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Amazon Culls "Offensive" Books From Search System

Posted by timothy on from the streisand-effect dept.

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?"

7 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. Already removed my links. by palegray.net · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
    1. Re:Already removed my links. by eck011219 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
  2. Didn't block for me? by olddoc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    --
    Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  3. Consistency by gmuslera · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  4. Shades of Abunga? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Sales De-Lising Includes Political Books by dtaciuch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  6. Re:Cry me a river by nicolas.kassis · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.