Comments on: Dear Amazon: WTF?

By: Yvonne

Yvonne — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:42:06 +0000

I had followed this somewhat, but hadn’t really commented anywhere as I had wanted to organize thoughts and then, due to my usual sense of timing, well….

After to-ing and fro-ing and doing all sorts of semi-mindless arguments with self organized thoughts to this.

1. I come from a conservative background (with all that that entails).

2. No matter what my own background is, what amazon had done offended me on the same point that it had others – censorship and, well, bigotry because…..

3. No matter what I myself might choose or not choose to read, I would never, ever stoop to stop anyone else from reading or having access to the material. Hence thinking that what amazon had done falls into the “blind stupidity” category as well as contributing to the “idiot” factor.

By: Maire

Maire — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:35:36 +0000

Mind boggling. Positively mind boggling. Just yesterday I was talking about the ludicrous nature of this, citing Lady Chatterly as a way that the censor boards have gone before. And here I read that Lady Chatterly is deranked. Pardon me while I fall off my chair.

Firstly, if the premise for all this moralizing is the censorship of “adult” material, should not every romance novel be deranked? Any novel in fact with sex?

And who exactly makes these decisions? Where is the committee that decides what is morally unacceptable? Is playboy then morally acceptable? Oh, wait. yes. Because it only has to do with what Simone debeavoir would define as the other. Women being subjugated by the power group, men. I am still confused as to the deranking of classics.

As you put it courtney. A genuine amazon fail.
Chalk one pt up to the continuation of ignorance, discrimination, and hate. Hopefully the side of openness will win a point in turn.

Whew. Some of my dearest friends write books that are or verge on erotic. Delilah Marvelle to name one. Luckily, people are banding together.

By: wavybrains

wavybrains — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:05:07 +0000

Thanks so much for this posting. I linked to you, and I preordered Jackie’s book with an amazon giftcard (I get paid for one of my freelance gigs in amazon dollars). This is just so, so sad.

By: Estelle C

Estelle C — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:48:28 +0000

If I hadn’t already switched to BN.com, I would now.

By: Jackie Barbosa

Jackie Barbosa — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:57:26 +0000

I agree with you 150% (maybe even more). It’s not just about my book (although with my release date looming so soon, it’s definitely a very real concern). Truly, though, its the utter arbitrariness of what gets censored and what doesn’t that’s mind-boggling. If your book comes through with one of the “tags” Amazon has decided equals “adult” content, regardless of its actual content, it’s out.

I’m sympathetic to the concerns of parents who don’t wnt their kids accessing inappropriate content on the web. But seriously, this doesn’t even achieve the goal. Plenty of NSFK content is still readily available on Amazon. It’s not just censorship, but censorship without an actual CENSOR deciding what passes muster and what doesn’t using some sort of reasonably objective measures.

But at least I can say I’ve been amazon ranked now! Who knows, maybe it’ll become bagde of honor!