Publishing Talk » Amazon

amazonfail – 10 unanswered questions

Jon Reed — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:43:21 +0000

If you’ve been asleep for the last two days, there’s a very handy #amazonfail flowchart over at the National Coalition Against Censorship to help you catch up.

But it’s over now, right? Amazon have said it was an error, they’re fixing it, it’s dropped from the top 10 trending topics on Twitter – get over it already. Right?

Wrong. Dear Author give a very good analysis of why Amazon’s explanation is none at all. Pandagon also explain why it doesn’t add up. And Patrick at Vroman’s Bookstore writes about the dangers of an Amazon monopoly on bookselling this highlights.

Given the media blackout at Amazon Towers, there are still a lot of unanswered, troubling questions. (For future reference, Amazon, here is some useful advice from Colin Roswell on dealing with a social media crisis.)

So, Team Amazon, here are your starters for ten, no conferring:

What happened? Was this a) Policy b) Glitch or c) Error?
Why were some titles de-ranked back in February?
If this rogue ‘adult’ ranking affected “books in a number of broad categories“, why were LGBT ones very specifically stripped of their rankings while we could still find Playboy Centrefolds etc?
Do you now realize that ‘Gay & Lesbian’ does not equal ‘adult material’? Some of these books are very tedious, and not at all sexy.
Since sales are restricted to over-18s anyway, who are you protecting?
Why did Lady Chatterley go MIA? Has she now safely returned to the potting shed?
Why is our only news source a drip-feed of anonymous insiders? Do you have a PR department?
Do you remember when Margaret Atwood and others boycotted The Dubai Festival in February, because one gay book was banned? Does this make the UAE more liberal than Amazon?
How could you be so beastly to our very own Stephen Fry? Do you not like QI?
Why do you need a secret cloaking device anyway? Are you Romulan?

I’m sure there are other questions I’ve overlooked. If you have more questions to put to Amazon, please do add them in the comments below. Meanwhile – stay vigilant!

amazonfail = PRfail

Jon Reed — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:57:58 +0000

My favourite quote of the day comes from Amazon de-ranked author Gore Vidal:

“Why don’t they just burn the books? They’d be better off and it’s very visual on television.”

I still can’t quite believe that lovely, liberal Seattle-based Amazon would go in for the sort of virtual book burning we have seen at the weekend – even if they are more like Wal-Mart these days. Despite what at least one author was told, this seems less like deliberate policy, and more like corporate f***wittery on a grand scale. But the outcome and the appearance is the same: de-ranked books, and mass censorship of gay and lesbian literature by ‘Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company.’

This is why we could do with a full statement about what happened. So far it looks like they are backtracking from a policy decision – which may or may not be the case:

11 Apr 09 – Policy

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

12 Apr 09 – Glitch

A “glitch” has occurred in our sales ranking feature that is in the process of being fixed. There is no new policy regarding “adult” titles.

13 Apr 09 – Error

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Well, at least they’re fixing it. But it’s not a full explanation of what happened. It doesn’t explain Lady Chatterley going missing in action. It doesn’t explain Craig Seymour being de-ranked in February. And it doesn’t explain the ‘accident’ that caused it.

I really don’t expect a personal reply to my letter to Jeff – he’s a busy man. But a full statement from the Amazon PR department would at least quell the rumours and conspiracy theories. Yesterday, these included a meta-troll theory, a hacker claiming responsibility for causing the mess (he didn’t), and a French translation error.

Given that this firestorm started on Twitter, you might think it would make sense for Amazon to address the issue there – especially since they have their own Twitter account. Jeff Rutherford offers some helpful suggestions on how they might have done this. But the most enlightening tweet we received from Amazon yesterday was:

Amazon Daily: Cooking by Kindlelight http://bit.ly/FHVp9

You can’t find this tweet any more, because, interestingly, their Ministry of Truth appear to have suspended this RSS-generated feed today, and deleted tweets back to April 10th, before the crisis.

Really not the way to win back our trust, Amazon. By trying to maintain control, you overlook the fact that you have already lost control – you may have noticed that we’re already talking about you.

