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Amazon is Burying Sexy Books, Sending Erotic Novel Authors to the 'No-Rank Dungeon' (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Samantha Cole, reporting for Motherboard: In the last few days, word has spread among independent erotica authors on social media that Amazon was quietly changing its policies for erotic novels. Five authors I spoke to, and several more on social media, have reported that their books were stripped of their best seller rankings -- essentially hiding them from casual browsing on the site, and separating them from more mainstream, safe-for-work titles.

[...] Most people browsing Amazon books might not notice or care about the best seller rank -- a number that's based on how well the title is selling on Amazon.com -- but it's part of an algorithm that influences how the book appears in search, and whether it shows up in advertisements, including suggestions from one product to the next ("If you like this book, you might like this book"). For independent authors and booksellers, this ranking is hugely important for visibility.

27 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. I'm OK with this... by Kenja · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I search for books on dinosaurs, I don't really want to see a "romance" title about a guy and a t-rex having sex.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    1. Re:I'm OK with this... by gweihir · · Score: 2

      But if you search for "sex", do you want books about birds and bees?

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    2. Re:I'm OK with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Why not? That is technically a "book on dinosaurs" as much as any other.

    3. Re:I'm OK with this... by ElRabbit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It will be OK until Amazon decides that book on dinosaur may be offending for a certain category of people (fundamentalist) and then send them down the drain too. Hidding erotic book is just the first step to send us back to Middle Age

    4. Re:I'm OK with this... by Penguinisto · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not seeing the slippery slope here.

      Seriously - a book about gay dinosaur sex (WTF?), on a site where more and more minors go browsing (so they can bug Mom and Dad to buy them whatever they find) is most likely not something you want turning up in generic results. Remove the silly Dino reference, and the same holds true for any adult vs. generic-audience book.

      Couple of thoughts come to mind here...

      * Amazon could have done this better (say, similar to Google or Bing's SafeSearch functions, where you have to opt-in before seeing adult material), but it's not a bad start from a parental POV.

      * A question - does this change also hold true for non-book products Amazon offers on its site (like sex toys ferinstance)? If so, that is your benchmark as to where Amazon is going with this - whether its a trial balloon with just one type of product (books), an overall push to segregate adult-only from generic stuff, or...?

      * Amazon is a private entity - it can organize its wares however it likes.

      * No, a private organization self-censoring does not "send us back to Middle Age(sic)". It's government you have to watch out for, for signs like this.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    5. Re:I'm OK with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you read up on the "slippery slope fallacy", they'll usually list it as a "potential fallacy", as if what someone says it could lead to does in fact happen, then the original argument was in fact not a fallacy. For example, if the government says that they want to monitor all internet traffic to look for child porn, and I say it needs to be disallowed because they might use it to monitor all citizens, officially that's a slippery slope fallacy, but then you hear about PRISM, and it turns out my argument may not have been such a slippery slope after all.

      Basically, dismissing an argument based on "slippery slope" really isn't a valid dismissal in any case except the most outlandish slippery slopes. If it's possible, it must be considered.

    6. Re:I'm OK with this... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 2

      Not to mention the new law that holds online companies liable for anything resembling sex trafficking......funny how Congress passed a law that Trump has not yet signed, and it still gets enforced long before it goes into effect. I guess you can use greed against lust to enforce morality.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    7. Re:I'm OK with this... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Only if your entire history is less than 50 years old.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    8. Re:I'm OK with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      If you search for "sex" on Amazon, you are doing it wrong... on many levels at that.

    9. Re:I'm OK with this... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      "Slippery slope" is a form of argument, which may or may not be fallacious depending on each particuar use. Future events don't retroactively make originally-fallacious assumptions used in constructing a slippery slope argument non-fallacious.

      If you buy a lottery ticket, a subsequent win doesn't mean that buying the ticket in the first place was a wise financial decision.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    10. Re:I'm OK with this... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      All the evidence is that it works the opposite way. Society becomes more permissive over time.

      There are many, many counterexamples. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq after the US invasion, Victorian Britain, the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. These are all examples of societies becoming less morally tolerant and more repressive.

    11. Re:I'm OK with this... by Askmum · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If I search for books on dinosaurs, I don't really want to see a "romance" title about a guy and a t-rex having sex.

      You may be trolling here, but this is actually an example of the creepy kind of censorship that is very prevalent these days. Just like Google removing KODI from their autocomplete.
      This is censorship and censorship sucks. We should stand up and fight companies who do this, not make jokes about it. Because at the end, there will be nobody who can make the joke.

