Happy Chocolate Bunny Day!

[boomqueen]

I'm so mad at Amazon right now, I can barely see straight.

I think this article covers the whole topic articulately, but to summarize:

Amazon is removing sales rankings from 'adult' materials. If they were actually doing that uniformly it would be one thing, but Amazon is targeting LGBT works (including award-winning literary classics and textbooks on gender and sexuality) while leaving heterosexual literary porn ranked. This greatly affects the accessibility and searchability of these materials to have their rankings removed. And it's total bullshit.

Suddenly, many books lost their sales ranking and levels of searchability on the Amazon site.

Somehow, the brain trust of your company has decided to protect the “entire” Amazon customer base by restricting access to content that someone (who?) decided was offensive. In your zeal to protect me from myself, of course, you managed to leave content that I find singularly repulsive online (really, exploring the human condition is bad, but Mein Kampf is just fine?).

This loss of ranking, listing, search functionality seems to be largely, but not wholly!, limited to fiction and non-fiction with themes relating to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues. Authors affected range from E.M. Forster to James Baldwin to John Barrowman, our beloved Captain Jack on Dr. Who and Torchwood and others, including a host of female authors who write erotic fiction.

Gee, I can buy a book on training fighting dogs (something so offensive my stomach hurts just looking at the cover image), but specific types of human relationships are suddenly taboo?...

And wow, great work on the search butchering. A straight-on search of Bastard Out Of Carolina returns…wait for it…links to five books before the Dorothy Allison version ranks. Pretty Baby, the Brooke Shields movie, ranks higher. Neat. I mean, I’ve never loved your search, but this is really bad. It is amusing to me that The Handmaid’s Tale pops up higher in this search than the actual book I’m seeking.

-Kassie Krozser

The fall out from this is so severe that if you Google for "Amazon Rank", you will find this, and "Amazonfail" is a top search term on Twitter. Never underestimate the power of google bombing.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr...

So I'm going to cheer us all up with a little public singing/dancing (hat tip to wisteria_ for this gem):

Who can resist people randomly bursting into the Sound of Music at a train station?!?