Is Amazon Delisting Yaoi? Apparently Not.

Academic, Boys' Love / Yaoi, Evil Comments (1)

Amazon is currently facing online protests against its delisting gay- and lesbian-themed  “adult” books while retaining the listing of heterosexually themed “adult” books. This event, which was swiftly dubbed #amazonfail on Twitter yesterday, is leading to some interesting protests, from the standard petition to a movement to redefine and Google-bomb the term “Amazon Rank” over at the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog. However, an alternative viewpoint, supported by Amazon itself, is circulating the the entire thing is an accident of software architecture. I checked Amazon’s media room for a press release on the subject, however, and as of yet, nothing has appeared. In the meantime, you can track the titles that have (and have not) been delisted over at Jezebel.Com.

Naturally, as a boys’ love scholar, I was curious to see whether or not any BL manga was delisted. At least one BL fan reported that the award-winning (and, I have to say, not exactly explicit) manga series Antique Bakery was delisted. So, I went to Amazon and searched on “yaoi manga,” sorted by “bestselling.” (You can still access an individual Amazon bestseller list for Yaoi, by the way.)

I found that Amazon sales ranks were reported for eight of the top 10 bestselling yaoi manga that I checked. Neither Our Kingdom 6 nor Crimson Spell 2 were ranked. I suspected it may be because they’re series volumes, since the other ranked manga were all standalones. Might this explain Antique Bakery‘s missing listing? So, I checked popular manga series Naruto (volume 35, to be precise, because that’s the first one that popped up in my search), and its Amazon rating was listed, calling into question my “series” theory of missing Amazon sales ranks. As a result, I don’t really know why some BL manga don’t have sales ranks and some do. However, it seems that as a genre, yaoi hasn’t been delisted by Amazon — and you’d certainly think that since it usually carries a rating of OT to M for its graphically depicted M/M sexual content, yaoi would be on anyone’s “adult” list!

On the other hand, as some of the articles have mentioned, Alan Moore’s explicit heterosexual graphic novel Lost Girls hasn’t been delisted, either. Perhaps Amazon’s software (like, arguably, the minds of most of the U.S. mainstream) doesn’t have a category that can comfortably combine “adult” and “graphic novels/comic books/manga”?

I’m not complaining about the oversight, of course. Personally, I’ve always disregarded Amazon’s sales ranks, and this evidence of further rank-tampering has hardly restored my confidence in their utility. But since the ranking often makes a difference to publishers’ PR, it’s certainly better for the genre if yaoi is overlooked in any delisting movement.

As an aside, sociologically speaking, the #AmazonFail furor of April 2009 reminds me quite a bit of the LiveJournal Strikethrough protests of May 2007….

drupagliassotti @ April 13, 2009