UPDATE 2:
Not a hoax or troll. Probably not something evil on the part of Amazon either, but could be. I’m sure we’ll eventually find out. I’m leaving my google bomb up, just in case.
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UPDATE:
Sigh. My hoax detectors were clearly full of waxy buildup. This is the work of a troll. Never mind.
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Amazon Rank.
Amazon has been removing sales rankings for books that contain lesbian and gay content so that they won’t come up in searches. This is supposed to be about adult content, but that rationalisation is not holding up. Twitter users can follow the ongoing saga at #amazonfail.
From a letter from friend and author Leanne Franson:
And are you on top of the mess at Amazon (apparently german, japan etc as well as .com) where they are removing the sales rankings of lgbt books, often with no erotic content, including selfhelp books and memoirs, classics, historical fiction, as well as making a bunch of them not show up if you do a general “all categories” search, only a book search. Apparently someone has decided that if they have a sales ranking they will come up in bestseller lists etc, and has decided that all lgbt content is “adult”.
Of course books like Playboy Centerfolds is still clearly rated,
What a mess and a huge huge huge step backwards.
markprobst.livejournal
community.livejournal.com/meta_writer (long list of books affected)
queersunited.blogspot.com/is-amazon-censoring-lgbt-books.html
blogs.news-journalonline.com/amazonfail-a-twitter-movement.html
www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazon-rank/ (info on googlebombing and use of the new term “amazon rank” “amazon ranked me” etc)
My Assume Nothing book has had its rank stripped. (of course it was something like 500,000th lol!) It is such an EROTIC book. sigh. It comes up with “Assume Nothing”+”franson” in a search of books, but not in an “all departments” search. How bogus. Same with “Teaching Through Trauma”, which weirdly however, brought up a listing for “Juicy Mother: Celebration”: a comics collection I am in that DOES have much more juicy tales. I guess they missed Juicy Mother, since it also has a sales rank still.
Please check titles you love or publish or wrote, and list them to the meta_writer listing above.
Petition:
www.thepetitionsite.com/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy
Use their express customer service form http://tinyurl.com/amazonservice to voice your complaint or call 1-866-216-1072.
Fun.
Leanne
From the online petition:
We the undersigned, state our strong objection to Amazon’s “Adult” policy as outlined in their letter in italics below
“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.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com AdvantageWe find it hypocritical that Amazon continues to sell adult books but thinks that removing the sales rating to (keep them out of the public eye) will achieve this.
We would like to hear the rationalisation for allowing sales ratings for explicit books with a heterosexual focus such as:
–Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
–Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love” (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Bertrice Smal’s Skye o’Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
–and Alan Moore’s Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)
Yet the following books, which have a gay or lesbian focus, have been classed as “adult books” and stripped of their sales ratings:
–Radclyffe Hill’s classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;
–Mark R Probst’s YA novel The Filly about a young man in the wild West discovering that he’s gay (gay romance, no sex);
–Charlie Cochrane’s Lessons in Love (gay romance with no sex);
–The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience, edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues);
–and Homophobia: A History by Bryan Fone (non-fiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years).
Please tell us, Amazon, why the explicit books with a heterosexual focus are allowed to keep their sales ratings while the non-explicit romances, the histories and the biographies that deal with LGBTQ issues are not.
We would love to hear your reasoning.