I found out today (via Twitter, obviously), that Amazon has decided it’s okay to be homophobic.
Many books with LGBT content have had their Amazon sales rankings removed over the last couple days. According to this post, Mark Probst (who wrote The Filly) emailed Amazon and received the following in response:
In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage
A list of many books affected is available here.
The problem is this: many of the books affected do not actually have adult content – while some books that do have adult content, het adult content, are still on the list (say what you will about Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn is far pornier than Well of Loneliness). And that sort of discrimination needs to stop before it goes further.
Other places to read about it:
- the #amazonfail hashtag page
- Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
- An email sent to Amazon
- Jezebel
—
April 13 update: The new story on #Amazonfail is available here. They are now officially calling it a glitch, albeit a user-created one, and saying they’ll take care of it.
This from Amazon spokesperson Drew Herdener:
“Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.”
Which means everything is fixed and going back to normal, as long as people forget about that letter authors were receiving about new policy.