Thank You!!

http://www.afterellen.com/node/48877

It just totally blew off this week.

That is one of the most horrible things I have ever heard of.

Now you suddenly say, the ’seeming targeting of GLBT books’ – which means, you’re not even sure that they have, nor can in fact prove they had, after you posted enough to make it seem a fact. Plus, now you state that Amazon have ‘rectified the situation’, when in fact nothing needed rectifying in the first place, or Amazon definetely would have given a public apology had they really suddenly ‘attacked’ GLBT books, and if Amazon were to ‘pull crap like that’, they’d neither been able to stay at the top for so long, correct. But I have no problems in finding what was said had been removed or censored – none of it.

(Besides, you still haven’t apologised to those not sharing your very aggressive sentiment, over accusing them of condoning Jews deportations in the same breath with censorship, or to be idiots – watch your choice of words here.)

As long as GLBT books are available under whatever ‘ALA’ list, we don’t need censorship scaremongerers like you clutching at straws by now. If you believe what you say Amazon did, YOU can go somewhere else – but don’t force others to do the same or insult them for staying.

As long as there’s no real proof, you’re alone in this no matter how many share your STILL unproven ‘opinion’, not ‘fact’. I boycott a lot of anti-gay or lesbian this or that, and if it were to be proven I’m the first to leave Amazon too – but only ‘then’.

This entire brouhaha could have been avoided when it was first brought to Amazon’s attention back in FEBRUARY. They could have avoided all this unpleasantness (and lost revenue I’m sure) had they taken the complaints seriously and had they informed the public of a “glitch” in the system. Personally, I have no sympathies for them whatsoever.

On the other hand, the seeming targeting of GLBTQ books smelled of censorship and in case people are living under a rock, books with these themes remain on the ALA’s list of most challenged books. One simply cannot help being concerned about this, and like I said before, I am glad that so many people cared enough to take action and flood the blogosphere. If they hadn’t, dollars to doughnuts Amazon would have done nothing to rectify the situation.

It’s kind of backwards to attack those–such as authors–whose very livelihood depends on their books being made available and calling them “alarmist” or a mob. In my view, the fact that people took action and called a giant like Amazon into account–glitch or not–gives me a little hope that the public isn’t totally brainwashed.

So there!

“hamfisted” and “embarrasing”

You are right, Amazon.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166329.asp

>>> “What has been interesting are the comments from those people who don’t seem to have an issue with this. There are quite a few who have bought into the “glitch” excuse (which is absolute b.s. and any newb IT professional or even hobbiest will tell you that). These folks claim Amazon’s just doing “business” and trying to target the largest market possible while alienating no one. These are the same people whom more than likely would have turned a blind eye to the deportation of Jews, saying “it’s just good government”.

I guess these idiots don’t understand the meaning of the word CENSORSHIP.

I’m still amazed that healthy, egalitarian and consensual expressions of love are somehow “bad”, but graphic and oftentimes unecessary depictions of violence are “good”.” <<<

I BEG YOUR PARDON!? What has this Amazon issue to do with the Jews, and how dare you bring their past treatment into a discussion about current censorship, accusing those who apparently don’t have an issues with ‘Amazon’s (unproven) censorship’ would condone something like their deportation!? How dare you bring in old politics into this!?

Get with the issues here, and don’t insult those who still can get their books, gay or otherwise, by simply typing in author or title and forget all the tags and departments and labels – and voila, it’s right there! ALL OF IT! And don’t say ‘we claim Amazon’s just doing ‘business’’, of course they are, I believe that’s what they’re there for! Or accuse those same ‘people’ would also think violence is ‘good’ and love ‘bad’ – HOW DARE YOU!?

I for one said that the adult label is applied to everything sexual outright, gay or otherwise, fact – and that other adult themes are not labelled adult, fact. No matter they should be, but simply aren’t because the sites have to adhere to some ‘rules’ and sorting the stuff and is bloody difficult for a giant like Amazon with hundreds of thousands of items, and ‘tech issues’ DO arise frequently. FACT!

