Note: Post is updated twice below.
Those who know me know I spend an inordinate amount of money with Amazon.com. (Not as much as I used to, Tom. I swear!). That's one of the reasons this news, as reported on the blog Jacket Copy by Los Angeles Times writer Carolyn Kellogg, bugs me...
One of these books has been removed from Amazon's sales rankings because of "adult" content; the other has not.
"American Psycho" is Bret Easton Ellis' story of a sadistic murderer. "Unfriendly Fire" is a well-reviewed empirical analysis of military policy. But it's "Unfriendly Fire" that does not have a sales rank -- which means it would not show up in Amazon's bestseller lists, even if it sold more copies than the Twilight series. In some cases, being de-ranked also means being removed from Amazon's search results.
Amazon's policy of removing "adult" content from its rankings seems to be both new and unevenly implemented. On Saturday, self-published author Mark R. Probst noticed that his book had lost its ranking, and made inquiries. The response he got from Amazon's customer service explained:
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.
Here's what really bugs me. Probst writes gay-themed historical novels for young adults. These are the kind of books that teens and young adults who may be coming to terms with their sexual orientation might read to better understand themselves through relatively pedestrian fiction. Similar authors of young adult gay fiction, such as Mark Roeder and Ronald Donaghe, were also dropped from the sales ranking system and thus prevented from popping up when searching popular titles. I've read these authors' works, and they are hardly "adult" in content... not even close.
From Probst's blog...
On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: “Transgressions” by Erastes and “False Colors” by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book “The Filly.” There was buzz, What’s going on? Does Amazon have some sort of campaign to suppress the visibility of gay books? Is it just a major glitch in the system? Many of us decided to write to Amazon questioning why our rankings had disappeared. Most received evasive replies from customer service reps not versed in what was happening. As I am a publisher and have an Amazon Advantage account through which I supply Amazon with my books, I had a special way to contact them.
He received the trite reply noted above. Nice.
Amazon, this is bullshit. Your classification of any and all gay and lesbian themed books, be they fiction or non-fiction, as "adult" content is an ignorant decision that smacks of the bigoted and hateful mindset I'd expect from organizations like Focus on the Family and the so-called National Organization for Marriage... not from the largest bookseller and one of the few places to find self-published work.
What makes this new policy all the more ridiculous is are the titles that aren't being classified as adult (also from Kellogg's blog)...
Our research shows that these books have lost their ranking: "Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs; "Rubyfruit Jungle" by Rita Mae Brown, "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" by Alison Bechdel, "The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1" by Michel Foucault, "Bastard Out of Carolina" by Dorothy Allison (2005 Plume edition), "Little Birds: Erotica" by Anais Nin, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" by Jean-Dominque Bauby (1997 Knopf edition), "Maurice" by E.M. Forster (2005 W.W. Norton edition) and "Becoming a Man" by Paul Monette, which won the 1992 National Book Award.
Books that remain ranked include: "Naked" by David Sedaris; "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller; "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis; "Wifey" by Judy Blume; "The Kiss" by Kathryn Harrison; the photobooks "Playboy: Helmut Newton" and "Playboy: Six Decades of Centerfolds"; "Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs; "Incest: From 'A Journal of Love'" by Anais Nin; "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" by Jean-Dominque Bauby (2007 Vintage International edition), "Maurice" by E.M. Forster* (2005 Penguin Classics edition).
WTF? As the Times writer notes, many of these titles still ranked are hardly less "adult" in content than those Amazon has chosen to censor from sales rankings, providing no Amazon Rank for use in searches. Very telling is that the Kindle e-version of "Unfriendly Fire" is still ranked , as all Kindle selections are -- at number one, no less -- in Gay and Lesbian fiction. Yet the recently released hardcover version doesn't come up at all when searching.
Here I thought Amazon was a progressive company. They apparently feel this algorithmic censorship, applied very unevenly and without any consideration to specific content, is somehow a good idea. It's not. It flies in the face of their history of good customer service, is potentially damaging to authors financially (especially those who self-publish) and is just plain ignorant.
To founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, I ask: why? Why are you doing this... especially in such an ill-conceived and uneven way? I expect more from your company, Mr. Bezos. And I especially never would have Amazon would be committing de facto censorship of gay and lesbian books in the 21st century.
Got homophobia? Shame on you.
* Maurice? Wow, how'd they let that slip by? Horrors. Two men kiss somewhere in the text.
UPDATE I: This is becoming quite the Twitter trend... @AmazonFAIL
UPDATE II: Publisher's Weekly is reporting online that what was a classification decision is now a "glitch."
A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove adult titles from its sales ranking. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a glitch had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new adult policy.
For most of the weekend on Twitter, in conversations with the hash tag "#amazonfail," users were discussing the fact that the e-tailer was removing the sales rankings for books that it deemed featured "adult content." Many readers, and writers, decried the fact that Amazon appears to be removing the sales ranking for titles that feature gay and lesbian characters and/or themes.
Uh huh. There was a glitch all right. But it was in the front office, not the server room.
All I can say to this is "god Bless Twitter"!!!
Posted by: Paul Taylor | 13 April 2009 at 10:24 AM