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.
According to this ljer http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.html he’s ,a troll trying to gain a little bit of internetz fame.
Hey, all you writers whose books got deranked…can you all tell us the titles? Some of them, from the descriptions, I want to read, and not every commentator listed title/author.
Whoah. Neil gaiman called you wonderful. I’m so jealous!
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/04/amazonfail-sunday.html
@rosa, the list maintained here might help:
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html
DIRECT LINK to cancel your Amazon account: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/rsvp/rsvp-mi.html
Just type CANCEL ACCOUNT in the order # box—and make sure to tell them why.
Suggestion for authors: remove all Amazon links from your websites. Direct them to other vendors, where possible. Take down Kindle links. And email Amazon to let ‘em know.
Just an idea 🙂
Just in case you wondered, belying the fact that they’re doing this for adult material the book “Heather Has Two Mommies” was stripped of its rank.
I will be linking: now.
I’ll be linking later…fantastic idea and glad to hear it’s already at the top of Google.
I posted the link at my blog and wrote a blog about this directing people to your information and that at Dear Author.
Thanks for following this so closely for us!
Sabrina
Alternatives to Amazon (for books at least):
http://www.indiebound.org/
http://www.abebooks.com/
The only thing Big Corporations understand is money. Fight back with your wallet!
Article in the Guardian newspaper from the UK, and a Guardian comment column that links here.
I can’t wait until some idiot decides that interracial romances are “mature content” and not suitable for children.
Oh wait, they probably already have.
The one thing obvious thing no one’s pointed out to the idiotboxes at Amazon.com is that they are NOT in the business of legislating public morality. That’s for parents and churches to do, (and let’s face it, some of them do a pretty crappy job). Be that as it may, Amazon IS in the business of SELLING BOOKS, regardless of content. That is why Jeff Bezos makes $81 million dollars. And if he wants to keep making that kind of money, he needs to get this matter taken care of ASAP or sooner.
Gad Dang it! I don’t check my email or surf my favorite sites for one fricking day and all hell breaks loose. Figures….
Don’t worry girls! I linked and emailed my arse off.
Mad though, I bought shit from them last week.
I did send the link to my gay friends and told them to light the fires and go crazy too!
Bad Big Commerce Brother!
Maybe we should all buy dildoes and have them shipped to Amazon Customer Service. Hehehehehehe
I want Neil Gaiman to think I’m awesome, too!
Linked on my blog, rather annoyed that this is not making the UK news channels as a story.
Ms Alex, I caught a substantial piece about it on Channel 4 news earlier, albeit as one of the later items. I haven’t seen it anywhere else but there and Guardian online, though.
Hi Caty,
I missed that bit of Ch4 news (must have been when I wandered off for coffee) but I’ve just seen @krishgm talking about it on Twitter (not signed in there over the weekend which is the first time in three months (honesty I turn my back for one weekend and all hell breaks loose!)). I’d seen the Guardian coverage but I can’t find anything on BBC which I think is shocking if they really haven’t covered the story. If anyone has seen a BBC story I’d appreciate being pointed in its direction. 🙂
They might as well call it an April Fool’s joke instead of a glitch. Either way they either need to fix it and apologize of watch their sales plumment.
I told my daughter about it, who then amazoned “virginity” to see what popped up. The first thing up should have eyebrows raised.
Amazon owns AbeBooks—-bought them out a few years ago.
I sent an e-mail yesterday and just got a response –
“Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.
Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.
Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.”
Way better than “this was a glitch.”
Count me in as another person who got the “ham-fisted” response.
I never complained about it only being GLBT and I fear that they still aren’t getting the message that people are not just upset about that aspect.
I’m seeing books come back up when you search for them individually, but an awwwwful lot of missing rankings still. Has Amazon stated publicly and unequivocally that they intend to restore rankings to all books stripped of them, or have they only committed to making them visible if you search for that specific book?
And search engines by subject are still “unrepaired”.
Linked to Amazon Rank from my site and am waiting for Amazon’s bad PR mistakes (more than their glitch) to lead to some real business losses here. (And great examples for future PR companies of what NOT to do in a web 2.0 world).
So, you’ve been using Google’s page rank to “bomb” Amazon’s sales rank… Cute. And a little bit stupid. Greetings, Affidavit
So, you made the effort to come here and state the obvious with poor grammar and lame elipses. Cute. And a little bit stupid.
Amazon !!! i can’t belive it!!!
I had a vacation, and missed this thing with Amazon, but I would like to see a change in your definition. You made a mistake…
Instead of .. she amazon ranked and decided anal sex was okay.” , it should read …she amazon ranked me and decided saddlebacking was okay.