Monday, June 11, 2018

Amazon's Secret War Against Authors

Last March I noticed something weird:  a lot of my books still had rankings in subcategories but not an overall ranking.  It wasn't that they were so far over a million that they couldn't be ranked anymore; most of them were still between 150k-500k so there was no reason for them to disappear. 

I just assumed it was a system glitch or something.  But then I saw a Facebook post from Writer Beware that linked to this article.  Turns out there was a sinister reason for this:  Amazon was conducting a secret, undeclared war on erotica authors.

The idea is that Amazon wanted to make erotica titles harder to find but not ban them altogether.  Apparently part of this was concern about a "sex trafficking" law.  I actually find it pretty ridiculous to call erotica authors like me "sex workers."  I mean if someone is reading one of my books they're not out hiring real sex workers, aka prostitutes.  Really the powers that be should want more erotica authors because it'll help keep people from going out having actual sex, right?

Amazon wasn't the only one to overreact to this.  Microsoft declared it would have a PG only policy in Office 365 and XBox Live, which seems ridiculous and fascist.  I mean does that mean I can't type naughty words in MS Word or some goon will delete it?  Is someone going to stand by with an airhorn to bleep out cursing if I shout an f-bomb while playing Madden or HALO or something?  And I don't know how that fights sex trafficking. 

Anyway, the ridiculous thing with Amazon is that they wanted to try hiding erotica titles--but they continued profiting from them.  I mean even when they took down my overall rankings, they didn't stop taking their 30% from my books.  It's pretty cowardly really.  Either ban erotica or don't; this is just weaseling. 

The secret war was over by the end of the month, though.  As the article says, it wasn't because of authors like me so much as authors from the Big 5 they were carelessly hitting with these sanctions.  Amazon doesn't give a shit if Planet 99 Publishing complains about books becoming invisible, but if Random Penguin calls up, then they start to get worried.

I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they try it again.  Probably the next time they'll target it better.  Because another bit of hypocrisy is if I do something it can easily be quashed, but if a best-selling author does the same, hardly anyone will say boo about it.  I mean Amazon isn't going to pull EL James' books or even Lawrence Block's erotica titles from the 60s because they're more well-known authors, but people like me they can pick on.

But hey, all's fair in love and war, right?

3 comments:

Cindy said...

It's more like Amazon is going to do whatever they want because they can. Did you happen to see this? http://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=264067.0

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

It doesn't surprise me. I also can't seem to stop using my Amazon app. So I guess I'm part of the problem. People like me just keep supporting Amazon. Sigh.

Arion said...

That's really stupid of them, if people want to read erotic books they should be allowed to do so!

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...