Lilith Saintcrow's Blog, page 232

On QueryFail, Or, The Lilybed of Grief

Cross-posted from the Deadline Dames, where you can find more writing advice, giveaways, and cute kittens! (Okay, I’m lying about the kittens.) Check them out!

There’s a fairy story Speshul Snowflakes like to tell themselves. It goes a little something like this:

Once upon a time, Arte was Pure and Preshus. Suffering Artistes had no thought of Filthy Lucre; they slaved away over their Precious Werks. They Wrote with Snow-White Quills dipped in their own Preshus Blood, and they starved Gracefully t

Spread The Word, Cat Follies, And Heaving Bosoms

So, good morning. It’s a bright sunny one out there. First though, the sad news. Comics creator Frank Frisina’s young niece has disappeared. (Hat tip to Neil Gaiman for the link; he tweeted about it and everyone promptly crashed the site. So if it’s not up, please be patient and refresh, or go to this alternate.) I mean, Christ. This is a parent’s nightmare. I just can’t imagine. I mean, you wonder about it as a parent, and it’s always a fear. But to have it actually happen…words fail me. So if

It’s Not Moral Cleanliness, But I’ll Take It.

Good morning, hello, and thanks to the new readers who dropped by as a result of AmazonFail coverage. Thanks also to old readers for your comments, support, links, and just general awesomeness. And that’s all I have to say about that. (Go ahead, heave that sigh of relief. I’ll wait.)

It’s tax day. I will feel a great surge of moral cleanliness when I drop my return in the mail. I suspect the feeling will not last. Feelings of moral cleanliness never do, for me. It’s a dirty dirty world we live in

Glitch, Monoculture, Profit (#amazonfail recap)

Tomorrow I’ll be back to regular work and blogging (not a moment too soon, I think). I’m still utterly flabbergasted that Amazon shows no sign of offering an apology, and can only assume this means they’re okay with the communities who were directly insulted–LBGT, the disabled, feminists, authors and readers of several genres, etc.–being, well, directly insulted. This story broke on Saturday and we’ve had two very, very faint statements, neither of which had anything remotely resembling an apolo

Days Later, Still #amazonfail

This has got the be the most exquisitely agonizing wait for a company to JUST SAY SOMETHING, WILL YOU since, oh, Enron? (We’re still waiting on an apology from that one, too, right?) This is passing the realm of the ridiculous and bumbling into the sinister. I’m not saying we should know every little fiddle faddle in twenty press releases, far from. But how blind does a Web 2.0 company have to be to not see that an apology is in order and will take the wind out of much of the continuing anger an

Glitch, Ranking, And Porn, #amazonfail

Links first, and then the meat.

* ScienceBlogs’ Janet Stemwedel on AmazonFail, very worth reading.

* NYT has “discovered” Twitter.

* Jezebel with another thoughtful update. I just like Jezebel more and more all the time.

* And SmartBitches with a three-pointer from downtown.

I know I’ve said it ad nauseum, but it bears repeating. Why does Amazon have sales ranks at all if they’re going to “game the system” by deranking books? By now it is well established that there was a policy of deranking “adul

Seattle PI has new #amazonfail statement

The Seattle PI blog just posted a new statement from Amazon:

Amazon.com has offered a response to the AmazonFail fiasco.

Because there’s so much attention to this, I’ll offer spokesman Drew Herdener’s comments unfiltered:

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories suc

Why I’m Bothering With #amazonfail

1. Amazon Censors Search Rankings To “Protect” Us

2. This Is Not A Glitch

3. Still Not A Glitch, But A Policy

4. (Update) Idiosyncratic Code?

There are reports coming in about sales rankings reappearing (I see Beecroft’s book is back up) and a few people tweeting “We WON!”. I am reserving judgment–there is no “winning” when we don’t know what happened (though Mike Daisey has some scoop from an Amazon employee) and Amazon thinks people can be fobbed off. Not to mention that the #1 book in “Homosex

Idosyncratic Code? #amazonfail

This just in from Mike Daisey, who commented on my “This Is Not A Glitch” post: a source inside Amazon tells him it wasn’t precisely a “glitch” but a translation error.

From an email exchange Mike forwarded to me between himself and Anthony Hecht, a reporter at The Stranger (I have Mike’s permission to quote):

From: Mike Daisey *email redacted*

Date: April 13, 2009 2:00:34 PM EDT

To: Anthony Hecht anthony @thestranger.com

Subject: Re: In case it gets lost in the comments…

Well, this is the real sto

Still Not A Glitch, But A Policy #amazonfail

Part 1: Amazon Censors Search Rankings To “Protect” Us

Part 2: This Is Not A Glitch

AmazonFail proceeds apace. It’s almost 11AM Monday and still no response from Amazon about why they censored search rankings on GLBT, disability, feminist, feminist sexuality, and classic titles. Theories about this being just a huge trollage are running around, the most reasonable of which is tehdely’s.

I still do not buy the “glitch” and I do not buy trollage. Let me explain why.

Jane at Dear Author has a spreadsh