homophobia & Amazon.com

[rm]

http://vashtan.livejournal.com/490173.html
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11369.html

Amazon removes rankings from books with homosexual characters, including from at least one YA book, because they don't wish to include "adult" content in their rankings out of respect to the range of their membership.

Queer content does not inherently equal sexual or "adult" content.

We've got a big problem on our hands with this one.

If you find a targetted media product, add to list here: http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

What does amazon do to small presses?

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Couple of things.

One, many small specialty publishers utilize PoD (or Print on Demand) services like Lulu, iUniverse, etc. rather than do large runs of books because they lack the capital to sustain that business model. When Amazon introduced Booksurge last year, they basically told all the PoD small press people to switch to Booksurge or die. Aside from the obvious anti-competitive practices angle, they're also more expensive and produce books of lower quality than many PoD houses. Here's a handful of links about it:

http://lupabitch.livejournal.com/1509365.html
http://lupabitch.livejournal.com/1512409.html
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2008/04/victoria-strauss-authors-guild-on.html
http://antitrust.booklocker.com/booklocker-files-class-action-lawsuit-against-amazon

And then Amazon.uk decided that publishers couldn't sell books for less than Amazon.uk did.
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2008/06/victoria-strauss-amazon-flexes-uk.html

I also know of at least one instance of Amazon blackballing a publisher when it refused to comply with bad business practices:
http://www.avotaynu.com/nu/V09N16.htm

I won't lie. Sometimes I have to use them to find a specific thing. On the whole, though, I buy local/indie, local, or using other sites.