Amazon discriminates against gay books: You may have seen some of my Tweets about this Amazonfail/Amazon rank thing. Here is the nutshell:
As of 12 April 2009, Amazon.com has removed the sales rank figures from books containing sexual, erotic, romantic, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or queer content, rendering them impossible to find through basic search functions at the top of Amazon.com’s website. Titles stripped of their sales rankings include “Brokeback Mountain”, “Bastard Out of Carolina,” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” prominent romance novels, GLBTQ fiction novels, YA books, and narratives about gay people. Somehow though, despite is being focused at all ‘adult’ books, it seems to be solely gay and lesbian books that are affected. So while you can still easily find Playboys and the ilk, a young adult novel that explores a person coming to grip with their feelings for a same sex partner; the latter gets censored… or rather ‘rendered unsearchable.’
Needless to say, over the weekend the internet and the Twitter-verse went nuts! Amazon is, after all, a site that openly sells sex toys! However, if you want to purchase a gay or lesbian book from them, well, that is too naughty for them to allow.
The writing community (of which I dare to add myself) is pissed. This doesn’t just smack of censorship: this IS censorship!
Amazon is saying it is a “glitch“, however one author of gay books received this email from Amazon in reaction to his query:
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,
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage
Look, most of us probably wouldn’t be buying one of the books affected… but that doesn’t give Amazon the right to deny them to those people who do want to purchase them. Support This is not a glitch: Amazonfail!
Boycott Amazon! Refuse to support a bookseller that thinks it has the right to tell YOU – the book buyer – what you can and cannot read.
Update: Perhaps as a bid to ‘fix their glitch’ Amazon is now delisting romance writers and books about feminism, as well as books about disability and sexuality.
