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alex_beecroft mentioned it yesterday--the "ranking" line is disappearing from books listed on Amazon. Not all books, as far as we can tell, just GBLT-themed books.Now I check my amazon rankings obsessively, and can state with surety that this morning between 9:00 and 10:00 (Eastern Time), the ranking line disappeared from GYM DANDY after having been there since the novel was first listed as "coming soon" back in January.
I'm not given to paranoia, but I searched a small sampling of non-gay novels, and they still have it. I think we're moving into WTF territory. Everybody check to see if you still have a ranking line and report back, along with whether or not your novels are GBLT.
ETA: Might be all erotica, including m/f, as well. Huh.
See "Amazon.com Sales Rank:" below, pulled from one of Paul Quarrington's books.
- Location:Toronto
Profile
- storm_grant
- storm_grant
- storm grant, author
Page Summary
- sooguy : (no subject) [+1]
- marquesate : (no subject) [+2]
- jaye_valentine : (no subject) [+1]
- a_j_mirag : (no subject) [+4]
- erastes : (no subject) [+1]
- rwday : (no subject) [+1]
- tamara_allen : (no subject) [+1]
clarelondon : (no subject) [+1]
- (Anonymous) : It's all erotica, not just GLBT [+0]
- asknosecrets : (no subject) [+1]
- liminalia : (no subject) [+0]
Comments
Is there a place where they are tagged as GBLT? It seems odd that they would go through and only delist certain ones. Seems time consuming.
Amazon appears to have just added it's Kindle books to the general rankings, so this could be a glitch, but seems odd it would be only GBLT & erotica.
This looks fishy...
And maybe they should be there. I'd like to see my Kindle + hard copy + other ebook formats combined into one ranking. After all, that's a true picture of how my book is selling on Amazon.com.
The addition of the Kindle books should affect our ranking, but in no way explains why we'd lose the line altogether while mainstream books have not.
Yes, that's what I meant when I said that I didn't know "why this should affect my books".
Anyway, things are still unclear. I have found GLBT books on Amazon that still have a ranking line, and non-GLBT books that don't have it. But it seems to be true that the majority of the GLBT books "lost" their ranking line, while the other books didn't.
I'm trying not to be all suspicious about that.
I keep checking mainstream books and they do have rankings. It's hard not to see conspiracy there.
BTW, even big name authors are affected - neither Sarah Waters' nor Anne Rampling (Rice)'s books didn't have rankings when I checked. I don't get this at all, but it really pisses me off. Any idea where we can direct complaints?
I imagine you can write to customer service. They've usually gotten back to me in a couple of days.
I feel most badly for Alex, because that Dear Author review had to give her an enormous boost and she got cheated out of seeing it.
On Kindle, I don't have a ranking line, but I'm pretty sure that I never had one, to start with. I've never had any idea how I ranked on Kindle.
Btw, thanks for the re-friend.:)
RWDay (see her comment, above) noticed that Anne Rice's vampire stuff has rankings, but her erotica does not. Hmmm.
Sorry about the friending thing. I must never have friended you when you first moved to your pro journal although I certainly meant to.
I noticed it a couple of days ago but assumed it was an Amazon hiccup.
For me, it's only for books with the tag 'lgbt'.
I removed that tag from one of mine to see if it makes any difference (where I'm the only tagger), I'll let you know if anything changes.
I have a book that is ONLY on Kindle, which has the tag but also has the rating. It's not consistent.
(I can't tell if my other books/Kindle version are part of the problem, as I'm not sure if no rating just means no sales *lol*).
Note another exception - the I DO antho doesn't have the tag but shows no rating. When we KNOW it's been selling!
I'm steaming mad. Should we all write or something? I know of course that Amazon won't take a gnat's piss-sized note of our protests (I deal with them at work, too) but isn't it worth the rant?
I'm pretty sure I Do had a ranking. Now it doesn't either.
I posted here, Facebook, and Twitter hoping one of the agents or larger publishers will take up our cause. I'm going to wait a few days, gather some facts, and see if we can get us a champion.
I agree that a champion is badly needed. In the UK that might be one of the bigger erotica labels such as Black Lace (part of Virgin Books, which are part of Random House).
Oddly, the gay/lesbian bestseller list still stands, with largely the same books, just now only the Kindle editions remain.
I'm sure this is just a way to push their Kindle device, although hiding behind a morality platform is only going to bring them grief.
Probably they've figured out that readers of GBLT & erotica are huge internet/e-book users and they think this is a clever way to sell more Kindles.