Over the weekend a huge controversy hit the GLBT community. No, not gay marriage. Not the Church or the military or an “outing” of another huge celebrity.
It was Amazon…
Amazon decided to classify certain books as “Adult Content” and then promptly drop them from their bestseller search engines because they felt Adult Content was inappropriate. You can read two short articles about it here and here.
I find this funny because on Friday I noticed that my book had no ranking anymore, and I couldn’t even find it through any of Amazon’s general search engines. I called them and told them about my book and its missing rankings in Gender and Sexuality and Gay and Lesbian Nonfiction. They transferred me around to five different people and the final person just told me that nobody had bought my book in 2 days—since Amazon’s rankings are updated by the hour, two days of no book sales would severely hurt the ranking.
And then I come to find out it’s not about book sales because people were definitely buying it … it’s rather that Love is an Orientation is considered Adult Content! Ouch. Who knew I was writing Christian gay and lesbian porn? (that last comment was a sarcastic...)
:)
Much love.
www.themarinfoundation.org
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7 comments:
Though I don't know the first thing about book sales or genre classification, is it alright that they've reclassified your book? I get the feeling that it's not good. We'll have to spread the positive word if there's something to overcome.
Cheers.
I ordered your book through Amazon. I noticed how difficult it was to find. I had to use your name in the search engine to get your book to populate in the first few results. While I haven't read your book yet I'm guessing it lacks any graphic descriptions of sex acts and probably even any use of profanity... so what a stupid classification!
Both of you are dead on! There are no graphic descriptions of sex, no profanity, and I also find it weird that it got classified (especially in) Gay and Lesbian Nonfiction. If you notice the overwhelming majority of the other books in that category are literal how-to-gay-sex-books. I don't know how they even come up with these classifications?!
I do know that both Borders and Barnes and Noble classified my book in Christian Living and Gender and Sexuality...that makes much more sense to me.
And JDESJARD, the problem has been fixed and it's no longer difficult to find anymore - just type in Love is an Orientation in the general search engine and it's the first thing that pops up. Thanks for searching so hard for it...I hope it is very worthwhile for all of your hard work.
Much love.
If it was intentional, it was wrong.
In the interest of fairness, Amazon says it was an employee programming error that mis-tagged titles from far more than the GLBT related category. Link below if for an article from a tech publication about the situation.
http://www.macworld.com/article/139988/2009/04/amazonlisting.html
"Amazon's French site mistagged a number of keyword categories, including the "Gay and Lesbian" category, as pornographic, using what's known internally as the Browse Nodes tool. Soon the mistake affected Amazon sites worldwide, Daisey said in an interview. "If you use that tool in one site, it affects every site in Amazon. So the guy screwed up in France and it propagated everywhere," he said."
I'm reading it now & it seems more like a textbook for Bible colleges!
I hope the problem is solved soon.
I bet that many novels on Amazon have dirty words in them....
Who would have thought that Amazon was so prudish! Ha!! ...and it originated in France which is not a prudish country.
Maybe this will bring more attention to your book in the long run!!!!!!
Wait a minute! They were selling the Kama Sutra & didn't pull it all this time????
I don't know in which post to leave this -- but late at night -- when I have some of my best and worst thoughts, it occured to me:
I should have written Love is an Orientation or why didn't I write such a book?, etc...
Andrew, it seems that at this juncture in your life, this is a calling from God. And I do think that an "ever straight person" needed to write this book. Now, I know this sounds contradictory, but
So many of us -- GLBTS -- have lived with who we are all our lives. Shouldn't we be the experts at large? And then we accepted Christ, and our problems seemed to intensify.
Here's the problem: we are not allowed to be middle of the road: we are forced to choose sides pro/anti -- Side A/Side B.
So our stories don't get told.
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