I perfectly understand CENSORSHIP, pal, (and I’m not for it per se when it’s up to individuals to ‘protect their own interests’, but not by saying A is bad when B is not just because they don’t like it) – but I’m not an ‘idiot’, just because I don’t ’see’ it in Amazon’s case. If they show ‘anti-gay’ books first than that’s simply because obviously more people buy them and reflects the customer numbers, NOT site policies. As long as I can get any book I like from them, I will NOT boycott them, no matter on what page my search will come up or has any ranking, since we in fact STILL don’t have any REAL proof they really censored any GLBT books ‘I’ highly doubt and can find just fine! Speak for yourself #100!

So in that case, I’m with #102 and #106 this time in addition to #54, since this issue has been completely blown out of proportion by now and looks more like a witchhunt in FACT, with ignorant people throwing insults on top now at NO clear FACTS having been established at all, and the majority is NOT always ‘right’, don’t forget that.

Before we jump to conclusions there may be a chance that this is not directly Amazon’s fault. One tech site is suggesting that this is the result of a renowned Troll abusing the flagging system on Amazon via scripts.

Gizmodo for the read

Amazon is notoriously bad with PR. Because Jeff Bezos seems to hate communicating–his recent outing on behalf of Kindle 2 was notable more for the fact he did it than for what he said. The wording of that “policy statement,” which I’m sure you and I will agree was likely written so CSRs like the woman quoted could just rattle it off whenever applicable, are a case in point. It reads like it was written by lawyers, which it probably was. Welcome to Amazon PR. It sucks. I’ve telling them that for years.

They have no idea how to explain something. If they’ve screwed up, they absolutely have no idea how to explain it. The huge fracas last year over their insisting POD books be printed by Booksurge is a case in point–had they explained why they were requiring it instead of trying to bully people I suspect the outcome would have been different. From their viewpoint, it was an excellent business decision that likely saved them millions. They aren’t, after all, a non-profit.

But no, they crept around quietly calling and emailing people and coming off like a bunch of bullies. And I suppose those suppliers who were short-discounting them would have raised a fuss in any case, but really–should Amazon be required to lose money just because it would be a nice gesture on behalf of self-published authors and small presses? Not.

The point I’m trying to make is that everything said to date is based on limited factual evidence and a boatload of speculation, yet all of that speculation is being made to appear as if it’s fact. It may well turn out that what everyone is saying is absolutely true. Well, not the business about deliberate censorship–that’s absurd no matter how you look at it. Amazon is currently being sued by the Humane Society and others over those dog-fighting materials people keep mentioning.

As for the IT issue, this is a more technical statement of what I mentioned: http://sbisson.livejournal.com/927640.html.

Three or four months ago one of my authors emailed me that she’d been fiddling around on Amazon and discovered her book’s cover price was listed as $22. The actual price is $15. Hieing myself off to the Evil Empire, I checked discovered at least a quarter of our titles had incorrect prices–they were overpriced $3-$7. It took a week for them to fix it, and a month or so later the problem popped up again.

The repair process required that our service rep at Booksurge compare the Booksurge database to the Amazon one and send me a copy of the spreadsheet so I could then check all the prices against my database. Then send it back. It wasn’t as simple as going in and pushing a button. And we’re talking a mere 30 titles.

If my thought processes followed the path of this rank issue, I would immediately have decided Amazon had changed all those prices so they could make lots more money off those books, since the payment at our end is based on the listed cover price. However, since I assume Amazon is in the business of making money and would know that overpricing small press paperbacks was not the way to achieve that, especially since some of the titles had been selling quite briskly up until the price glitch, I just took it for granted the computer gremlins had struck and took care of the problem.

That the rank issue started out with what seems to be only a handful of titles and then grew exponentially just reinforces for me that it was something that seemed like a good idea at the time and than, as lots of good ideas do, failed miserably–and exponentially. In an effort to further narrow their search parameters to lessen the likelihood people would get results they might consider inappropriate, they picked the wrong key words, or didn’t use enough qualifiers or both. The paranoia that they deliberately chose to “launch their censorship” on a holiday weekend because they figured no one would notice doesn’t really stand up, either. When are people more likely to go online shopping than on a weekend, holiday or not?

I don’t support censorship in any way shape or form. However, I also don’t support mob mentality and throwing around accusations based on emotion and supposition and one or two facts that don’t provide any real information. It seems anymore that where companies like Amazon and Google are concerned, anything they do is inevitably interpreted in the worst possible light, and then that interpretation is repeated until it’s accepted as fact when it may not be.