Those of you who are regular readers of my blog, know that I am not very political in my blogging, and I have never considered myself to be an activist. This past weekend I played a very small part in bringing to light a situation happening at Amazon, and now I wonder if I’ll ever get back to blogging about literature and my fiction writing! Though occasionally I might get my hackles up when one of my less-than-supportive family members uses a phrase like “your lifestyle choice,” I generally don’t feel like I have a lot to complain about. We now have a President who is as gay-friendly, if not more so, than President Clinton, yet still does not support the legalization of gay marriage. While I have observed Americans rallying to hateful causes such as Proposition 8, I have stood by and said very little, though I was always appreciative of those who were vocal in their dissent.

What this preamble is leading up to is that while I stand by my statement that I don’t believe that Amazon intentionally meant to de-rank all 57,000 titles caused by the “ham-fisted error,” it doesn’t change the fact that the policy quoted to me by their representative does exist. New evidence has been popping up as authors of gay and lesbian books now cite examples of Amazon de-rankings occurring as far back as January of 2008. Craig Seymour was the first author to speak up on Sunday and he posted a blow-by-blow account of his month long battle to get Amazon to reinstate his ranking.

Now, author of lesbian fiction Francine Saint Marie has told her story in a discussion forum. She makes a pretty good case for how there seemed to be a built-in filtering algorithm in the Kindle listing catalog that was de-ranking her books (she later surmised that it was based on keywords in her product tags) and Amazon representatives were clueless in how to defeat it.
Though the Kindle version of my book The Filly, never did get de-ranked and the word “gay” was used in several of my product tags, so you can take that for what it’s worth. There are still gay-themed Kindle titles that, like Francine’s, were unranked before this fiasco and are still unranked now. Strings Attached is a very popular title in paperback, so it stands to reason the Kindle version would be a big seller too and yet it has never been ranked.

What I’d like to know is why was there a “switch” that could be flipped in the first place, by a Frenchman or otherwise? (Why the heck was his nationality of any relevance? One doesn’t have to be well-versed in English to be competent in one’s job.) The answer seems obvious. Amazon has probably been experimenting with an automated way to filter out adult material and it back-fired with an over-zealous algorithm.

Furthermore, should adult material even be filtered at all? Why not either completely refuse to sell it or start a whole separate Amazon called AmazonBlue that warns customers they must be 18 to enter?

But short of doing that, the real question is how can Amazon feasibly execute their “we don’t rank adult material” policy? What constitutes adult material is a gray area. Didn’t Larry Flynt already fight that battle? With such a wide range of explicitness in literature, the burden of deciding what falls into the adult category would be nearly impossible. You would need an impartial ratings board akin to that of the MPAA to rate each and every book. Why don’t we just go back to the old days and let the Catholic Church make the decisions and then they can stamp “condemned” wherever they see (un)fit. I think you catch my drift.

Oh, and on a completely separate subject, I love Susan Boyle. I could listen to her sing with that sweet voice all day long.