Book News

Amazon has changed its search algorit to prevent erotic books from surfacing Unless a user searches for erotic novels.

Amazon is trying to make its vast website a bit less NSFW. The internet giant made some sudden changes to the way that erotic novels surface in its search results. As a result of the update, erotic novels have been filtered out of the results for main categories and many of their best-selling titles have been relegated into nowhere land.

The move has angered many erotica authors who say it could lead to a massive dent in revenue.

When a book has been labeled a best-seller, eg Fifty Shades of Grey, it might make the title more likely to appear at the top of search results.

Amazon has yet to issue a statement on the changes to its search results. However, one author said it received a notice from Amazon via email following inquiry. It said:

We've re-reviewed your book and confirmed that it contains erotic or sexually explicit content.

We have found that when books are placed in the correct category it increases visibility to customers who are seeking that content.

In addition, we are working on improvements to our store to further improve our search experience for customers.

It is not yet clear whether the search algorithms have been changed as part of US internet censorship requirements recently passed in the FOSTA that nominally required censorship of content related to sex trafficking but in fact impacts a much wider range of adult content.

A book about Spain's drug-smuggling underworld was banned last week by a Madrid courta. José Alfredo Bea Gondar, a former mayor of the coastal town of O Grove in Galicia, to freeze distribution of Fariña (Blow) by Nacho Carretero Pou because of references to his alleged involvement in the unloading of a shipment of cocaine and a supposed negotiation between Colombia's Cali cartel and local smugglers. The book is banned pending the hearing of libel case.

Kicking against what they consider outdated censorship, a booksellers' association has reacted to the seizure of the non-fiction book 'Fariña' by launching a website to replicate it word for word. The website includes a digital tool that searches for and locates the 80,000 words that make up the banned book from within the text of Don Quixote , extracting them one by one to recompose the banned book. On Friday after two days online, the website had racked up over 30,000 hits, according to the Booksellers Guild of Madrid. Fernando Valverde, the Guild secretary explained;

It's a metaphor for the fact that in the digital era you can seize a book, but you cannot gag words.

It is not clear whether the ruse is a legal way for people to read it.

In 2016, comedian and social provocateur Elijah Daniel wrote and published a short piece of porny fun about Donald Trump. It's titled Trump Temptations and is introduced on promotional material:

Full of uncomfortably lusty scenes of comically sexual acts, the 10-page essay was, according to Daniel , written while he was really fucking drunk and in 4 hours. The premise of the book is as follows:

It all started one fateful afternoon in summer of 2012. I was working as a bellboy at the Trump Hotel in Hong Kong on an internship program. This was my first time in a big city. It was all I could have ever dreamed of, and more. But little did I know, it was all about to change.

Elijah Daniel has fine eye for political satire. He went on to became mayor of a Michigan city and promptly used his office to ban heterosexuality.

The title has now suddenly been removed from Amazon and Daniels blames Trump. Daniels tweeted:

Donald Trump deadass had Trump Temptations removed from Amazon its literally been out for like two years. dont you have a government shutdown to worry about and you out here getting parody porn ebooks removed from Amazon Im crying hahahaha. Lil Phag (@elijahdaniel).

Military historian Anthony Beevor has had one of his books banned in Ukraine. The 1998 bestseller Stalingrad was barred for import last week alongside 24 other books for being anti-Ukrainian.

The accusation was levelled at Beevor's examination of the Second World War battle due to passages about Ukrainian militias slaughtering Jewish children on SS orders.

Serhiy Oliyinyk, the head of the Ukrainian State TV and Radio Broadcasting's licensing and distribution control department, alleges that the account hasn't been proven and was based on unreliable Soviet secret police material.

The author has responded that he used thoroughly reliable German sources; not Soviet sources, including a book by Helmut Groscurth, an anti-Nazi German officer, that was backed up by eyewitness accounts.

Beevor branded the ban preposterous and called the state's position completely unsustainable.