on Amazon's sudden, senseless and cruel breaking of my heart

I spent my first five years in Illinois with my single-parent mom, her parents and her three brothers. There were always lots of people milling around that big castle-like house, but when my mom left to go to her job serving pizza or out on a date, I grew immediately lonely and sad. Often I'd run away next door to the artsy couple who had this fantastic house sprinkled with magical things--a purple shag rug, split geodes studding the walls, water taps shaped like swans. I loved them and this quiet, magical home they had.

When I was twenty, my parents and I returned to that place and unexpectedly knocked on the door of the old neighbors. They and the house seemed the same, but the walls were now dotted with countless paintings of churches. Old churches, new churches, churches with white steeples, churches with steel spires. Everywhere churches. The couple, it turned out, had been born again, cheerfully, assertively, self-congratulatorily, evangelically born again.

I was crushed.

Which is precisely the feeling I had yesterday upon hearing about the recent and much descried changes on Amazon. Over the past few days--or, according to other sources, over the past couple of months--Amazon has quietly been making software programming changes. These changes were brought to light by author Mark R. Probst who noticed that his books had lost their Amazon ranking (the numbers that indicate the book's sales relative to other books and thus show the popularity of a book and whether a book is a best-seller). The numbers were simply gone. Writing to the company, Probst received this reply from an Amazon representative:

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.

Much has been made of this Amazon debacle. (It was the hottest topic on Twitter yesterday, gaining its own organizing battle cry #amazonfail. Jezebel has a fairly comprehensive thumbnail of the issue, a listing of books both losing and keeping their rankings, and a roundup of stories on the matter, if you want more information.) Much has been made and for good reason. There is no logic to this restructuring at Amazon. In fact, not only is there no logic, there is a great logic suck and that void is carrying with it books good and bad, books high and low, books classic and pop-tart, books of a stunning range of topics, interests,  readership and quality.

Amazon ranking does more than simply tell a reader, or an author, how well the book is selling. It also tells the Amazon search feature how to function. Screen out "adult" books--and adult here means  books dealing with GLBTQ issues, erotica, sex manuals (gay, straight and, I might add at first, Christian, but those rankings have mysteriously returned), books by GLBTQ authors, and sexual memoirs--and you're going to get a funky-ass crazy quilt of results. Perhaps the best example is this one, which gives four results for books searched under "homosexual," all centering on the topic of how to "cure" gayness. This is a problem of mind-imploding proportions.

The problems here are myriad. On a purely pragmatic level, you can't set up a search feature to "exclude 'adult' material" because most literature is "adult." You set up a search feature like this and you exclude not merely erotica, but you exclude Jeanette Winterson's memoir Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, and Betty Dodson's Sex for One. You don't, however, screen out Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho or Tucker Max's frat-boy memoir I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Set up this kind of screen, search for "Lady Chatterly" and you get four pages of results before you get to one in-print copy of the book. It's fucked up and it's just mouth-breathingly dumb.

On a political level, it's hard not to get irate at a company who feels it needs to parent its many, many consumers. I'm fully confident that if I search for books on anal sex, books by Quentin Crisp, or books on anal sex by Quentin Crisp, I can stomach the results. A search result never hurt anyone, as Susie Bright pointed out. Moreover, there's more than one way to incense a cat. Search for "helium balloons" and you get a string of suggestions for books on suicide. There's no way for Amazon to police for people's tender sensibilities. It's futile, offensive and stupid even to try.

On a purely capitalist level, Amazon is a company. It sells things. That's what it does--and does well. To set up strange, ineffective and pointless barriers to bringing people the things they want to buy is counter-intuitive. It's like a McDonald's turning out the lights, erecting a maze of curtains and making its customers grope in the dark to reach the kiosk. Your average web-savvy customer isn't stupid. We're going to toddle down the Internet highway and find that copy of Anaïs Nin's Spy in the House of Love somewhere else.

And on a personal level, I am sad, confused and angry. I love Amazon. I love it so much I want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant. I want to make sweet, drippy, sloppy, sweaty, unprotected love to Amazon. That's how I feel about Amazon. I spend thousands of dollars I can ill afford at Amazon. I am a book/DVD/music glutton and Amazon is my 24-hour Quickie Mart. I can't believe Amazon is making these gigantic mistakes, kowtowing to this shadowy and invisible "customer base" who is mortally offended at the idea of adults doing what adults do with other adults (but only in book form--it's not a problem to buy any one of the four really bad DVD versions of Fanny Hill, only the original, excellent novel), and making it hard for me to buy what I want to buy.

Or anything at all, really, because if Amazon doesn't fix this egregious error, this "glitch" that they are calling it, I'm done. I'm gone. And I'm taking my money and my love with me.

(If you're as angry as I am, take twenty minutes and call the Amazon customer help line, 800-201-7575, and ask to speak to the customer representative manager. Explain to him or her your reasons for your anger and tell him or her you'll boycott Amazon. You can also join Twitter and send messages to Amazon CTO, Werner Vogels. There's also a petition, but I don't have a lot of faith in it. And for the most fun form of protest, join Smart Bitches in their Googlebombing of Amazon.) 

UPDATE:

This afternoon I received the following email from Amazon's customer service. I kind of like the use of the adjective "ham-fisted." Here you go:

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.


Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

Comments

[Prince of Darfur]

Fuck Amazon. I've been boycotting it for years. They sell books at ridiculous discounts, and they sell used books as well. My publisher cuts my royalty payments from books sold by Amazon by the same discount that Amazon gives to customers. My royalties drop by 20 to 25 percent. I get nothing when my used books are sold on Amazon.

Amazon kills independent bookstores. It even kills used book stores. It is a locust on the land.

And Jeff Bezos is a weenie.

[Prince of Darfur]

One other thing, apropos de rien, I'd like to get your take on Roberto Bolano.

[Lilly]

Posts like this are why I kept your blog on my list in hopes you'd be back eventually.
Thanks =)

[Svasti]

Yes, I feel the same. I love Amazon too. But now, I simply can't buy anything from them! My lovely wish list of books is not a future action plan any more, but a friggin sad reminder of what was once a beautiful friendship. Fuck Amazon, indeed.

[Alana]

CG,

Yeah, I'm with you. Sadness. Fury. Fear, even. Mostly sadness.

I've given Amazon more money than I can count buying books and video games for the kiddo and even food!

Jesus.

Peace,
A

[Liras]

Shameful and irrational behavior on their part. I, my friends, my enemies and the word have spent a ton of money with them.

It will be a ton minus one, because I am done with them.

[S]

Prince: you get nothing when your books are sold second hand anywhere.