An Open Letter To Jeff Bezos

21 Comments | Posted: April 12th, 2009 | Filed under: Meta | Tags: ,

Jeff:

I’ve been an avid customer of Amazon.com for quite some time now, purchasing between $100 and $200 worth of books, DVDs, games, electronics, and music each month. I think the Amazon mp3 store is a prime example of how to sell music online, and it’s obvious that a great deal of thought has been placed in editorial pieces such as your annual ten best lists. I’ve always been happy to give Amazon my money, and joined your affiliate program because the company offers the chance for people who don’t have good local book stores and comic shops to pick up material I’ve enjoyed and discussed on my blog. Each month, I send between $1,000 and $3,000 of business your way through the affiliate links on the sites I maintain as well as a Twitter account set up for music, movie, and other geek-friendly deals. I’ve always had a good relationship with your company.

However, that relationship, which currently means between $13,000 and $26,000 per annum for your business, will be over unless you do not immediately take action to reverse your company’s new “Adult Materials Policy,” a blatantly homophobic and hypocritical rule that means that Alan Moore’s sexually explicit Victorian graphic novel Lost Girls is currently available through the sales rank-oriented search and lists, but not Radclyffe Hill’s acclaimed The Well of Loneliness, a lesbian romance set in the same era that features no sex. Some people with more patience than I have crafted a list that includes those two titles and several more egregious examples of this policy.

In an era where more people are becoming more accepting of those who aren’t like them – just look at our last presidential election – it’s a shame that the web’s largest retailer has decided to take a step back to the past and marginalize a vital segment of our society through rules that seem tailored to enforce a damaging, unhealthy status quo that has left so many leading unhappy lives. What’s next, removing black authors and materials about black culture from the sales ranks? If the web as we know it had existed in 1965, people would have been telling you that was the right thing to do, and they would have been as wrong then as your business is right now with this decision.

Yes, Jeff, you’re the CEO of just one online retailer, but it’s the biggest online retailer. Wouldn’t you like to give people one more reason to say that you’re the best? Hell, this decision may have passed you by entirely; and I’m willing to give you and those in your organization a chance to rectify this mess. I’m leaving the Amazon affiliate links on my site for another week, but if your decision has not changed by next Sunday, I’ll cancel my Amazon Prime membership, remove any and all affiliate links, and walk away from your company entirely.

Yours,
Kevin Church

Share This Post:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • StumbleUpon
  • Ping.fm
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr

21 Comments on “An Open Letter To Jeff Bezos”

  1. 1 Randal said at 7:33 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Serious question…how is it homophobic to INCLUDE Lost Girls?

  2. 2 Roel said at 7:41 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    No, Randal, it’s not homophobic to include “Lost Girls”. He’s using that as an example of what is allowed, while pointing out that “The Well of Loneliness” is not allowed despite being much less sexually explicit.

    In this instance, the complaint does not revolve around Alan Moore’s work — it merely serves as a frame-of-reference on how the system seems arbitrary.

  3. 3 Kevin Church said at 7:42 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Lost Girls is not about romance or feeling, it’s about sex. It’s titillation and pornography as art form. I’m quite sure that a significant number of male homophobes have no problems whatsoever with watching two ladies bump and grind.

  4. 4 Dorian said at 7:42 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Randal, I think you’re missing the point of Kevin’s example. The majority of the works that appear to have been delisted by Amazon are not sexually explicit, they simply happen to be on gay and lesbian themes. For example, both UNFRIENDLY FIRE and THE CELLULOID CLOSET, two non-explicit non-fiction works, have had their sales rankings removed by Amazon, which affects the way Amazon displays material when you do a search on the site.
    This is why people are upset: non-explicit gay-themed works have been affected, while sexually explicit works on a heterosexual theme have not.
    LOST GIRLS is a sexually explicit work that has not had its sales rankings removed. THE WELL OF LONELINESS is a non-explicit work that has. While LOST GIRLS does feature some homosexual pairings, it is predominately heterosexually themed. Thus the appearance of homophobia.

    (I say “appearance”…given who Amazon donates to politically, that’s probably being overly kind.)

  5. 5 Jason said at 7:47 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Kevin. Man, it’ll suck if I have to take my Amazon business elsewhere, but that’s what I’ll have to do.

  6. 6 Alice said at 8:16 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Ok, I’ve been reading some hysterical posts from authors on this topic, and had been unconvinced until now. But you’ve laid out the evidence pretty cleanly here, so I can really see that this is a problem. I signed into my amazon account (first order: October of 1997, I believe) and sent the following:

    “Hi! I know you’re probably getting a ton of emails on this topic, but I’ve been reading blog posts about Amazon changing their search policy when it comes to works by gay & lesbian authors. I certainly respect that Amazon is a private company under no obligation to me, but that whole move just seems a little too clumsy (at best) or hostile (at worst) for me to continue to support your company. It was this link here: http://www.beaucoupkevin.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-jeff-bezos/2009/04/12/ that really convinced me this was more than just a tempest in a teapot.

    I’ll be following this story with interest, as Amazon is my favorite online retailer, and I’d hate to switch. But I will if you don’t offer a better explanation for your actions.”

  7. 7 hardtravelinghero said at 8:27 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Bravo, Kevin.

    I will be passing on this link and the petition link to my many colleagues in higher education, as well as my former graduate school colleagues and professors, and anyone else who likely finds Amazon’s actions offensive on multiple levels to both authors and readers.

    I’ll also make sure my ArmzRace compatriots do not use images that link to Amazon in their reviews unless Mr. Bezos changes this policy.

