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.

Here's a thought for the 'progressive' politically correct left. Perhaps it was their tactic of yelling 'racist' at anyone who dares criticise immigration, that caused Brexit. The left's censorship effectively pushed commonly held views on immigration under the carpet. Now if these views had been allowed to be aired, then perhaps David Cameron would have realised that the referendum was not such a good idea, and not called it in the first place.

Perhaps censors everywhere should be reminded that censorship may block the airing of views but it doesn't stop people from holding those views.

The New Statesmen is reporting about a campaign group called Hope Not Hate, that seems to hate free speech.

The group has spent a couple of weeks seeking out examples of texts denying the Holocaust sold on the Waterstones, Foyles, WHSmith and Amazon websites. The group has published its findings in a paper called Turning the Page on Hate , and is urging the retailers to remove these texts, which range from what are deemed dangerous to Holocaust denials to far right books.

Since the campaign began, Foyles appears to have removed numerous works from its website. However, its chief executive Paul Currie said:

This is a difficult scenario for all booksellers given the width and scale of publishing and the perennial issue of censoring from all aspects of life what people can read.

WHSmith also appears to have removed some books from its website since the campaign launched.

At the time of writing, Waterstones retains the works Hope Not Hate listed. Waterstones' owner James Daunt told Hope Not Hate, What should we censor? he asked rhetorically, refusing to remove the titles:

It is not our position to censor this listing beyond the existing measures we take to exclude self-published books that may potentially be offensive.

Index on Censorship's chief executive Jodie Ginsberg. Encouraging bookshops not to stock certain content because it's considered hateful I think is problematic, she explains:

When you're suggesting [the removal of books from] some of the largest bookshops in the country, which are the ones most people can access, then you are limiting people's access to information... Anything that limits people's ability to find out information is a threat to freedom of expression.

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.

Irish book censors have not banned a single magazine and have blocked just one book in the last ten years. Now a member of the Irish Parliament has called for the Censorship of Publications Board to be shut down.

Fianna Fail Arts and Culture Spokesperson Niamh Smyth said: This is one quango that should be whacked. She was referring to a political campaign slogan whack a quango, to shut down quangos. Smyth added:

The ongoing existence of a Censorship Board that doesn't censor anything is bringing the concept of censorship into disrepute at a time where we need it more than ever.

The only time the board has been heard of in ten years was the ludicrous submission of Alan Shatter's novel Laura over something to do with abortion.

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.

Religious moralist campaigners at One Million Moms are whingeing about a book publisher that supports gay parenting. They write:

Everyone is familiar with Scholastic Inc. Their book fairs are popular fundraisers at your child's school. However, Scholastic is not safe for your child and parents should be warned.

Scholastic Inc., the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books, is using its platform to promote pro-homosexual and pro-transgender books for children.

The corporation, for example, published a pro-transgender book called George for 3rd graders. When people look at George, they think they see a boy, the book reads. But she [George] knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl.

According to its website, Scholastic Inc. reaches 6 million children per week with its publications. It features morally toxic reading lists for children, such as:

• Books for Two-Mommy Families
• Great books for Two-Dad Families
• Picture Books About Transgender Children

The American College of Pediatricians warns: Conditioning children into believing that a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.

Scholastic does not have our children's best interests at heart. Tell Scholastic to stop harming children.

A censorship row has erupted in Paris after publishing house Gallimard announced it would publish a collection of pro-Hitler pamphlets by the otherwise notable novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

Céline is hailed as one of France's most brilliant writers for his 1932 novel Journey to the End of the Night, regarded as one of the greatest French works of the 20th century.

Gallimard has insisted it will go ahead with the publication of Bagatelles pour un massacre, a collection of 1930s pamphlets by Céline, who called for the extermination of Jews. The publication date is not set but Gallimard has insisted its intention is to frame the texts with a critical commentary.

When Gallimard was reported to be about to publish the collection last spring, the government stepped in and summoned the publisher. The government urged the publisher to include notes giving the full context drawn up by specialists, including historians. The editor is understood to have rejected this, claiming that notes by a literary expert on Céline would suffice.

Serge Klarsfeld, a French lawyer and Nazi-hunter has demanded the publication be stopped, threatening legal action if Gallimard continues. He said he supported historians studying the texts, but said that presenting a shiny new edition of Céline's "abject" writing in bookshops would be "intolerable" and no amount of footnotes could temper that.

The book has already been published in Canada in 2012, although Le Monde warned that the Canadian edition's notes were insufficient.