The good people at Amazon have made a small change to the way you can search for books. It’s Easter Sunday, so you’re probably not supposed to notice. The target of their new approach is anything that they consider to have adult content, and especially anything that might involve GLBT issues. The writing community is already staring to blaze about this, but it needs much wider attention.Basically, any title that Amazon consider "adult" will no longer be included in the "Best Sellers" lists – or ranked at all. These titles will not show up on all searches, even when the exact title of the book is entered. Who decides what books are "adult"? That’s not at all clear. But whoever’s making the choices is casting the net far and wide, and hauling in an awful lot of GLBT books.
What are some of these books?
This is the ever-growing list of titles that have been scrubbed by this policy change from Meta Writer at Live Journal. Many are non-fiction works, such as Dr. Nathaniel Frank’s Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America and The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students.It gets worse when you go to the Live Journal site.
What a slap in the face. I'll take my business over to local bookstores and other online sites.
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1 comment:
Ryan,
This isn't 'my' issue, but I understand how you feel.
It doesn't seem to make sense even though I don't fully understand the business issue and can't understand why the business move makes sense.
Now I'm sorry that I purchased a number of electronic items from them recently.
Have you tried alibris? I don't know how they are with new books, but I've purchased a lot of used books through them and have never been disatisfied.
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