Amazon admits mistake, blames France.

Not really, but I thought it was funny.

According to Daisey's inside sources, "A guy from Amazon France got confused on how he was editing the site, and mixed up 'adult,' which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' That browse node editor is universal, so by doing that there he affected ALL of Amazon."

So they've finally admitted what happened, but I'm not on board with the whole #SorryAmazon thing just yet. As I said yesterday, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Amazon set out to censor the "bad" books so people wouldn't get offended, and then this fiasco happens. In short, they did something stupid and shouldn't be rewarded for it just yet. Then again, I'm a big believer in stomping out idiocy when it rears its ugly head anyway.

...I've been around Sam too long. :p

ETA: Cheryl Morgan has a good post on the matter (site might be temporarily down):

What does appear to have been “embarrassing and ham-fisted”, to coin a phrase, is Amazon’s PR response. Had they simply issued a brief official apology early on explaining that this was a cataloging error and they were working on it then much of the fuss would have evaporated very quickly. It is clear from this article that Amazon staff were working very hard on the problem, so it wasn’t that it was being ignored.

Instead Amazon left it to staff to leak explanations, and when an official response came there was no sign of an apology and every sign that Amazon felt it had nothing to apologize for. In particular the accusation of “misreporting” appears to have been a deliberate attempt by Amazon’s PR people to cast the company as the victim in the affair.

When are companies whose livelihood depends on internet patrons going to learn they need better PR? I've seen it happen with LJ, and you'd think other companies would pick up on this, but so far I see the same mistakes happening over and over again.

Writer's Block: Looking Back

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This is actually my second LJ, and one of these days I'll get around to deleting the old one - I just haven't yet. I won't post my very first entry in this lj, but I will post one I made the day after I created it (because I feel comfortable sharing this one). I made two lists: "What I am," and "What I am NOT." Reading over it, I thought it was still pretty interesting and fun to repost.

( Me? Using an LJ cut? It's more likely than you think. )

The Internet has infected my werewolf/vampire smut!

While in Atlanta I purchased the new book by Keri Arthur, Deadly Desire, which is the seventh book in her Riley Jensen series (the first being Full Moon Rising). It's classified as paranormal romance, but you can find them in the sci-fi/fantasy section in most bookstores (which is how I got started reading it as I don't wander to the romance section). I love the series despite some of the cheese, it's light reading, and I can put away the novels fast, which is always a bonus for me. The story is compelling and pulls me in, and the plot keeps getting better. And, yes, I love my werewolf/vampire smut. Shut up.

Anyway, in the last book The Darkest Kiss, Riley discovered a nest of a rare type of vampire: emotional vampires. They feed off emotions (duh), and they're a big problem because they'll cause fights and feed off the anger and other emotions. They call them emos for short. You can see where this is going, I'm sure. Last night, I was reading and in the third chapter of Deadly Desire, Kade (a horse shifter and now a fellow guardian) tells Riley, "...I have to cross-check the details of everyone in that emo nest you found to make sure there's no illegals or underaged turnings."

Emo nest. Emo nest. I had to put the book down for a moment and giggle helplessly because instead of dangerous vampires, I pictured a room full of Hot Topic rejects sitting around telling everyone how no one can comprehend the pain in their lives while Linkin Park plays in the background. This might pose a problem later on in the series as all the clues I've picked up on lead me to believe the emotional vampires are going to be a major plot element, and a huge danger for Riley (and I do admit the leader she encountered in the last book was more than a bit freaky and scary power-wise). However, they're going to be called emos and I'm going to wonder why Riley doesn't just buy them abunch of razor blades and let the problem solve itself.*

I predict much giggling in my future. Curse you, Internet.

* = Ok, I apologize for the horrible joke, and I do not intend to make light of cutting/self-injury. I'm an awful person.

They grow up so fast.

Sasha on March 3, 2009:


Approxiamately six/seven weeks old.

Sasha on April 14, 2009:


Approxiamately twelve/thirteen weeks old. (Also, ignore the carpet. It needs a good steam cleaning. Next house I have, I will not get light carpeting in a heavy traffic room. Ugh.)

Look at how long her legs are, and her paws are huge. She is going to be a big dog. She's also losing some of her fluffiness, but I suspect it's because her coat is changing, and she'll still have thick fur.

( More pictures under the cut of Penny and Sasha. )

It's not over yet! (More on Amazon Fail)

Dear Author: Why Amazon’s Explanation Is None At All

Point 1: This is not a one-off mistake. According to a post at Teleread.org, books with sexy content have been targeted by Amazon before. Craig Seymour, author of “All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C.,” was deranked in February. When questioned about this, Amazon claimed that it was adult content being intentionally filtered out. On April 10, 2009, Mark Probst, noticed that Gay romance authors Erastes and Alex Beecroft’s books from Running Press were deranked. On April 11, 2009, hundreds of GLBT books, including Probst’s own book, The Filly, were deranked. Amazon gave Probst the same response that certain content was deemed adult and thus filtered out of searches and lists. On April 12, 2009, all hell broke loose when the Twitterverse picked up on the deranking of gay, lesbian, erotic and feminist books. But to be clear, this started as far back as 2008. It’s just now come to a head.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Amazon's Response: Bad

The delay in response was just breathtaking. GLAAD had a statement out LONG before Amazon responded, and even then, there’s no assurance that it won’t happen again except that it will be “corrected.” There was no response to the original evidence of book suppression - which leads me and many others to believe that the suppression is standard operating procedure. I don’t think I can measure how much that discomforts me. As I tweeted last night: Soylent Amazon is made out of people.

What also stunned me with the epic PR fail was that Amazon did not respond to the community that raised the concerns in the first place: nothing on Twitter. Nothing on the Amazon.com website. Only a template email from their customer service department that was identical to the statement - a statement made initially to an online-only newspaper, and again, not the Amazon website.