Fail, Amazon.com. FAIL.
Amazon.com has removed the sales rankings from books that it deems "adult", which (among other things) prevents them from showing up in searches from the main page of the site. Amazon's definition of "adult" content includes some heterosexual erotica and pretty much every book on the site with GLBT content regardless of whether it contains actual sex or not. Like, for example, autobiographies or self-help books or the children's book "Heather Has Two Mommies". Go on, go to Amazon's main page and type that title into the search box. NO RESULTS. The topmost and only related result (when I do it) is an article on the controversy over the book. Similarly, if you type "homosexuality" into the main search box, what you get is a bunch of books on "deprogramming" gay people, which apparently are the only sort that didn't get unranked by Amazon.
WHAT. What. WHAT.
If you are specifically searching within the "book" category, things seem to work more or less normally, but I am still getting anomalous results on authors who've had their sales ranking taken away, like typing an author's name and getting a bunch of similar authors come up before the one I want -- an obvious result of not having a sales ranking, which is apparently is at least part of what Amazon uses to determine how high in the rankings a given result will score. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that this WILL hurt an author's sales, especially the whole "not being able to find it from the main page" thing.
I'm too sleepy to get my brain to cooperate on itemizing all of the ways in which this is rage-inducing. So I link. Also,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
telesilla makes the point (probably paraphrased badly by half-asleep me) that the issue of whether Amazon wants to make erotica searchable on its front page is a separate issue from the fact that they've basically made the sweeping judgment that gay porn =/= straight porn and, worse, that gay content of any sort is tantamount to porn even if it's something light, cute, fluffy and suitable for all ages. I mean, yes, the idea that the search box on Amazon's front page does not return results on all of their books (without saying so) is infuriating, but not even a small part as infuriating as the judgment call that they're making on what constitutes inappropriate search results.
Seriously, how much all-ages stuff has romance in it? Cinderella? Bambi? How much of it has couples of any sort, even just in walk-on parts? You really want to make all of that unsearchable, Amazon? Or explain why certain kinds of couples, of people, are okay for your customers to search for while others aren't?
I'm going to bed and see if the word makes more sense in the morning.
WHAT. What. WHAT.
If you are specifically searching within the "book" category, things seem to work more or less normally, but I am still getting anomalous results on authors who've had their sales ranking taken away, like typing an author's name and getting a bunch of similar authors come up before the one I want -- an obvious result of not having a sales ranking, which is apparently is at least part of what Amazon uses to determine how high in the rankings a given result will score. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that this WILL hurt an author's sales, especially the whole "not being able to find it from the main page" thing.
I'm too sleepy to get my brain to cooperate on itemizing all of the ways in which this is rage-inducing. So I link. Also,
telesilla makes the point (probably paraphrased badly by half-asleep me) that the issue of whether Amazon wants to make erotica searchable on its front page is a separate issue from the fact that they've basically made the sweeping judgment that gay porn =/= straight porn and, worse, that gay content of any sort is tantamount to porn even if it's something light, cute, fluffy and suitable for all ages. I mean, yes, the idea that the search box on Amazon's front page does not return results on all of their books (without saying so) is infuriating, but not even a small part as infuriating as the judgment call that they're making on what constitutes inappropriate search results.Seriously, how much all-ages stuff has romance in it? Cinderella? Bambi? How much of it has couples of any sort, even just in walk-on parts? You really want to make all of that unsearchable, Amazon? Or explain why certain kinds of couples, of people, are okay for your customers to search for while others aren't?
I'm going to bed and see if the word makes more sense in the morning.