Dampening my snickering glee at being ranked among Movements and Periods is the news that Amazon seems to be stripping the sales figures and accompanying rankings from GLBTQ books, erotica, and romance novels, particularly those with what they term “adult content.”
In short: someone in Amazon has utter shit for brains.
Authors such as Jaci Burton, Maya Banks, Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler have reported that since being stripped of their sales rankings, their titles are no longer found in searches on Amazon.com. MetaWriter is also compiling a list of titles that have been stripped of their sales rank.
When pressed for a reason, Amazon.com’s customer service department told YA author Mark Probst:
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.
What, I ask, the fucking fuckhell? Many an Amazon customer is infuriated, and the #amazonfail hashtag on Twitter has pretty much become the only thing worth following. What to do, what to do?
It’s time to hit ‘em where it hurts. No, not a boycott. When you want someone to pay attention, you hit ‘em in the PR.
It’s Google Bomb Time!
We did it for Bill Napoli. Now it’s Amazon’s turn. As always, fuckwittery should not go unrewarded. We propose the following entry be entered into the lexicon:
Amazon Rank
amazon rank
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): amazon ranked1. To censor and exclude on the basis of adult content in literature (except for Playboy, Penthouse, dogfighting and graphic novels depicting incest orgies).
2. To make changes based on inconsistent applications of standards, logic and common sense.Etymology: from 12 April 2009 removal of sales rank figures from books on Amazon.com containing sexual, erotic, romantic, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or queer content, rendering them impossible to find through basic search functions at the top of Amazon.com’s website. Titles stripped of their sales rankings include “Bastard Out of Carolina,” “Lady Chatterly’s Lover,” several romance novels, GLBTQ fiction novels, YA books, and narratives about gay people.
Example of usage: “I tried to do a report on Lady Chatterly’s Lover for English Lit, but my teacher amazon ranked me and I got an F on grounds that it was obscene.”
Alternate usage: “My girlfriend wanted to preserve her virginity, and I was happy to respect that, then she amazon ranked and decided anal sex was okay.”
Making this the top result, which is also dependent upon algorithms and shit, requires help from you savvy folks.
I’ve created a page with the definition for “amazon rank.” LINK TO http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank with “Amazon Rank” as the anchor text. The link should look like this:
This is known as Google-bombing.
Second of all: Urbandictionary.com. We’re creating a definition and if it’s approved, you can vote on it to increase its prominence. Vote early, vote often to increase the definition’s power.
All you have to do is link to the page using these words: Amazon Rank. The more you do it, the higher up in rank the page will go, and the more successful it will be. One would hope.
The goal: that “Amazon Rank” points to the definition that underscores Amazon.com’s shortminded censorship and inconsistent policing of what ought to be accessible to the book buying public.
ETA: As of 6:15pm EST/2:25pm SBTB Time, we are number one in google results for Amazon Rank. Holy smoke. Behold the power of angry bookfolk, Twitter, and the interweb.
ETA: As of 7:54pm EST, Amazon has given out a host of explanations, which I’ve heard from Twitterers, along the lines of “people complained” to “we will have more information tomorrow.” I smell a giant meeting in PR at Amazon HQ bright and early tomorrow. We’ll see what the morning brings.
But in my inbox, an email from Craig Seymour whose book, All I Could Bare, a memoir of his job as a stripper, was stripped of sales rank back in February 2009, despite memoirs from prominent pornography actors remaining within the ranks. So this has been creeping up insidiously, it seems, until massive delisting occurred over the last few days. Pokes some mammoth stripper-pole sized holes in the “we responded to customer complaints” response.
Jane from DA has, of course has a template response letter to send, as well as links and a full-bodied explanation of why sales rank is important. Carolyn Kellogg from the LA Times book blog also covered the story today. We’ll see what tomorrow brings in #amazonfail.
ETA 9:13 pm EST: Oh Noes! It was a glitch! One that’s been in operation since February, according to Craig Seymour, and one that clearly should be blamed for a whole mess of other problems.
Now #10 with a lovely (Pornography) tag. sigh
Should we burn books we don’t approve of too? This is a super dumb move.
Okay, I posted the link multiple places, including Facebook. Man, I hope it helps.
I’m going to go read an m/m romance now that I downloaded from a site that was not Amazon.
Number #2 result! Great job!
Posted the link in 4 places.
Done…I likened Bezos to The Brain and the person who suggested this crap to Pinky. Felt bad after doing it, as at least Pinky’s funny…Bigotry—it just won’t go the f*** away, will it?
I’m on it. The link goes on my Links page and at the bottom of every page on my site. And Twitter.
Hit #3. Yeah!
I linked on my LJ, and I also wanted to let you know that it’s already on the first page of the google results, but not the top yet.
http://corinnethewise.livejournal.com/91775.html
Hope this helps!
Wanna have fun google bombing?
There’s a thread about this over at the amazon forums under “romance.”
I wonder if my evil tendencies are heightened while under the influence of chocolate bunnies and peanut butter eggs?
Now number 2!!!!!!!!!!
It’s at #2 now. Damn, y’all move quickly.
Linked from my blog. I’m also off to tip several much bigger blogs to hope they cover it. Boo-urns, Amazon!
Word: attack59 – you said a mouthful!
Great idea! I’ll post it now.
