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Amazon pulls yaoi from Kindle store
Robot 6 posts this story:

Amazon pulls yaoi from Kindle store

Excerpts:

Yaoi manga is a niche genre, but like all niche genres, it has a devoted following. Yaoi readers gobble up the books like romance fans read Harlequin novels, which is not surprising as they are basically the same thing, except that yaoi 1) is manga, 2) is a love story between two men, and 3) often includes lots of sex.

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Recently Amazon has become more strict in enforcing their content requirements for ebooks. Several DMP books that have been available online since 2009 are getting the axe, beginning with our 801 Media titles like Weekend Lovers and King of Debt. However, in the last few days the issue has spread to the June imprint by Amazon’s refusal of The Selfish Demon King, and the removal of The Color of Love from the Kindle store.

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....all the reviews I checked described the book as more sweet than sexy, which raises the question: If this story had been about a man and a woman, would it have been removed from the store?

A quick search suggests that the answer is “no.” Titles currently available on Kindle include Christmas Creampie, a graphic novel in which “horny Whoreville hussies show a frustrated dildo shop owner the true meaning of Christmas,” and Little Lorna in Resort Sports (I’m not even going to link to this one), in which Little Lorna, who is spunky, sexy, but “not too bright,” goes on vacation to Mexico with her Uncle Bob; “nudity, spanking, and sexy humor” result.

So apparently a sweet love story between two men is unacceptable, but an orgy in a dildo shop is OK.

Thanks to crabby_lioness for posting this over at noscans_daily

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Re: Kindle store searches

txvoodoo
2011-05-08 07:34 pm UTC (link)

My point is that it's a FALSE pattern. A pattern where we dogpile (and it's not just Amazon, but that's the current one) and make a big kerfuffle and then ignore when it wasn't right to start with, or when it's remedied.

If you can't see that, well...you're just part of the problem.

I'm getting really sick of this entire culture of faux angst at things with NO follow through.

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Re: Kindle store searches

chikane
2011-05-09 09:07 am UTC (link)

My point is that it's a FALSE pattern.

My point is that you're blatantly wrong. The thing in 2009 was claimed to be a glitch (notice that that's actually as unlikely as the supposed "evil hacker" who of course only did it for gay-themed books, or the stoopid french intern) - but sure, had that been fixed immediately (or at least acknowledged as a problem quickly), that'd have been mostly fine. It didn't, though. It took quite a lot of effort to get Amazon to even acknowledge the problem.

There was no followup then because there really was nothing to follow-up on. We knew the official excuse, but the behavior by Amazon was already enough to be unhappy with the company. You need to understand that the PR response of a company can make things worse. In the case of Amazon's fail 2009, that is exactly what happened.

But, you know, if it had ended there...kay. Errors happen.

Whoops. It didn't end there, and they did it again, which this posting is about. Amazon should, by now, know they have a bad track record. Yet, evidently, they didn't really care and did it again. And that is what matters, sorry to say.

If you can't see that, well...you're just part of the problem.

If you can't see the above, actually you're part of the problem by white knighting.
Criticizing a company for their poor PR is not exactly a problem, sorry.

I'm getting really sick of this entire culture of faux angst at things with NO follow through.

I'm getting sick of white knights acting as if criticizing a company was a horrible!thing myself, to be honest.

You need to understand that it is not the customers responsibility to be nice and understanding about where they shop. It's the company's responsibility to make themselves attractive to customers. Amazon is doing a poor job at that, especially when they KNOW they are already under scrutiny for their last homophobic fail.

It's really that simple.

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