Comments on: Amazon.com under criticism for de-ranking gay-themed books

By: stretch65

stretch65 — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:39:39 +0000

Vast right wing consapirasy

By: Arty

Arty — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:44:32 +0000

I am a student at Boston University conducting a project on Sharpie Markers. If you could take a couple minutes of your time to fill out this survey, that would be great. Thanks. http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/122445/advertising-sharpie-marker-survey

By: Jonathan Anonuevo

Jonathan Anonuevo — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:25:54 +0000

That’s pure nonsense! So I can conclude that Patty Smith is saying that the glitch in the sales ranking system “accidentally” removed the rankings of books with homosexuality? Patty, in my opinion you need to live up to honesty and loyalty to customers.
Quote: On Sunday night, however, Amazon spokesperson Patty Smith told the L.A. Times that it wasn’t a bias, that it was merely a glitch that had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed.

By: Jonathan Anonuevo

Jonathan Anonuevo — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:25:36 +0000

By: Jonathan Anonuevo

Jonathan Anonuevo — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:25:20 +0000

By: erykthedead

erykthedead — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 02:44:06 +0000

VIGs
a) Communications is very tough in a large organization,I doubt the customer service reps had a clue what was going or were authorized to comment.
b)mmm, and aliens built the pyramids
c) Clearly, a weeks seems pretty reasonable to someone in the computer industry who has had to find a glitch in a couple million lines of code.
d)You’ve done the data mining to back this statement up right? You have reams and reams of paperwork containing every title hit by the glitch? I guarentee Amazon does.
e) Just no. Amazon is on the NASDAQ as AMZN it’s down about 2 today on 6 million shares. They still don’t owe the public an transparency into their operations.
Not ever embarrassing thing is intentional; sometimes it’s just a glitch.

By: tamburlaine

tamburlaine — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:44:38 +0000

So are gays now set to perma-whine?

By: Vigs

Vigs — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:38:39 +0000

(sorry, last one, promise!)
I saw from a comment below a discussion about personal attacks in customer reviews, possibly regarding Tarot? I have had an author request that Amazon remove a customer review that is personally directed rather than focusing on the book. Amazon can and will do this on a case-by-case basis. They will not remove a negative review just because, nor will they remove a review from a journal, industry newsource, or other publication.
I hope I was able to provide some background to the situation. Regardless of your feelings about the content, I think it’s pretty clear we all value the exchange of free speech!

By: Vigs

Vigs — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:34:58 +0000

(cont’d)
Ok, so clearly I’m in publishing. My issues with this “glitch” are as follows:
a) inconsistent responses from Amazon customer service to almost letter-for-letter queries received over several days.
b) the “testing” was started targeting a very specific set of books, and happened to coincide with the day the two m/m romance novels began to show up on Amazon’s “regular” romance bestseller list.
c)I’m no computer expert, but it shouldn’t take a week to fix a glitch.
d)Claiming it affected other non-fiction titles in health, self-help, and body/mind is disingenuous as it didn’t affect ALL titles in those categories, just the ones that had a tag word like “homosexual” somewhere in its text.
e) I keep forgetting Amazon is a privately held company. So shareholders can’t demand transparency. But Amazon is so ingrained in our culture, that new policies, if this is indeed a policy shift, should be made public and clear.
(Unrelated: if a *customer* posts a review that derides

By: Vigs

Vigs — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:29:28 +0000

(cont’d)
There isn’t a member of the publishing industry who doesn’t use Amazon at least once a week, if not daily, to research the competition for a title they want to acquire, to find out the specs of a book whose design they want to mimic, to find out when the last book on a similar subject was published, etc.
Granted, this does not add dollars to Amazon’s bottom line, but my point is that–whether they intended to or not–Amazon has become the largest book database or resource. And it’s free. So there is a significant percentage of the population out there who use the Amazon search feature.
Authors care about the rankings in particular, because it’s the only way they can get any sense of how their book is doing at that moment. The rankings are meaningless without actual sales figures attached and a thorough knowledge of how the rankings are determined, and how frequently they are updated. And the overall ranking is everything, regardless of category or genre.