My
journalism professor used to say, "never get into a battle with someone
who buys their ink by the barrel." He was referring to newspapers, but
the same could be said in the firestorm of writers (and readers) versus
Amazon.com, which arose over the weekend.
Many
writers, editors, and publishers of erotica as well as GLBT and
sex-related books, including Scanner's friend Rachel Kramer Bussel,
noticed that the Amazon sales rankings of books they had written,
edited, or published had disappeared as part of their new adult policy.
Hundreds of titles had been affected.
When
books are deranked, they no longer come up near the beginning of search
results, even if they're a popular-selling title or a classic like Lady Chatterly's Lover,
and hence, they are hidden from potential buyers. It appears that the
books have been selected for deranking due to their sexual content, or
in the case of gay titles, simply due to the tag "gay," whether or not
sexual content appeared in the books themselves.
Word
quickly spread via Twitter with the tag # amazonfail, and throughout
Amazon online superstore itself with the tag amazonfail, which users
added onto the listings for books that had been de-ranked.
Amazon's response to those who have emailed to complain is an additional fail.Read More...
