TB here.
This is going to be a long post, but it’s worth reading. The gist of it is that Amazon is up to a bunch of terrifying nonsense, and IHS is responding in the best way we know how. The changes we are making will be risky and could mean massive financial losses for us. But it could also open up some exciting new options for authors and readers. We get into the details toward the end of the post, but first we want to give you some backstory, so you understand what is going on.
My Very Bad Morning (the saga begins)
Most mornings, I start off my day by checking to ensure our universal links are operating as they should. For those who don’t know, this is a special type of link that lets you click on a product from anywhere in the world and be automatically directed to your home marketplace. We use Geniuslinks (a paid service) and they alert us when there’s something off about a link. For example, if we’re linking to a paperback that is out of stock or to an eBook that has been unpublished, they let us know.
In a normal week, I’ll have to deal with 6 to 12 “bad” links.
One morning in late January, I noticed a significant number of bad links. This has happened a few times in the past, such as when a publisher republished all of their eBooks and I had to update all of the links, (which was time consuming since it’s a manual process).
But as I poked around this time, I noticed something else was going on.
I wasn’t getting the usual error messages. This issue was something new, and it had to do with Amazon Associates (this is a program through which Amazon pays websites like ours a small commission if a customer buys a product after clicking the link on our site).
If you don’t have an Amazon Associates account, there’s no way you would notice this. So let me show you what is going on.
When I’m logged out of my Amazon account, I see this:
But when I’m logged in, I see an extra “Influencers and Associates” area, like this:
Normally, this field tells me the commission rate for the product I’m looking at and gives me a way to create a link that is tagged with my account. But not this time. The red arrow I’ve added points to the issue.
Amazon Associates is letting me know this book, which happens to be one by Miranda and me, is excluded from Associates. (Also, you’ll notice that I purchased a paperback copy of my own book, which I do every time to ensure the paperback is formatted correctly. It’s faster than requesting an author copy.)
I have been in the Amazon Associates program since 2018 and I had never seen an “Excluded Product” warning before on a book. Given that I know this particular book pretty well (having coauthored it), I was alarmed. Why would they exclude my book? Did I do something wrong?
I emailed Amazon immediately and received some boilerplate messaging that did not clarify the situation at all or provide any means of rectifying the problem. This is typical of dealing with Amazon. They made it sound like the issue was a result of a recent change that was (temporarily?) impacting books published after January 20. (Our new release came out January 21, so this tracked.) This was annoying, but at the time we chalked it up to a bug in the system that would eventually be fixed.
Meanwhile, the number of “bad” links on my Geniuslink dashboard was growing by the hour.
Is this a targeted book ban?
As I started to investigate these flagged books, I started to notice something that made me extremely queasy. It wasn’t solely new releases. There was also a certain category of books that was being impacted in a big way: erotica.
And not just sapphic erotica. I did a little bit of digging, and look what I found:
Clearly, Fifty Shades of Grey is not a new release, so the January 20 excuse didn’t hold water. Something else was going on.
At this point, I sent email to Amazon and Geniuslinks (and to Booklinker, which is the same company. Booklinker is free for authors to use and Geniuslinks is their paid option). I asked pointblank if erotica was being de-monetized as a way of shadow banning the content.
Amazon, per usual, didn’t answer my questions, but continued to give me boilerplate responses that only raised more questions than answers.
Geniuslinks, who had been nicer in their initial responses about the broken links, became a little defensive when I asked if this was targeting erotica. So, I went through the top ten books on different erotica charts (FF, MM, MF, etc.) and most of the time, all ten of the top books were excluded. I shared this finding with Geniuslinks/Booklinker.
Again, I got gentle pushback saying it wasn’t solely erotica that was being demonetized. Which was true, but erotica was the one getting hit the hardest. Finally, yesterday, Booklinker issued an official statement confirming what I had been telling them for weeks. This is from their announcement:
Amazon has implemented a significant policy change: product-level “ASIN” data will no longer be provided for products Amazon classifies as “unsafe.” From our initial checks, the impacted books tend to contain mature themes, including sexual and violent content.
I’ll admit, I felt slightly vindicated when I read this because there were points when I thought I was losing my mind. I kept screaming, “They’re targeting erotica!” and I kept receiving, “No, no. That’s not happening.”
Well, it’s happening.
