Amazon FAIL!

My anger buttons are being overused these days, but oh my god. Heads-up credit for this one goes to such_heights and copperbadge, respectively!

From markprobst [here]:

On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: “Transgressions” by Erastes and “False Colors” by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book “The Filly.” There was buzz, What’s going on? Does Amazon have some sort of campaign to suppress the visibility of gay books? Is it just a major glitch in the system? Many of us decided to write to Amazon questioning why our rankings had disappeared. Most received evasive replies from customer service reps not versed in what was happening. As I am a publisher and have an Amazon Advantage account through which I supply Amazon with my books, I had a special way to contact them. 24 hours later I had a response:

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.

copperbadge also notes [here] that by stripping sales rankings from gay and lesbian literature, Amazon is killing publicity for these writers while leaving "adult" literature of a heterosexual nature completely unaffected. Furthermore, it's becoming clear that non-adult LGBT literature is also being affected by Amazon's discriminatory policing.

Please take a minute out of your day and sign the petition against this policy!

ETA for Googlebomb: Amazon Rank

cooling the rage...

Two poems for today!

Concerning Starling's Law of The Heart

"...the critical factor controlling stroke volume is the pre-load or degree of stretch of the cardiac muscle cells just before they contract."
--Marieb's Human Anatomy and Physiology

House a pump in four chambers,
arteries and veins for pipes, valves
for valves, pacemaker a tap

( that won't quit running. Let it. )

***

Nocturne in C

Because these are not the nights of empty hands,
because these are not the nights of dreams galloping
like gasoline fire over blue tar,
I wish you could see what I see
( when I look at you, )