    -Hardtravelinghero

  8. 8 Randal Yard said at 9:21 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Ok, thanks for the responses, point taken, and I don’t entirely disagree…I just think it’s odd to use the word “homophobic” when you cite an example that contains homosexuality that is ranked. I confess the policy confuses me – because my search for Well of Loneliness came up with a sales ranking (862,672). Oranges are the Strangest Fruit, Maurice, and Stone Butch Blues do, too. It’s weird…some versions of the book seem to have sales ranking and some don’t.

    I should be clear, it’s a crappy policy, but it’s entirely within their rights (and I think they’re still ironing it out), and refusing to buy from them is the correct response to it.

    Also, considering your comment, I don’t think you’re aware that since 2005, Amazon has donated to Democrats over Republicans at about a rate of 60-40…! It is a Seattle company…!

  9. 9 Stewart Cook said at 9:53 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Wow. Thanks for the post Kevin. I’m completely floored that in the 2009 there are still dinosaurs holding onto the cretaceous…

    Appreciate the heads up and will look forward to hearing the response you get from Amazon.

  10. 10 mightygodking said at 10:39 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Well said.

  11. 11 Kristina said at 10:47 pm on April 12th, 2009:

    Thanks for first writing this to Amazon and then for bringing it to people’s attention. This is one of those situations that I have a hard time believing no one along the way said, ‘Hey, isn’t this just kind of pretty fucking terrible?’. Amazing.

  12. 12 KDBryan said at 2:41 am on April 13th, 2009:

    You know, this is exactly the kind of searing, frothing angry-white-boy hatred I’ve come to expect from you, Kevin Church.

    In seriousness, thank you for this. It’s a great summation and kudos to you for your promised course of action. I won’t be using Amazon again in the future myself if this insulting BS continues.

  13. 13 Dayv said at 4:25 pm on April 13th, 2009:

    I was about to join this crusade, but now there are reports that Amazon may actually be something of a victim here:

    http://i.gizmodo.com/5210424/hacker-claims-he-shoved-amazon-into-the-closet-using-inappropriate-flag-exploit

  14. 14 Mike said at 4:43 pm on April 13th, 2009:

    Actually, I agree with Dayv. This really doesn’t sound like Amazon, and based on everything I’ve heard about and from Bezos over the years, it definitely doesn’t seem to fit his politics. Mind you, if it’s for real, I’ve made my last purchase from them, but it just doesn’t ring true.

  15. 15 Matt Algren said at 6:00 pm on April 13th, 2009:

    I’m not buying it, Dayv. Much more likely that they’re just filtering for books in categories like “gay” (etc) in the category metadata, like someone else suggested this morning. It’s just an extremely overzealous attempt at baby-proofing the site, and I’d be surprised if Seniorest management knew about it.

    It’s worth noting that a lot of the anti-gay books (most of which didn’t get de-ranked) don’t use category metadata like “gay”, instead going the general education/parenting/self-help route. LGBT people aren’t their primary audience, and people looking to fix their kids don’t look in the gay section of the bookstore.

    P.S. Randall, girls doing it is okay. It’s dudes going at it that people have a problem with.

  16. 16 christopher h said at 8:12 pm on April 13th, 2009:

    Supposedly it was due to a search programming error, due to someone editing the site from France. Still doesn’t smell right, but it’s at least slightly plausible– and forgivable, provided that they correct and relist everything immediately.

    As for things that continue to be valid points to critique Amazon about:
    -Undercuts local book and comic book shops, as Mike Daisey in that link points out: “It’s just an online Wal-Mart.”

    -One of the few high-profile businesses of its kind which has no charitable giving/employee-donation match for non-profits (especially noticeable in progressive-ish Seattle). Definitely fair that as a business, its wholly within its rights to give or not give to whomever it chooses but given that its profits are based almost entirely on the creative productivity of others– it would be prudent and also socially responsible of them to contribute to ongoing creative development within the arts. (The latter point was cribbed from someone else in a long debate on this subject, so I can’t lay claim to its soundness.)

  17. 17 Sandy said at 11:13 pm on April 13th, 2009:

    Here is the New York Times article that says this was caused by a cataloging error.

  18. 18 Kevin Church said at 11:26 pm on April 13th, 2009:

    Interesting bit in that NYT article:

    At least one author said he had encountered malfunctions in his sales rankings on Amazon as far back as February. Craig Seymour, an associate professor of communications at Northern Illinois University and the author of “All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C.,” a memoir, said his book had disappeared from most searches for several weeks but was restored in late February.

    In a blog post late Monday, Mr. Seymour wrote that Amazon’s statement was a start, but not sufficient. “It does not explain why writers, like myself, were told by Amazon reps that our books were being classified as ‘adult products.’ ”

    Amazon said in the statement that it planned “to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.” It did not elaborate on its statement.

  19. 19 Sandy said at 12:05 am on April 14th, 2009:

    Just wanted to make clear that by linking to that article I was not endorsing as “the truth” Amazon’s “cataloging error” story; I just thought it was worth adding to the discussion. It might come out that there is more to this than just some glitch.

  20. 20 Dayv said at 12:56 pm on April 14th, 2009:

    Similarly to Sandy’s comment above, I have no inside info on the “hacker” angle, just a link to pass on.

    Regardless of what actually caused this, Amazon’s front line personnel reacted badly when questioned about it and little has been done to remedy or acknowledge this.

  21. 21 shukov said at 7:43 am on May 14th, 2009:

    I miss the days when men were men and women were women and faggots were perverts. America is sick

Custom research papers