    12. Re:I'm OK with this... by rgbatduke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are two really important problems with this:

      a) Where do you draw the line? Is Stranger in a Strange Land "erotic"? How about Lady Chatterlie's Lover? Is it "eroticism" that we hide, or do we hide books with politically incorrect content, such as books that refer to persons of color as ni**ers or w*gs? Do we hide books that might make some particular group feel bad? Do we hide poltical books?

      If Amazon starts hiding every single book that has a sex scene in it, it will become Amazon for Kids. We'll be thrown back to the last century, only worse, as Amazon is well on the way to becoming the only viable bookseller in the country, and its browsing algorithms are already super dangerous in terms of raising any new book or casting it down to oblivion, no matter how good or bad it might be. Sure, many books with erotic scenes aren't porn, but again, where do you draw the line? On what basis?

      b) Who decides? This is the really terrible thing -- not only is there no clear line, but whatever criterion they come up with for a line is being implemented by some overworked human who probably has no time at all to actually read the books that they are effectively "banning", hiding from nearly everybody. This isn't even malicious censorship -- it is censorship by the lazy, censorship by the unqualified, censorship by a bored clerk somewhere.

      I say this as the author of a book that is not porn, it is actually at least an attempt at actual literature, that has erotic content (it's a book for grown ups to be sure) that has been classified without my knowledge or consent as "erotica" by Amazon and hidden so securely that when I tell people about it, they often can't find it searching for it by name.

      And that s**Ks.

      (And by the way, /., putting a "lameness filter" on my submissions that prevents them from happening if they contain ni**ers and w*gs spelled the right way in a context where I'm using them in an intelligent conversation is an example of exactly the same thing. Leaving me pretty damn mad...)

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
  2. Nothing to see here.... by GoJays · · Score: 2, Insightful

    People seem to forget that Amazon is a private business. They can do whatever they want. If they choose to not show your book, that is up to them. They are not blocking the sale of the book. The author can sell the book on their own site, or at another book store if they like.

    If the book was removed from the INTERNET, this may be a problem because it is the removal of freedom of speech. Not shown in Amazon searches.... nothing to see here... move along.

    1. Re:Nothing to see here.... by NettiWelho · · Score: 2

      People seem to forget that Amazon is a private business. They can do whatever they want

      How absolute is this in the US? For example, if you have a literal monopoly on something?

    2. Re:Nothing to see here.... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No one is claiming it's a 2nd amendment or free speech issue. The issue here is that Amazon is such a dominant force for modern literature that authors are now pretty much beholden to whatever whims they decide to act upon.

      Author Jenny Trout had every book in her contemporary erotic romance series The Boss (written under the pen name Abigail Barnette) stripped of its rank and reclassified to remove it from the Romance category. She told me in an email that Amazon is “the bread and butter of every indie out there.” She says she sold half a million copies through Amazon in a three-year period, compared to 35,000 at every other retailer combined. Her series was de-ranked without warning or explanation.

      “There's no way for an indie author to make a living without Amazon, so whatever nonsense they decide they're pulling this month is just one other thing we've got to put up with,” Trout said. “And that sucks, but they're a private business and they get to do what they want, so we can only really complain from a consumer standpoint. It's not censorship, it's just a big bullshit hassle, so there's really no recourse for us.”

      I'm not some anti-Amazon crusader by any means, but it's always a little worrisome for a single entity to become as dominant as they've become in so many areas, because when this sort of thing happens, there's literally no recourse for people, and no real way for market forces to make corrections.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    3. Re:Nothing to see here.... by BlazeMiskulin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People seem to forget that Amazon is a private business. They can do whatever they want. [...] Not shown in Amazon searches.... nothing to see here... move along.

      Nobody has said anything about the First Amendment--which you are jumping onto with a strawman.

      Just because they're a private business doesn't mean they're immune to criticism.

      People are complaining that this private business is behaving in a way which is detrimental to the livelihood of their suppliers, and convenience of their customers. This IS something worth discussing--so that suppliers and customers know what's happening and can make knowledgeable business and purchasing decisions.

    4. Re:Nothing to see here.... by jwhyche · · Score: 2

      No they haven't.

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  3. In the butt by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Informative

    They best not try to bury the great Chuck Tingle, author of such books as, Space Raptor Butt Invasion, which is book one of the Space Raptor Butt Trilogy. His earlier work, such as Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt are already classics. However, his newer work, such as the speculative Slammed In The Butthole By My Concept Of Linear Time is not quite as good as his earlier work.

    https://www.amazon.com/Space-R...

    https://www.amazon.com/Slammed...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  4. Re:Alternative Theory by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Funny

    My brain just automatically translates that to read "Amazon women sacrificing erotic authors... "

    Sounds delicious. Is this book illustrated, or...?