Also, please sign this petition, which will be sent to Amazon. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-amazons-discriminating-censorship
Okay, this was bad enough when I though it was only fiction books. But nonfiction?! Books from lesbian parenting/pregnancies and self-help books to biographies (like one for Harvey Milk) are losing their rankings. WTF Amazon?!?
I think we’ve hit #1.
It just came up as the first search result for me.
Done and done.
Also, since someone above posted a link to a petition, I thought I’d note that the following one has been going for a few hours and has about 1750 signatories so far so it’s a little more entrenched.
Not that I’d discourage anyone from signing both!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy
Linked from my blog as well.
What I don’t get is, if they sell it why not rank it? How does removing the ranking protect kids from adult content?
Posted to KindleBoards.com:
http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,6770.msg138182.html#msg138182
There was already a topic on it.
I posted a tread on the Amazon Erotic Romance forum as well. The links to this site and Dear Author are all there. I wonder if mods will pull the posts with the links. 🙂
thrilled to see it pop up at #1 on my search just now – when I posted on my blog it wasn’t even on 1st page.
ROCK ON BITCHES! 🙂
It’s still only #3 for me! :/
Y’all using quotations or has my google broken from excessive refreshing? (quoted does come up as #1 for me)
Erm. I just searched myself at Amazon, and all of my books are listed on the search page, with rankings on their specific pages. ?!?!
And since each of my titles includes the word “Erotic”…I’m a bit confused, as apparently they would be deranked and/or unsearchable.
I also searched Jaci Burton and Lora Leigh, and it appears that all of their books are also showing up.
So I’m either missing something…or something’s changed at Amazon.
They seem to be assuming that salacious content is being presented on the front page or via the recommendations feature. De-ranking makes the titles so hard to search that it’s probably fair to say that no one is going to see them by accident.
spam word: question59—Yeah, I have about 59 questions for the person who thought this de-ranking plan was a good idea.
First result for “Amazon Rank” now!
@ colette: Brokeback Mountain and Heather Has Two Mommies are coming up as well. And they have sales figures on their pages (although no #70 in this category, just number sold). Perhaps they’ve reversed the policy?
@earthgirl…good to know I’m not crazy. 🙂
Hi! You don’t know me, but I’ve been reading for awhile (and sent a few people here for book IDs). I love the googlebomb, but I thought I’d point out ( if you hadn’t noticed) that the smartbitchestrashybooks URL is filtered out by google’s safesearch – which means that most people searching from jobs and public libraries won’t see the googlebomb, which is a shame and dilutes the power of it.
(I noticed this way back when you googlebombed Napoli and I, on a filtered computer, couldn’t tell what people were talking about; and it’s still happening.)
Would it be worth trying to do a backup googlebomb towards a site that doesn’t have any adult terms in the URL?
Amazon is not an Amazon, a fury free dame with bow on a horse, no, Amazon´s a Square, like they used to say in the sixties.
Does it also count if I post the link right here? I already posted it at two blogs.
Well, here goes:
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank/
Tsk, Moab is my Washpot from Stephen Fry deranked, and he´s one of my heroes. And the sad part is, that book is…drumroll…a biography! And yes, mr. Fry´s gay. and.so.what.? she asked them pointedly.
Posted x3.
I’m going to make sure any links that are programmed to automatically direct to Amazon (goodreads etc) directs to B&N or some place else.
Sweet Dames and Gents,
better use this link for the petition, since it already has 2.108
petition votes (better gather them in one petition, I´d say)
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy
I posted it on my Facebook wall. Lots of my friends and family will not be thrilled by this bit of news.
did they do this on Easter figuring no one would be online to notice it happening?
I linked it to my LJ and Facebook. Hope it helps, good work ladies!
ROCK ON! Sharing the love and the linkage on my mainsite and other sites.
I love the internets. 🙂
Amazon might be a bunch of fucktarts, but they don’t stand a chance against the collective might of…well, the Internet. (“Oh, fuck, the Internet is here” indeed.)
Signed Sierra Dafoe’s petition and sen it on.
googled Amazon Rank and was first website I found…that´s good, yes?
And yes, Amazon IS Rank! Yuck, the stench from here…
And it’s made the LA Times Jacket Copy blog complete with a link back to the Smart Bitches!
And they also explain why versions of some books we’ve heard were removed may still be showing up on the rankings—depends on the edition and/or publisher.
@ev: My best guess it that they just didn’t think it through. Someone complained, so they labeled a bunch of things “adult” and didn’t really take into consideration all the implications of the way their system would handle that. In fact, based on my time working for a major software company my guess is that the person who made the decision doesn’t have a clue how the software works and how things tie together.
Generally stupidity is more common than conspiracy.
Heather Has Two Mommies does not have a sales rank as of now.
Stephen Fry’s and John Barrowman’s autobiographies have lost their ranking on the editions that have ‘gay’ in the categories or subjects they’ve been assigned, but have not lost the ranking on the editions that do NOT have the word in the categories or subjects.
Given that…
HHTM paperback (linked above) has no rank and has ‘gay & lesbian’ as a category, plus words like ‘lesbian’ and ‘homosexuality’ among its assigned subjects.
HHTM hardcover does have a sales rank, and has no words implying it’s not heteronormative in its category or subjects.
HHTM library binding has no rank, “Gay & Lesbian” in categories and ‘lebsian’ and ‘homosexuality’ in subjects.
HHTM library binding reprint is the same as normal library binding—no rank, key words listed.
HHTM special edition paperback has no rank, has keywords.
No, I don’t think they’ve reversed anything yet. :/