The dust from this week’s “amazonfail” brouhaha has settled, but the issue at stake hasn’t been.
There’s a very good analysis at Bookoven and another at Techcrunch. But the best I’ve seen is on Vroman’s (the legendary Pasadena bookstore) blog:
By now, you’ve probably heard all you care to hear about Amazon’s incredibly stupid decision to “de-list” books with adult content (and especially books with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes and subject matter). You’ve read the excellent blog posts, the well-written letters to Jeff Bezos, followed along on Twitter and the retorts by independent booksellers. You’re probably about ready to turn the page on that whole mess and continue with your life.
Don’t.
This is more important than that, and now is the perfect time to think about whether you want to trust one company to dominate the book market, or any market, for that matter. The benefit of having a rich, diverse ecosystem of vendors and suppliers has never been more obvious: many sources of information equals choice, and choice equals freedom. It’s actually your freedom that’s at stake here, and putting things back the way they were, fixing the notorious “glitch,” won’t change that. Because your freedom was at stake long before this recent de-listing experiment. Anytime you limit yourself to fewer suppliers, especially of something as vital as information (and if you purchase a Kindle, you’re effectively doing just that, limiting yourself to a single information provider), you’re putting yourself at the mercy of that provider.
The other response I found brilliantly on target was this one, short and sweet, from Powell’s, the legendary Portland, Oregon, bookstore:
“At Powell’s, all books are created equal. We hold this truth to be self-evident. Whether any given title is deserving of a wide readership, we leave that decision to you, our customers. In the spirit of such freedoms that perhaps we too often take for granted, today we’re offering friends a special, winning deal. Just enter the code #powellswin’ by 11:59 pm (Pacific) on Thursday, April 16, 2009,
and you’ll save 20% on your order of $20 or more.”
Go, Powell’s. See you in November, during MCN 2009.
April 17th, 2009 11:04
I just don’t know where people are getting the data for their opinions. All I’ve seen is secondary sources or sources that likely aren’t official responses. As far as I can tell we still don’t know what happened and without that, all this other commentary is nonsense isn’t it? it basically just comes to people putting together a story, then attacking someone based on that story… I need a bit more I think.
April 20th, 2009 02:47
At its heart, amazonfail seems to be a – of all things – a cataloging issue and how cataloging represents very specific and biased world views. I recommend two posts about this: Clay Shirky ( http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/04/the-failure-of-amazonfail/ ) and Mary Hodder’s (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/14/guest-post-why-amazon-didnt-just-have-a-glit)
Quote of the day (from Clay Shirky) — “Metadata is worldview: sorting is a political act.”