Amazon Rank

[kiyakotari]

Amazon Rank

This is disgusting. I can't believe they even included Foucault's History of Sexuality. Fuck you, Amazon.

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Comments

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be so ticked off if they were consistent, but no. Some pretty disgusting pron on eBooks and DVDs is still up, books on dogfighting and Playboy stuff is still listed. One person pointed out it might not be legal behavior in selling in Canada, either.

[doll-paparazzi.livejournal.com]

You know... I just went to Amazon and typed in a friend of mine's name who write YA gay titles and it came right up. So, I don't know what the searches are excluding and what are including specifically. Are they pulling out older, obscure titles? Are they pulling out titles that aren't popular in general? What is it specifically are they pulling out, because remember this is one person's point of view.

I was trying to figure out how Mike's books are put into Amazon in general to see if he is YA general or if it's gay or what, but he mostly writes gay fiction.

Look up Michael Thomas Ford and then, tell me what you see. Because I am concerned if they are doing this, but I never trust these things 100% because the first name I plugged in came right up.

[saintsavin.livejournal.com]

Disgusting: absolutely.

But, I'm honestly a little amused the staff at Amazon assumed NO ONE WOULD FIND OUT. There are no secrets for big corporations anymore. The documents. We has them.

[sayashaw.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, if you know the name of the book and/or author you can look them up, but a lot of books have been pulled from the amazon ranking system and if you are looking up just general subjects (I saw an article in the PI that had a screen shot of what they got when they typed in Homosexuality as a book subject and it was terrifying) it's rather scewed

[lionhearts.livejournal.com]

I can believe this. What I can't believe is that they thought people would just kind of let it slide when they figured it out. Honestly, Amazon, what the hell?

I guess I just have to wonder... WHY? Who does this protect/spare/whatever it is they think they are doing? I'm so confused.

[doll-paparazzi.livejournal.com]

That's really fucking lame.

Amazon is really odd in how they do things in general. Their search engine is the biggest piece of shit bar none.

[calalillith.livejournal.com]

What. The shit?

I used to love Amazon.. now I feel kind of.. used.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

More links and comments on massaging rankings here, along with some rude interchanges. Filtering and rankings matter because it affects sales by writers, particularly in more specialized genres like m/m romance, and those writers were *ticked*.
http://theferrett.livejournal.com/1259643.html
So was Hanne Blank, whose nofiction textbooks about topics in sexuality were also unranked, and many of her fellow "facts on sexuality" writers.
http://www.hanneblank.com/blog/2009/04/12/losing-my-ran/

[calalillith.livejournal.com]

This was linked to on the cnn.com homepage: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10217715-93.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0

At least it’s making the rounds.

*snerk* it even made the foxnews.com homepage, but check the difference in phrasing: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,514923,00.html

(my comment, pasted from another blog)

[kiyakotari.livejournal.com]

Wow. I'm...pretty stunned by that Fox article. Not by the content - there's a REASON people call Fox ridiculously biased, and why I ignore them. But...the formatting on it is horrible! WHO PUT THAT WEBPAGE TOGETHER?!? They should find a new line of work. I could barely read the article because of the lack of, oh, I don't know, PARAGRAPHS.

[calalillith.livejournal.com]

*lol*

They prolly have a content management system and just drop the copy in blocks that get broken up like that.. I've seen all sorts of hideous things like that in different places.

But yea.. foxnews.com.. they prolly still run their servers on hamster wheels ;P