    Umm, asking for a friend.

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  5. Loved reading these two /. headlines by gachunt · · Score: 3, Funny

    I read

    " Amazon is Burying Sexy Books, Sending Erotic Novel Authors to the 'No-Rank Dungeon' "

    ... then ...

    " President Trump Slams Amazon For 'Causing Tremendous Loss To the United States' "

  6. That's not the issue here by Solandri · · Score: 2

    The issue is that porn is one of those businesses where the producers will seek out and try new methods of distribution long before the mainstream does. Essentially Bezos used erotic novel authors to help jumpstart amazon.com (Amazon began as an online bookstore). Now that it's branched out and grown big enough that Bezoes doesn't feel he needs them anymore, he's burying them. It is literally climbing on the backs of other people to haul yourself up into a dominant position, then discarding them. Decent people don't do that. They acknowledge those who helped them rise up to success, and even give them a helping hand in the future (I scratch your back, you scratch mine). I'd been hoping Bezos was better than this, but it's sounding like he's just another Gates, Jobs, or Ellison (take as much as you can, and discard the person once they lose their usefulness).

    This is all so simple to fix without taking the drastic step Amazon seems to have taken (based on the summary - TFA won't load in my browser due to some script it's trying to run). You flag all products which could be considered adult. Then you add a "hide adult content" setting in the account settings and set it to On by default, and let the user decide whether to leave it on or turn it off. The physical analogy is a room in the back of the video rental store where you put all the adult videos, and customers can decide for themselves whether or not to go into that room.

  7. another byproduct of the gutting of safe harbor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    a lot of sites are removing or downgrading 'sexy' and 'offensive' content in the wake of the feds recent gutting of safe harbor provisions.

  8. Re:Cat got my tongue? That should be banned erotic by iampiti · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In the west fewer people may be religious nowadays but the mechanisms that undelie religions still operate on people and so we get this new wave of morality

  9. what was happening by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What was happening previously was that racy books were showing up for searches for normal books, often absurdly unrelated searches. They were gaming the searches like it was the early days of Google.

    I don't know if Amazon was weighting the sales numbers too highly in their algorithm or what, but even quite specific searches for normal topics might have the bizarre racy results showing higher than strongly selling normal books.

    So I say, good: it's about time.

    If this is a problem somehow, then fine, give us an easy, prominent account setting to say "no smut". Then go back to your old algorithms to your heart's content.

    But something was not right before, in any case.

  10. This isn't new, Amazon discriminates all the time by CrashNBrn · · Score: 2

    A handful of the "noticed" times that Amazon has discriminated against "sex."
    2009 - Amazon Culls Offensive Books from Search System
    2010 - Amazon Taking Down Erotica Removing from Kindles
    2013 - Books with Questionable Content Being Deleted from eBookstores in Sweeping Ban
    2015 - How Amazons Monster Erotica Book Ban Shaped Cloudflares Censorship Stance

    An ongoing attempt to remove anything "too sexy" from general search, or outright bans of fringe content.

  11. Re:Alternative Theory by rgbatduke · · Score: 2

    No, they've been doing this for a while now. Seriously, they've been doing it to me and my book, The Book of Lilith, for a long time. Go to Amazon, search for it by name. Chances are it won't show up at all -- because they at some point decided it was "erotica". Which it absolutely is not. It has sex in it. It is a mature themed book -- the whole Lilith legend is about sex and gender relationships. But it is not porn, or erotica. I had it classified as SF&F, which is much closer to what it is, mythopoeic fantasy.

    As a consequence, you have to a) Search by a string as explicit as "The Book of Lilith by Robert Brown", and when you do THAT you still don't see it, you only get "Your search contains adult items which have been hidden. If you wish to see them, Show all results". Finally, if you click that, Amazon reveals to you that I've written a book! Oh! You can buy it!

    In the meantime, it NEVER shows up on a search of Lilith related material. Half of these books are filled with erotic vampire scenes. Some are outright porn. But MY book has been classified without my knowledge or consent as erotica, and has vanished from everybody except people BROWSING for porn, who sadly aren't as likely to buy a book that is not, in fact, porn.

    So all that is happening now is that the fact that they've been doing this for years now is finally coming to light. Maybe because of Trump, more likely because people are finally getting pissed enough to BRING this blatent, irresponsible, and unguided censorship to light.

    --
    Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.