for children. They could have been up front about these policy changes. Instead, they have been operating in an underhanded manner, and attempted to use their extreme power over internet book-buying to turn Amazon Rank into a reflection of a very narrow vision of what is suitable content for adults.
Please pass this on to everyone you know. The blogosphere, thankfully, is dependent upon far too many individual providers for any singular instance of censorship to spread widely enough to silence us.
From Dear Author:
What’s going on?
For those who don’t know, Amazon has decided to derank and then remove from front page searches books labeled “erotic” and GLBT. For example, books that are about Lesbian parenting have been identified as “adult content” and deranked. Patti O’Shea’s book that is listed “erotic horror” despite having only one sex scene has been deranked and removed from front page search results. Amazon has deranked Annie Proulx, E.M. Forster, but not American Psycho. Mein Kampf and books about dog fighting are ranked and can be searched from the front page, but not books about gay love or books with erotic content.
You can track more of the deranked books on twitter.
Why is this is a big deal?
It’s not because customers put any stock into the Amazon Ranking number. It’s that the Amazon Rank affects a books’ visibility on the bestseller list, on the “If you Like ___, you might like __ feature” and so forth. It is akin to the bookstore removing the books from the shelves and requiring you to go to the Customer Service desk and ask for the book or author specifically. Visibility is a huge factor in sales and anyone who doesn’t believe that is kidding themselves.
More information from Dear Author can be found here, including a form letter you can send Amazon's customer service department expressing your disapproval. There is also a petition you can sign.
Mark R. Probst also has a discussion of how this de-ranking has affected him personally; his young adult novel The Filly, which he describes as a "gay western" and which, while it contains gay romance, contains no explicit content, has been removed from Amazon rankings. Similar removals include the
Another blog has initiated "google bombing" of the term Amazon Rank (click the link for a witty and appropriate definition of what Amazon rank has become).
This disgusts me. I firmly believe that it represents censorship, the limitations of the public -- everything Milton was writing against in Areopagitica, everything that our First Amendment was written to protect us against. I can understand not wanting truly adult material to show up in searches, but if that were Amazon.com's real intention, they could have made sure that all adult content is similarly blocked, straight erotica included. They could have done what LiveJournal does, and warned users that the content they are about to view may be unsuitable for children. They could have been up front about these policy changes. Instead, they have been operating in an underhanded manner, and attempted to use their extreme power over internet book-buying to turn Amazon Rank into a reflection of a very narrow vision of what is suitable content for adults.
Please pass this on to everyone you know. The blogosphere, thankfully, is dependent upon far too many individual providers for any singular instance of censorship to spread widely enough to silence us.