What Amazon’s policy change means for IHS
Unfortunately, it’s hard to say for certain how far this policy change will reach. From what we can see, most to all of erotica of all types (MF, FF, MM, etc.) has now been de-monetized. But in addition, many of the new releases on the lesbian fiction and romance charts are also excluded, even if they are not explicitly erotica. Our new release is not erotica and contains no more “mature” content than any other typical contemporary romance on the market. But it’s an excluded product. Some of our older titles have been swept up, too. Including an English language title that is excluded but the German translation is not.
For us, this is a red line. This is the beginning stage of the type of censorship we’ve feared since we first heard the term “Project 2025.”
Amazon Associates is one of the biggest sources of financial support for IHS. When we launched the new version of our website in 2022, we tried to get associates accounts with other major book platforms such as Apple and Barnes and Noble but were denied.
This meant we only featured Amazon links on the website because we simply couldn’t afford not to. But given Amazon’s recent actions, we had to make a difficult choice. How could we continue to give preference to a platform that was essentially banning books?
What IHS is doing to address this change
For the past few weeks, we have been working with our web developers to redesign the backend of the IHS site to include the following buying options:
- Bookshop.org
- Apple
- Kobo
- Barnes & Noble
- Direct links to authors’ stores
Our website designers are working behind the scenes to implement the changes. We’ll still feature Amazon buy links, but it’s going to look different. You’ll see the changes soon. If you are an author, we will be reaching out shortly with more details on how to add your other store links.
The risk for IHS
I started IHS all the way back in 2017. It has grown into one of the largest databases of sapphic fiction. It’s one of the most visited sapphic fiction websites. And I feel like it’s under attack right now and I’m scared. Losing one of our bigger funnels for funding is absolutely terrifying.
This is going to impact us in a number of ways. Financially, it will be painful. Of the new vendors, only Bookshop.org is currently offering us an affiliate program. With Amazon, we not only got paid for books, but for anything else you bought while you were there. We’ve seen it all, from canned food to computers. And it adds up. Now, we anticipate that a lot, maybe even most, of the book sales generated by IHS will result in zero compensation for us.
Why does this matter? Because from the beginning, IHS has provided the vast majority of resources for free. We don’t charge for new release announcements, or to be in the database. But every book link has to be manually added (by me, TB). Now, many books will have multiple links, adding even more time, but not more money.
This is how we fund IHS:
- Advertising
- Amazon Associates
- Buy us a Coffee
- Patreon
With the state of the economy, paid advertising on IHS has declined. Amazon Associates is in jeopardy. Only about 20% of our Patreon members have a paid account. And the more time spent working on updating a database of over 10,000 books, the less time I have to spend on writing, which is my full-time job.
I’m going to be brutally frank right now. I have no idea how this will play out in the long run. I don’t know if we’ll be able to afford to keep running IHS. But we’re going to do our best. We won’t tolerate censorship and we won’t be complicit in giving Amazon unilateral control over what genres are deemed “acceptable” to promote.
If you enjoy IHS and want to help us cover the costs of implementing the new changes, we’d sure appreciate it if you considered buying us a coffee or joining our Patreon. Every little bit will help us navigate this new world we find ourselves in.
Does this mean you should cancel your Kindle Unlimited subscriptions?
That’s up to you. Personally, I cancelled all of my subscribe and saves, Amazon music, and I’m considering getting rid of Prime. We know not everyone has other options for getting their essentials. Some live in areas without access to stores. Some can’t physically leave the house. We get it and we’re not telling you what to do. You have to do what’s best for you.
At the moment, I still have my KU account because I can’t afford to buy every single book and I want to support authors. The fact that I’m even considering cancelling tells you how scared I am. But we also know that the more sapphic books you read in KU, the more money goes directly into the pockets of sapphic authors. If this is how you get your books, please don’t feel guilty.
We do ask you voice your displeasure with Amazon regarding the exclusion of erotica from Amazon Associates.
In typical Amazon fashion, they don’t publicly list a dedicated customer service email. Some customers report success contacting [email protected]
The company generally encourages users to use live chat, but our experience with the AI chatbots lately have been maddening.
Of course, you can tag them on social media to voice your displeasure. Be loud.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Amazon (we’re not sure if you can post on the page, but you can flood them with comments on their posts)
Instagram: @Amazon
Twitter: @Amazon
Together we’ll fight censorship.
