By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 13, 2009
Filed at 8:39 p.m. ET
NEW YORK AP — Amazon.com apologized Monday for an ”embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” that led to the sales ranking being removed from tens of thousands of books.
The online retailer initially said Sunday that a ”glitch” had caused the problem and promised that the numbers would be restored. But Monday afternoon, sales numbers were still gone for such recent works as Chelsea Handler’s ”My Horizontal Life” and from such classics as Gore Vidal’s ”The City and the Pillar” and James Baldwin’s ”Giovanni’s Room.”
”What kind of a childish game is this?” Vidal said Monday. ”Why don’t they just burn the books? They’d be better off and it’s very visual on television.”
On Monday, Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener called the deletions an ”embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.” He said that 57,310 books had been affected.
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amazon rank
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): amazon ranked
1. To censor and exclude on the basis of adult content in literature (except for Playboy, Penthouse, dogfighting and graphic novels depicting incest orgies).
2. To make changes based on inconsistent applications of standards, logic and common sense.
Etymology: from 12 April 2009 removal of sales rank figures from books on Amazon.com containing sexual, erotic, romantic, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or queer content, rendering them impossible to find through basic search functions at the top of Amazon.com’s website. Titles stripped of their sales rankings include “Bastard Out of Carolina,” “Lady Chatterly’s Lover,” prominent romance novels, GLBTQ fiction novels, YA books, and narratives about gay people.
Example of usage: “I tried to do a report on Lady Chatterly’s Lover for English Lit, but my teacher amazon ranked me and I got an F on grounds that it was obscene.”
Alternate usage: “My girlfriend wanted to preserve her virginity, and I was happy to respect that, then she amazon ranked and decided anal sex was okay.”
[via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books]
See also:
- Amazon removes sales rank from sexuality, queer, feminist titles (Sexerati)
- Amazon Rank (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books)
- Search the #amazonfail hashtag on Twitter
- Petition: In protest at Amazon’s new “adult” policy
- Amazon Accused of Removing Gay Books from Rankings (Mashable)
- #Amazonfail and the politics of anti-corporate cyberactivism (net effect)
- meta Writer’s Amazon Censorship -who is affected list (Livejournal – add your name to this list).
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