Twitter Exposes a Rank Plot at Amazon.Com
It pays to keep an eye on your enemies on holidays. War is no respecter of traditions or diversity. So much simpler for your enemy to slip in while you're asleep and cut your throat.But it helps to know who your enemies are.
Today while gay and lesbian writers were sleeping -or probably hiding eggs for their children and nieces (and smoothing the edge of a chocolate bunny ear so Junior won't realize Mommy nibbled it) or enjoying a chocolate-free Passover seder - little did they know that Amazon.com was staging a secret war on glbt books, authors and publishers.
I fell into the amazonfail brouhaha this morning with a surprising number of twitter grumbles. It just so happens my twitter-posse is mostly writers, agents and editors. Gender-pioneering author Kate Bornstein calls her cluster "Twibe."
Every night she signs off with a "goodnight Twibe" and we all sleep better for it.
If you've never heard of Bornstein I would usually recommend you zip over to Amazon and check out her books... BUT... (Yes, there is a big but. Thanks to the asses at Amazon.) The book ranking search feature at Amazon was sabotaged - not by hackers but by Amazon itself.
Guard your neck. Apparently select books have been being stripped of rank since early Feb. Craig Seymour, author of All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. (Atria/Simon & Schuster), blogged his frustrating correspondence with Amazon.
Seymour, currently Associate Professor of Journalism at Northern Illinois University, said today "Like many authors, I frequently check my sales status on Amazon, so imagine my shock, back in early February when the "Amazon.com Sales Rank" completely disappeared from the Product Details of my book. The book also disappeared from the search listings, so that if a customer looked up All I Could Bare by Craig Seymour on the Amazon home page, nothing came up."
After much persistence on Seymour's part and evasion on Amazon's, "February 25, 2009: I get the first email telling me that my book has been branded as an adult product, as if it's a sex toy or something."
Comments
Smart and succinct. Dear Author explains why Amazon's explanation is no explanation at all. http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/14/why-amazons-explanation-is-none-at-all/
NT times declares the Amazon "error" over. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14amazon.html?_r=1&ref=business
Richard Nash writes the ultimate response in why "a glitch" isn't a good enough excuse. http://rnash.com/article/amazonfail-a-straight-white-male-publisher-on-glitches-and-ham-fisted-error/
Fenneke, The link below seems to work and include the rank. But I checked out http://www.amazon.com/Best-Womens-Erotica-Marcy-Sheiner/dp/157344099X/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_2
Marcy Sheiner's Best Women's Erotica (an anthology I'm in and we're still rank-less)
Fenneke Gonggrijp
(Guest)
(Guest)
04/13/2009
Could anyone from the States test the link below please? I accessed amazon.com from europe (but the .com site, so no special european site like .co.uk) and can see ranking just fine. The link below is a direct link to 'Tipping the velvet' by Sarah Waters, which contains explicit gay content but still has its general amazon.com sales ranking when i look it up:
http://www.amazon.com/Tipping-Velvet-Novel-Sarah-Waters/dp/1573227889/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239660211&sr=1-1
I have an article up about the situation at http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1644548/amazon_sales_ranks_disappear_for_glbt.html?cat=38 -- and I'm hopeful that we'll have more answers and reinstated sales ranks quickly.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/apr/13/amazon-gay-writers
New article @ UK's The Guardian. Gore Vidal, Annie Proulx, EM Forster and Jeanette Winterson among the de-ranked.
elliot
(Guest)
(Guest)
04/13/2009
As of Monday morning, 6:00AM central time, Amazon is still claiming this is a glitch. It's as if they think this is merely an image issue, and if they repeat the branding tagline of "just a glitch" enough, it will sink in and people will 'buy' the glitch theory.
It's a shame that the people who run one of the larger information distribution systems in the world just don't get that, yes, information is important to society, and how, when, and where you regulate access to that information makes a difference.
Amazon is more than being flippant when they call this a 'glitch.' Amazon is talking down to the public as if we're a bunch of pre-schoolers who couldn't possibly begin to understand how a database or a computer works. The terminology of 'glitch' is as technical as Amazon dares to get with us neophytes. Not surprisingly, being condescended to in this manner is pissing people off as much as if not more than the original misguided policy that started this whole mess in th
http://craigspoplife.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-amazonfail-timeline.html Here is the link to Craig Seymour's Blog mentioned in article
If you have a related #amazonfail article, blog or open letter either on AC or elsewhere, please leave the link in a comment below.
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