morgan_dhu | More thoughts on Amazonfail (Reply)

Fortunately, I remembered to check my outstanding book orders - I had an open order with some unshipped items from Amazon.ca. I cancelled my order immediately, and made use of the nice little box they provided for comments to explain exactly why I had cancelled and why I would not be ordering from them again while this "adult books" policy is in effect.

Now, of course, I will go find somewhere else to order the cancelled items from, because it's important that the authors don't suffer from our protest actions - many of them are already going to hurt enough when their books don't appear in searches and on bestseller lists - because that's one of the very important ways that authors reach new readers, and that's why this issue is about so much more than just making it harder for us, the readers, to find the books we want to read.

Authors who are writing the kinds of books that we will no longer be able to find from casual searches are going to lose sales if this policy continues, and some of them may not be able to find publishers in the future if their sales numbers fall, and that will make all of us immeasurably poorer.

So - don't just protest this.

If you can, if you have the financial ability to do so, please consider going to your local independent bookseller, or to an online bookseller that's not out to censor books and impoverish authors who are writing "adult" material, and buy one of the books that has been stripped of its sales ranking on Amazon. There's lots of good books to choose from.