The web is alive with people having issues with Amazon’s recent de-ranking of certain “adult” books. The rumors are swarming that it’s a big conspiracy or something like that against certain types of books (namely gay, lesbian, etc.). The problem I had with what I was “hearing” was that I seriously doubted Amazon would harm publishers or authors in the romance industry in this way. Heck, we’re one of the biggest selling genres of authors out there. So I was TOTALLY relieved to have found this information from Amazon Spokesman Drew Herdener. Here’s what I found:
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.
Now that does make more sense! I’m excited to know that the books we know and love aren’t going to be harmed by being left out of the search engines!
