Liz Schechter ([info]ladysmith) wrote in [info]kushiel_trilogy,
2009-04-12 20:03:00
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  • Mood: irate

Amazon pulling sales ranking for "adult" books.

Amazon.com has recently started pulling the sales rankings for books that they consider "adult." A majority of these books are books that no sane person would consider adult - many of them are textbooks and non-fiction books that contain GLBT themes. John Barrowman's autobiography has been de-ranked, as has Brokeback Mountain.

The list of books is ENORMOUS, and includes the Imriel trilogy of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books.

Now, what does this mean? It means that if you go to Amazon and plug in the title of the book, you still won't get it. For example, I just went and plugged in "Kushiel's Mercy". This is what I got.

If you go and plug in the subject "homosexuality", THIS is what you get!

What can you do? COMPLAIN! Email Amazon! Or go sign this petition. And spread the word. Amazon has to be made aware that this is NOT acceptable!


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  • 23 comments

[info]kellwho

April 13 2009, 00:19:40 UTC 3 years ago

I'm not getting anything abnormal from either of your links...

[info]saraphina_marie

April 13 2009, 00:41:44 UTC 3 years ago

The "Sales ranking" number at the bottom of the section has been removed.
No sales rank means it will soon drop off searches making it really hard to find and to buy. This policy has been applied exclusively to any gay and lesbian and queer related materials. Not to anything hetero (like Playboy for example).

[info]kellwho

April 13 2009, 00:48:41 UTC 3 years ago

Oh, duh, sorry, guess I didn't look hard enough. Well, that is worth getting up in arms about!

[info]saraphina_marie

April 13 2009, 00:52:34 UTC 3 years ago

It's really easy to miss if you don't realize what you are looking for. It took me three times looking at the same page to realize what was missing!

[info]kellwho

April 13 2009, 00:57:48 UTC 3 years ago

I re-posted a link I found from a LGBT site on facebook along with an explanation. Got a few hundred friends on there that won't be happy!

[info]saraphina_marie

April 13 2009, 01:24:13 UTC 3 years ago

Seriously.
If this was a mistake, it's a big one. And if this was on purpose, Amazon is really going to regret it.

[info]lassarina

April 13 2009, 03:59:13 UTC 3 years ago

Interesting possible explanation: http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

(Makes some excellent points, particularly in the third paragraph.)

[info]saraphina_marie

April 13 2009, 04:10:21 UTC 3 years ago

Yes! Excellent post! Thank you for linking it.
And I can see where this could be an issue, but as many commenters are saying over there- this still puts Amazon in the hotseat where they need to take responsibility for this mess, fix it, and ensure that things of this nature do not happen again.

[info]lassarina

April 13 2009, 04:11:54 UTC 3 years ago

Oh, yes, certainly it must still be fixed.

As of right now, when I bring up Amazon's main page, it still recs me Naamah's Kiss, but as other commenters have mentioned, searching Kushiel's Mercy doesn't bring up the Imriel trilogy until 4 items down - it seems to want to sell me the Phedre books.

[info]ladysmith

April 13 2009, 12:47:46 UTC 3 years ago

And if you look at the copies of the Imriel books that do come up, they are not being sold my Amazon per se. They are being sold by resellers through Amazon stores.

[info]ladysmith

April 13 2009, 12:51:58 UTC 3 years ago

There are some good points in there. Emma Bull (coffeem here on LJ), makes the point that this looks like its some kind of algorithm failure, since it appears to have been done by keywords.

However, as of last night Amazon was still refusing to comment on what happened, why it happened, or what they're doing to fix it. And this has apparently been ongoing for several months. They need to step up and explain, and then fix it.

[info]lassarina

April 13 2009, 14:25:58 UTC 3 years ago

Oh, I certainly agree! I am at this point far more interested in what they plan to do, than in what they already did. They can't change what they did - whether "what they did" was algorithm fail or, as one comment somewhere put it, "a glitch between someone's ears" - but they can get some credit back based on how they handle it.

[info]crimson_sonata

April 13 2009, 01:44:56 UTC 3 years ago

And also the first books that pop up under 'homosexuality' are about "curing" yourself of homosexuality... That's so incredibly offensive... And to think I liked Amazon!

[info]allichaton

April 13 2009, 00:20:13 UTC 3 years ago

Also, hit them where it hurts. The PR.

[info]kali_kali

April 13 2009, 00:21:49 UTC 3 years ago

I get the Kushiel books coming up in a search, including the page on the link you provided, both on .com and .co.uk. The Phedre trilogy, however, has been delisted from rankings on .co.uk (the Imriel one hasn't), when I looked an hour ago.

[info]saraphina_marie

April 13 2009, 00:38:24 UTC 3 years ago

Recently in US the Phedre series is still showing a rank but Imriel series has been stripped.

[info]umihebizanomiko

April 13 2009, 01:19:44 UTC 3 years ago

What the fuck. What the fucking fuck.

What, we're now so concerned about children discovering the wrong things on the internet that Amazon is censoring itself? What the hell ever happened to parents monitoring their kids' internet usage? For that matter, just how offensive can an Amazon search even be?

Pardon my French. 8D

[info]crimson_sonata

April 13 2009, 01:50:38 UTC 3 years ago

Wow, they're really insulting the intelligence of the general population. Are we going to start going back to the McCarthy era here?

I'll sign the petition and possibly write an e-mail if I can think of something good. Thanks for bringing this up!

[info]amadareneko

April 13 2009, 02:31:52 UTC 3 years ago

That's utterly awful. Basically consider all posts above me seconded; I'm at an actual loss for words :(

[info]sorrowtouch666

April 13 2009, 06:50:48 UTC 3 years ago

well that could be why i can no lounger find my hard core erotica books

[info]dominanefret

April 13 2009, 10:53:48 UTC 3 years ago

Anyone know what JC thinks about this? I'd love to hear her take.

[info]ambrosemcgrath

April 13 2009, 22:41:39 UTC 3 years ago

According to her Facebook account:

"Jacqueline Carey is reserving judgment on the Amazon 'glitch' for now"

[info]star_of_wonder

April 14 2009, 03:07:35 UTC 3 years ago

I also find it bizarre that Amazon categorizes Justice as Erotica, while it categorizes Dart as Historical Fantasy. Not only is Justice so not erotica, but I thought that Phedre books were so much more explicit than the Imriel books.

How annoying and shocking of Amazon to do this. I will help spread the word.
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