Amazonfail

[elfinblaze]

First of all, I hope you all had a lovely Easter. I'd post pictures of mine, but I want to leave this post public, so the pictures will have to wait.

Secondly, if you've ever bought books from Amazon, or were considering buying books from Amazon, read these posts.

Basically Amazon have decided they don't want to have certain books/texts searchable. What books? They claim those with "adult content". In reality they've excluded books with gay and lesbian content, including at least one young adult fiction book, which proves it's not really "adult content" they're excluding. By the same token, Playboy and sex toys still show up.

This makes me as mad as all those YouTube clips that get flagged for "adult content" if they contain a homosexual kiss, while heterosexual kisses are open to be watched by anyone. Not many things actively infuriate me (mostly it's just expected) but when companies actually go out of their way to make certain peoples' lives more difficult, then I see red.

[Edited to add more details: markprobst (Mark R. Probst) is one of the writers affected and one of the first to blog about it. There's also some noise on the topic on Neil Gaiman's Twitter page, and meta_writer has a list of books (and editions) affected here.]

So if you'd like to avoid Amazon here's some alternative book retailers online: Book Depository which is based in the UK and ships free worldwide, or Fishpond for my fellow Australians if you want a local alternative.

Comments

[macguillicutty.livejournal.com]

That is some of the worst BS I've ever heard of. I know of at least one author who uses Amazon for her seller so she can directly link some of her sales to a charity, but a good deal of her fiction includes a lesbian police detective. I wonder if she knows about this.

Thanks for putting the word out there!

[elfinblaze.livejournal.com]

It's weird, because a lot of the books I read haven't been excluded. I assume because the sexuality of the characters isn't the main issue and they're mostly adventure stories? It seems to be very inconsistent, the whole thing.

It's just ridiculous all 'round.