And what started on Twitter has now made the mainstream media. Here’s an item from last night’s Channel 4 News in the UK:

This is not a conspiracy. It’s just bad judgement and disastrous PR management. The most insightful comment I read yesterday was from Patrick at Making Light:

None of which means that anyone shouldn’t be mad at Amazon, or that Amazon shouldn’t be embarrassed. Rather, it means that this is how the world works. A great deal of racism, homophobia, etc., happens not because anyone particularly wants to be racist or homophobic, but because the ground has been tilted that way by arrangements made long ago and if you’re not constantly on the lookout it’s easiest to roll downhill.

Yes, Amazon should have been more aware of the likely repercussions of this, but mistakes happen, things go awry, and people are usually quite forgiving if you own up and put it right (promoting the de-ranked titles on their front page for a few days might do it). Amazon’s apparent disengagement from the problem could be more damaging to them in the long run.

Social media works because it’s about openness, authenticity, and building trust with people. Not because those are attributes of social media itself – but because those are now our values in the wider culture. Social media just provides the tools to tap into that online. It’s telling that Amazon hasn’t really engaged with social media so far, despite being one of the first companies to offer customer ranking and review features.

For a big organization, social media strategy is often simply about listening in to online conversations about your brand, engaging with and influencing those conversations, and responding appropriately. You can do this by typing your brand name into any number of search engines, including http://search.twitter.com. If you discover a social media backlash, you address it.

Amazon may have the technology, but social media is only partly about technology. The culture is far more important. By not responding quickly through the social media channels that raised awareness of the problem in the first place, amazonfail has turned into a PRfail.

An open letter to Jeff Bezos

Jon Reed — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:19:53 +0000

Dear Jeff,

I don’t know if you use Twitter, but you might be aware of something called #amazonfail, currently the most talked-about topic among the network of 5m+ users. This is an online expression of dismay at Amazon’s new and apparently discriminatory censorship policy.

If the version circulating on the Internet is correct, your new policy of excluding ‘adult’ material from Amazon searches by removing their sales ranking runs as follows:

“In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.”

The idea of protecting us from ‘adult’ material seems unnecessary, when your own Conditions of Use (USA / UK) restrict Amazon purchases to adults. But my concern – and that of the many people tweeting with the #amazonfail tag – is how you define ‘adult material’.

In my country, a few years before you were born, a book was published following a notorious obscenity trial. The prosecution was ridiculed for being out of touch with changing social norms when the chief prosecutor asked if it was the kind of book “you would wish your wife or servants to read”. Publication went ahead, 32 years after the book was written, and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” has since become regarded as a classic work of English literature.

Overnight, you appear to have overturned that hard-won decision and reclassified it as filth that we should be protected from.

Worse still, D.H. Lawrence notwithstanding, your definition of ‘adult material’ appears mainly to apply to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books. Non-explicit LGBT literature, history and biography is censored, while explicit hetero books are not. No longer can we find Jeanette Winterson’s “Oranges are not the Only Fruit” or Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” by sales rank. But we may still find “Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds” and Alan Moore’s “Lost Girls”, a graphic novel in every sense. Even our National Treasure, Stephen Fry, appears to have had his autobiography de-ranked, while it it all too easy to find Jackie Collins.

You can see many more examples of this curious inconsistency listed on the online petition that many of us are currently signing, and on this handy list.

This looks very much like blatant homophobia. Would you care to share your selection criteria with us? Or have you simply gone through your Gay & Lesbian section with a red pen?

This approach to what is deemed obscene and what is not takes publishing on a backward step that makes you seem as out of touch with modern social norms as Mervyn Griffith-Jones. As Kassia Krozier points out, we can freely find “Mein Kampf”, books on training fighting dogs, and other offensive material. But the works of E.M. Forster and D.H. Lawrence appear not to be the kind of books you would wish us to read.

Well, you have your wish. We will not buy them – from Amazon at least. As well as signing the online petition, joining the Facebook Group and redefining “Amazon rank“, we shall boycott Amazon until this policy is reversed. Other online retailers are available, other highstreet chains – maybe we shall even support our local independent bookshop.

I hope this is a mistake that will be quickly corrected, and not a conscious policy of discrimination. I look forward to a public response to the many blog posts and tweets on the subject that have been written this weekend.

Jon Reed, Publishing Talk