It seems those nice folks over at Amazon.com have made a teensy snafu. Or maybe the censorious bastards did it on purpose. Either way, over the weekend the sales rankings were removed from hundreds of books with 'adult' content. Also, even more chillingly, searching Amazon for these titles yielded no result. This included erotic fiction, but also non-erotic books with homosexual themes. Even non-fiction. Tellingly, what books were left in the gay/lesbian category were the sort that advocate a 'cure' for homosexuality.
It's been all over Twitter, (so I'm told: I still don't really understand Twitter and even the name annoys me). The blogosphere has gone mad. I'm still catching up on it, but I can tell you this: that despite promises that the 'glitch' has been fixed, if you search Amazon.com for 'Cat Marsters', you only get one of my books (plus some random thing about slavery--not mine). I have four under that name--one novel, one single-author anthology, and two multi-author anthologies. They're all firmly in the erotic romance category, and the multi-author books have gay/lesbian stories in them.
(click on the screencap for a larger image. See? Only one book!)A glitch? Or censorship? Given how bloody irritated I've been with Amazon recently over their Kindle nonsense, I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
ETA: As Jan pointed out, Amazon.co.uk don't seem to have succumbed. But Amazon.com is definitely still wonky. The stupid thing is, if you were to find my one remaining ranked book and click on that, then on the next page click on my name, you'd get all my books. Is crazy.
I find three of yours when I search on amazon.co.uk
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's just the US. I checked again and still only got the one.
ReplyDeleteBut still, what gives? Why not all four?
Bad Amazon, bad.
Having considered this from every possible angle, I now can't imagine this is more than a monumentally huge error. I mean, Amazon is a business, I assume (perhaps wrongly) that they don't want to piss off their customers... Would they really have done something like this on purpose?
ReplyDeleteI'm still a little undecided; part of me can well believe it's a massive conspiracy, because otherwise ... man. A lot of people need to be fired either way.
A huge error, yes, but in what way? Was it, as Amazon claim, a computing error (sure, blame the machine. One day they'll rise up, you know).
ReplyDeleteOr was it actually an attempt to censor the site? I'd call that a pretty huge error.
Conspiracy theories abound, and to be honest I've lost track of them, having had a book to finish this week and therefore little time to check irate Twitter posts I don't really understand anyway. There was a theory about...er...someone sort of Googlebombing it but I...er, can't remember. Spent all week in a drowned world with dragons and mermen and whatnot.
Last I checked my books were back up again, but some authors still report gaps.
I downloaded the book from the site you mentioned and it worked perfectly on my kindle.Thanks for the tip, I was going crazy, because I read the other 3 and didn't want to buy the paperback. Thks again and btw love Sophie lol.
ReplyDelete