This just seems to be a bad idea on a long list of bad ideas. What are they thinking?
Amazon has pulled the sales rank of books with adult themes. This includes books by yours truly, as well as lifestyle books for gay and lesbians (some are historical accounts and not novels at all). My book, Doing it the Hard Way from Pocket and all of my Ellora’s Cave books are now stripped of their sales rank and may not appear in searches. Oh joy. As if making sales wasn’t already hard enough.
This from Smart Bitches Trashy Books: “Authors such as Jaci Burton, Maya Banks, Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler have reported that since being stripped of their sales rankings, their titles are no longer found in searches on Amazon.com. MetaWriter is also compiling a list of titles that have been stripped of their sales rank.
When pressed for a reason, Amazon.com’s customer service department told YA author Mark Probst:
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.”
And of course, Twitter is exploding with the news as small press and NY Presses are affected by this.
Wanna help get the point across? Link to http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank using the words Amazon Rank.