Comments | gehayi: Weighing in on AmazonFail

gehayi

Weighing in on AmazonFail

Apr 13, 2009 04:42

I didn't say anything yesterday because a) it was Easter and I was waiting for more people to be back from their holidays and b) because I was doing a lot of research yesterday, much of it to do with what books were showing up on ratings and which weren't. And, of course, posting in various places about how I feel ( Read more... )

amazonfail, blatant stupidity, lgbt, feminism, books

Comments 13

aunty_marion April 13 2009, 10:38:12 UTC

Pssst. Lovely list, but could you use tinyurl link http://tinyurl.com/ca96yv for the GoogleNews link? It's made my friendspage too wide to be able to see comments!

gehayi April 13 2009, 10:40:29 UTC

Sure! There you go!

aunty_marion April 13 2009, 10:59:38 UTC

Ta!

valarltd April 13 2009, 11:58:14 UTC

Radio talk show host Michaelangelo Signorile had his books deranked.
http://www.signorile.com/
It's going to be ALL over Siris-XM's OutQ station today.

gehayi April 13 2009, 16:26:33 UTC

Oooh, thanks, I'll add this!

hazel75 April 13 2009, 13:08:19 UTC

Great coverage on this!! Thanks for all the info and links!

polaris_starz April 13 2009, 13:20:48 UTC

Thank you for the links! When I finally went to bed last night it still hadn't been picked up by many mainstream news sources. I am currently in the laborious process of transferring my many wish lists (which I mostly use to keep track of books I want to read) from Amazon to Powell's. I could use your opinion: Should I shut down my Amazon account completely, or keep it but only buy from the dealers who use it to list their stock? (I.E. just use Amazon Marketplace to find used books from stores across the country.) I don't want to support Amazon itself, and I don't know if any share of the profits goes to them when I do that.

gehayi April 13 2009, 16:42:58 UTC

I'm giving them time to react to this shitstorm and reverse their policy. If they don't--well, I never bought much from Amazon Marketplace. But according to Wikipedia, Amazon Marketplace has been very profitable for Amazon. Amazon says that it charges a commission rate (which with books is 15%), closing fees charged to the seller...and even fees based on poor seller performance.

So even though you save money, they get to charge at least twice (and possibly three times, if the seller hasn't been selling well)per sale. It adds up.

lee_rowan April 13 2009, 14:02:20 UTC

What they need to do is put opt-out buttons for their customers. The phobes don't need to see my books, I don't need to see anything on gaming. (Amazo's computer apparently thinks that anyone who ever checked the price on Battlestar Galactica is a game-mad fanboy who wants Grand Theft Auto. Urrrgghhh...)

They have these buttons on their advertising system. All they need to do is set it up for site searches.

Idiots.

I still think they were trying to pander to the phobes while pushing their Kindle editions... because all those icky books? Still up there in Kindle, though the print versions had vanished.