amazonfail

[kuddliphish]

So I don't twitter, which is where this really took off, but I do follow enough writing blogs to have heard about it quite a bit. I'm not going to go into the whole story here, since other people (like Booksquare, Neil Gaiman, and Smart Bitches) have done that pretty thoroughly, but the up shot is that, over the weekend, a whole bunch of books,

Comments

[mbrubeck]

Read official and unofficial statements from inside Amazon and Clay Shirky's re-evaluation. Summary: A system meant to keep porn/erotica out of general search results (similar to Google SafeSearch) was accidentally applied to a broader set of categories than intended.

I worked at Amazon for 3.5 years, and my friends who still work there corroborate this version of events.

[kuddliphish]

Well, yes, I do believe it was an accident--if I actually thought company policy included bigotry I would be a lot more verbose and strident about the whole thing. But Amazon also hasn't been terribly forthright or pro-active either. My biggest concern (which I wasn't very clear about) is that this incident just underscores how big and important Amazon is in the book world, and I'm not sure I trust it with that kind of power. It seems like a little competition would be healthy.

I'm also not too pleased with how the adult content label is used--it hasn't been well advertised, and unlike SafeSearch, there doesn't even seem to be a way to turn it off, or an effective means for a writer or publisher to protest if the label is added in error. And again it wouldn't be a problem if Amazon weren't such a huge resource for writers...

[mbrubeck]

I can understand why big publishing houses would worry about Amazon's size and influence. (It's a similar situation to Apple's hold on online music distribution.) But I don't think readers and forward-looking authors need to worry. As big as Amazon is, it doesn't have anything like a monopoly. There's absolutely zero barrier to me buying my next book from Powell's, bn.com, or the huge independent bookstore a block away from my office (and, ironically, just six blocks away from my old Amazon.com office). In fact, I use Book Burro to modify every Amazon detail page to include links to public libraries and other booksellers. The minute Amazon fails to find a book and some other store succeeds, that store has won my money.

On the contrary, I think Amazon's existence is a huge benefit for marginalized authors in particular. Twenty years ago, how easy was it to find any books about gays and lesbians - especially for readers not living in large, progressive cities? Now anyone anywhere in the world can buy any book that Amazon or its