Meanwhile, in the rest of the online world....

[conuly]

I go to take a little nap and I wake up to AMAZON IS MORE EVIL THAN EVER. What? Seems everything's just... exploded.

Why does it matter if sales ranks are visible? I get that keeping sales ranks on some books while deleting them from others on dubious grounds is uncool, but why does it matter? What do they do, exactly? How does that keep books from being searched up? What're the odds that they'll make a hasty public apology within the next week and hope everything blows over?

Edit: It's now hit the LA Times.

Comments

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

Because they're blocking the hits from search results as well.

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

(And this isn't speculation— this is something that an Amazon representative has been quoted as saying, and has been confirmed with searches for some more obscure titles.)

[conuly]

Ah. I figured that had to work in there somewhere, but nobody was saying it, they were just talking about the sales rank!

[phoenixdreaming.livejournal.com]

This writer (http://www.naughty-and-spice.com/2009/04/12/amazon-plays-hide-and-go-seek-with-my-book-and-yours/) explains it:

[Amazon's response] “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.”

So what does that mean exactly? It means you can go to Amazon, type in the search line my upcoming release Take Me from Kensington Aphrodisia…and you won’t find it. It will not come up. Unless you start searching in sub categories or have a direct link, my book and other erotica/erotic romances are almost impossible to find. And when you do find them? You won’t see any sales ranking.

[conuly]

How about if their entire customer base stops letting their kids use the internet unsupervised, how about that?

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that'll happen.

But seriously, go to Amazon and type in "homosexuality" and look at the crap drivel unmitigated homophobic screeds stuff that comes up.

[conuly]

I think I won't. I'll just take your word for it.

[beezelbubbles.livejournal.com]

Taking word is good. I didn't and now I have blinding rage.

[conuly]

Is it as bad as reading comments on YouTube and the like? I strongly suspect it is, which is why I decided to just trust griffen.

[beezelbubbles.livejournal.com]

Mmmm... yeah. And I made the mistake of reading the reviews for the books that came up and just... I hate believing there are people like that in the world.
Also, I'm not sure I'm buying the glitch explanation. It doesn't jive too well with the canned response people were getting.

[conuly]

Really? Because I'm certain I don't buy the glitch explanation. Pretty funny kind of glitch that only targets gay books.

[beezelbubbles.livejournal.com]

I think I don't want Amazon to be evil, so I'm being tentative. I want the troll theory to be true. Either way, though, Amazon has really dropped the ball.

[wodhaund.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I have a couple friends who work for Amazon (as customer service and programmers), and as far as I can tell, there are a fair number of employees pretty unhappy with this as well.

It probably won't change a damn thing, unfortunately, but at least the whole of the company isn't all gung-ho about it.

[conuly]

FWIW, I have a couple friends who work for Amazon (as customer service and programmers), and as far as I can tell, there are a fair number of employees pretty unhappy with this as well.

I can believe it.

[appadil.livejournal.com]

Even if sales ranks were completely meaningless, the fact that many works with no explicit sexual content are apparently being flagged as "adult" simply for including GBLTQ subject matter is troubling.

[conuly]

Even without the double standard of NOT flagging many actually explicit books.

[xmorningxrosex.livejournal.com]

Such as Playboy (so I just read elsewhere)