Amazon Culls "Offensive" Books From Search System

Miracle Jones writes "Amazon has instituted an overnight policy that removes books that may be deemed offensive from their search system, despite the sales rank of the book and also irrespective of any complaints. Bloggers such as Ed Champion are calling for a 'link and book boycott,' asking people to remove links to Amazon from their web pages and stop buying books from them until the policy is reversed. Will this be bad business for Amazon, or will their new policies keep them out of trouble as they continue to grow and replace bookstores?"

Comments

Already removed my links.

[palegray.net]

I removed all Amazon affiliate links from my sites some time ago for unrelated reasons: extremely low CTR (even on highly relevant articles), "funny" reporting on their stats system that didn't jive with my internally monitored figures, and crappy support.

This gives me yet another reason to steer people away from their programs.

Re:Already removed my links.

[eck011219]

MOD PARENT UP, please!

I work every day with self-publishing authors, and Amazon's recent policies have completely blown away the concept that you could spend your money, get your books, sell your books, and make your millions. Now your MANUFACTURING PROCESS, not only your book itself, has to be approved by (and provided by) Amazon to be considered valid. Now you have to use Amazon's self-publishing arm (BookSurge) if you want your self-published book to be listed on Amazon. That's wrong on the surface, but when you dig deeper you find that they provide crappy product at prohibitive pricing, too.

Amazon can do what it wants, I suppose, but it's screwing a lot of earnest authors who are trying to make a name for themselves and haven't, for whatever reason, been able to sell their book to a royalty publisher. As I understand it, the "Chicken Soup For the Soul" series started as a self-published book -- say what you will about it, but it certainly spoke to a lot of people. That series would have never gotten off the ground under the current situation -- Amazon has taken control of the online bookselling world, and you are required to use their crappy services to produce your book if you want to sell it there. I'm sure this doesn't legally constitute a monopoly, but it's sure bad behavior given what Amazon used to say it was.

Personally, I think Amazon has lost sight of what it started out to be -- a community of book lovers. (I'm not just making this up -- I was at a Jeff Bezos keynote where he said this very thing.) Again, they can do what they please, but I was done spending money there when they began to discriminate against non-Amazon self-publishing authors.

Didn't block for me?

[olddoc]

I used a fresh browser session so I waasn't logged in and I searched for Brokeback Mountain and the Filly and found them both.
Did they change policy?

Consistency

[gmuslera]

What they have the books in the 1st place if they dont plan to sell them or at least being locatables?

If some search results requires i.e. over certain age to see them, so be it, but not for every user.

Shades of Abunga?

[JoshuaZ]

Abunga http://abunga.com/ was a "family friendly" alternative to Amazon. Abunga was similar to Amazon but people could vote on books being family unfriendly. If a book received enough votes it was removed from the website. Abunga failed miserably. It isn't clear to me why, given Abunga's failure, Amazon would do this. Censorship on the internet even when you have a right to engage in the censorship (as Amazon does as a non-government organization) frequently pisses off far more people than you make happy.

Re:Cry me a river

[Anonymous Coward]

PS

If Amazon suddenly started filtering all religiously themed books, would you guys still be so upset? Methinks not. It would be a lot of "F$#@ religion" and "idiots with invisible friends" talk supporting said change.

Personally, I think the best way is to have an opt in flag on your account. It is not visible to the public, but if you log in (which you have to do anyway to buy it...) then you can choose to include them or not. You get to have your dirty smut, and I dont have to see it flaunted in my face.

I think youtube has that in place, but i dont use youtube very often so im not sure.

Sales De-Lising Includes Political Books

[dtaciuch]

Andrew Sulliva;s Virtually Normal has been delisted: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/04/amazon-delists-gay-books-as-adult.html Sullivan's post may be misleadingly titled: is Virtually Normal, (a non-fiction book about gay rights, from a conservative perspective) a "gay-themed" book? Or is it just that its politics is likely to make someone uncomfortable?

Re:Cry me a river

[nicolas.kassis]

Yeah sure I agree a safe search isn't a bad idea. Google does it and most don't realize or care but it's plainly displayed when you do a search that it's on or off.

If they removed said books and refused to sell them then it would be worse.

And I would be as annoyed if any books were removed even religious ones but should a safe search include some of the more extreme religious books with more extreme views? It's a slippery slope.

Hmm, what's Offensive?

[aitikin]

I greatly deem the Left Behind series of books to be extremely offensive, how do I get these results to match up with the books and movies that they decide are offensive?

Re:Powells.com

[fermion]

While I agree with you, Powells and Amazon have one thing in common. The are mega book outets that tend to put smaller, more service oriented outlets out out of business. Powells has the other negative impact of encouraging people to travel to their brick and mortar store rather than just visiting their local independent book store, which probably has no other employees than the owners who just love books.

And amazon has one big advantage over Powells. Those stores that Powells would likely be happy to see out of business, Amazon gives them a leg up by posting competitive prices when showing the results of a book. So, if a customer wants to buy from an independent, they can.

I am certainly ambivalent about what Amazon is doing, mostly because I have never bought anything based on the Amazon rank. I assume it is fixed, and this tends to prove it. I am not ambivalent about Powells, and see no reason to buy there, just because they are cool Portland book store. In most cases I can use Amazon used books to find a seller much more local, which means I don't have to excessively pollute the environment just so I can say I order from Portland, where the cool light skinned people live.

A long time ago, I used barnes and noble used book service, which was very good. They messed it up and I went to Amazon. Maybe it is time to go back. Or Alibris.

Re:It's Amazon's business

[palegray.net]

By not selling that you are hurting the authors, not Amazon.

I assure you, a significant number of affiliates who immediately remove their links to Amazon's catalog of merchandise will hurt them, especially in a down economy where people simply aren't spending anywhere near what they were two years ago. As for the authors, I sincerely doubt they're depending solely on Amazon to sell their books. As for your last point regarding promoting stuff Amazon refuses to sell, I've already registered a domain and intend to start development work on a site in the next couple of days. I'll gladly take the money they don't want.