Amazon Under Fire

This in a couple of days ago from Alex Pryce @ Poetcasting: news that Amazon have turned up the heat on 'adult'-themed books, clipping sales rankings. I'm still reading through the articles, but here's what Alex says:

"Some of you may have noticed the fuss about Amazon's removal of sales rankings from LGBT books (or those it considers LGBT themed, including feminist textbooks). If you don't, this site has a good summing up of the story so far."

This blog has a set of further links, one of which points out the first complaint about Amazon's policy came up a couple of months ago. Mark R. Probst, was on the case a few days ago, just before the twitter/facebook storm started raging. He received this response from Amazon in response to his question as to why hundreds of books had lost their sales rankings:

"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."

Amazon are currently claiming it's a result of a 'glitch', or even a clumsy French employee (blame the French why don't you?), to which twitter users are responding with '#glitchmyass'. It's not a policy, they say, but the fact that it was pointed out on the quiet two months ago suggests not; they class many gay and lesbian books as adult, even though, according to authors like Mark Probst, the books don't have sexual content.

Alex also points out: "Cathy Ryan's first collection, 'I Dare You' from tall-lighthouse is among those to lose ranking position." You can listen to some of Cathy's poetry at Poetcasting.

New addition to blog list

Just a quick note that I've added a link to Chris Mlalazi's blog, Writing Seriously. He was a Poetry International blogger during the festival at Southbank.

Chris co-wrote a play called The Crocodile of Zambezi. You can read his post on Poetry International here.
And this link from an ironic post by Peter Fogtdal on the recent censorship of the play:

"...Raisedon Baya, Christopher Mlalazi, Aleck Zulu, Lionel Nkusi. These scoundrels had the audacity of writing and producing a play called The Crocodile of Zambezi. It premiered May 29, 2008; the writers and actors had worked on it for two years.

[...]

"So Robert Mugabe send some of his boys from the secret police. They rounded up the actor Aleck Zulu and the production manager Lionel Nkosi and gave them a ride in their car. They tortured them and put a gun in their mouths."

More at International PEN:

"The cast and crew of the satirical play The Crocodile of Zambezi have been at threat since May 2008, when two members of the company were attacked and the play was banned by the authorities in Bulawayo

According to the WiPC's sources, production manager Lionel Nkosi was tortured and threatened with death, and actor Aleck Zulu was beaten by police..."

Chris has posted many interesting things on the theme of Poetry and Freedom for the blog. His last post there is here.

Ngiyabonga ka khulu, Chris, for your poetry and thoughts. We hope things get better for you and your co-creatives soon.