Amazon Claims 'Glitch' Caused Site To Strip Sales Rankings From Gay/Lesbian Books

NEW YORK — A "glitch" on Amazon.com has caused the sales rank to be removed from gay- and/or lesbian-themed books by James Baldwin, Gore Vidal and others.

"There was a glitch in our systems and it's being fixed," Amazon's director of corporate communications, Patty Smith, said in an e-mail Sunday.

As of Sunday night, books without rankings included Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room," Vidal's "The City and the Pillar" and Jeanette Winterson's "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit." The removals prompted furious remarks on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere online.

Craig Seymour, author of the gay memoir "All I Could Bare," wrote on his blog Sunday that his sales rank was dropped in February, then restored nearly four weeks later, after he was told by Amazon that his book had been "classified as an Adult product."

Comments

[furryone]

bull***t! amazon is run by right wing conservatives, and THAT is why lgbt literature was targeted..­..they lost MY business forever long ago--time for this disgusting "business" to go the way of other useless dot.coms!

[bluguy8]

I find it very strange that it would on effect Gay & Lesbian writers. I don't by the story.Its someones little agenda

[pickwickianmom]

Read James Baldwin and then tell me if he had an agenda.

His only agenda was being a good writer.

He resented that he felt he should write about being black just because he was black.
He felt his homosexuality was a non-issue.

He's the most "agenda-less" writer I've ever read. It's what I love about him.

[jcwtts1]

Are you kidding? Baldwin agendaless. I feel that he has deep threads of agenda in his writing, about equality about the universality of man, about the structure of western societies, about the role of race in America and abroad. I mean he is making an argument in his writing, like most good authors.

[jcwtts1]

Also, read some of his critical writings brilliant and powerful. Some of his best stuff.

[ESerafina42]

Excuse me, pickwickianmom - bluguy 8 AGREES with you. He's saying that someone at AMAZON has an agenda.

[antaeus]

I appreciate the strict delineation that formalist criticism can bring, but it's awfully hard to see _Giovanni's Room_ as not addressing a gay theme.

[vixen22]

Wrote them an angry email, This is the response i got

Hello,

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

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.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

If yes, click here:

If not, click here:


Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.

Best regards,

Syed Arif
Amazon.com
We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company

[furryone]

EXACT same form-letter I got...they are steaming hot piles of CRAP!

[jcwtts1]

how can you say that? What if the letter is true, and more books got bumped? Especially ones that dealt with physicality or sexuality?

J

[illmanic]

ok., one more post and then i'll let others have their say!

i'm not saying that the guy described in the earlier link necessarily did this. also, i incorrectly described it as a breach of amazon's system; what he says he did was more of an exploitation of their system. my mistake.

but the larger point is that we have to think about what might have caused this situation before blaming amazon knee-jerk style. there are a lot of possibilities. so here's one more link that says why i'm trying to say much more eloquently:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5210142/why-it-makes-sense-that-a-hackers-behind-amazons-big-gay-outrage

there's also a good mention in the article of the impact of twitter on this situation, which is not to be ignored.

[illmanic]

let me try this again. to echo rbryanh's point and repost his link:

why would a company like amazon want to sabotage themselves and alienate a huge section of their market? i don't think they would. why couldn't this just be the work of a homophobic hacker? it makes a lot more sense to me. and then there are these:

http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html
http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

think about it. a homophobe hacks into their system. amazon doesn't want to admit a system breach so they call it a "glitch." isn't that more reasonable? i'm not saying that the guy in the link necessarily did this, but again, why would amazon do it? they're not stupid and they want to turn a profit.

go ahead and boycott amazon if you want to. but think carefully about the possible reasons that the "glitch" might have happened. once again, i can't objectively say that it's amazon's fault.

[ZenBastard]

Sooooo....­.......it wasn't really Amazon's fault. It was a homophobic hacker? 0.o

No doubt this homophobic hacker was told to screw with the Amazon sales rankings by Elvis, acting on orders from the CIA.

Step. Away. From. The. Kool Aid.

[illmanic]

um, i didn't make any of this up. there is a guy who claims to have done this himself. and there's a lot of speculation as to whether or not it's true. i have no idea what actually happened. the links i provided allow you to speculate.

more importantly, i DO think that people on huffpo and all over the web are having the knee-jerk reaction that amazon is behind this because of political motives.

if amazon is at fault, i think it's highly possible that it's an internal error. if not, it's probably this or some other hacker. either way they wouldn't want to publicize that. i just don't think people are thinking clearly about it. plus as i understand it a lot of it is fixed already.

also, why be so rude? the kool-aid joke is old and unwarranted. people are buying the story that amazon is evil without a second thought. i don't care one way or the other about amazon, i'm just wishing people here and elsewhere would think before they wrote. the twitter reaction has been especially extreme.

[mizzastor]

As someone who searches Kindle Books about atheism/agnostic, I wondered why every day Amazon's Recommended Books especially for me included the Bible. Now, I understand they must have an ulterior motive.

[fusiformgyrus]

Perhaps it's not a conspiracy, and they think both deal with the same concept. i.e. god

[AnotherTry]

How can a book about atheism deal with God exactly?

[illmanic]

not too many people responded to rbryanh's comment and link below, so i am going to repost the link, along with one more:

http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html
http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

the first link describes the work of an angry homophobic hacker who claims to have created the "glitch" to, in his own words, "cause a few hundred thousand qu@@rs some outrage." there's also a bigger story about his motivation and the details of how he supposedly did it. the second link is further speculation on how the "glitch" could be the work of a hacker.

i think we have to be careful not to jump to conclusions. it makes a lot of sense to me that this would be the work of a homophobic hacker. why would amazon deliberately anger part of their own customer base? and of course we'll never know what actually happened, because amazon would never report a breach of their system to the general public - which would be exactly what the hacker wanted.

righteous anger is addictive. but we have to be careful to direct it to the right person/org­anization. i'm not saying i know what happened, just that i would be careful about blaming amazon immediately. it would be a pretty odd thing for them to do. a breach from the outside actually makes more sense to me.

what do you think?

[Samnchgo]

This is not a "glitch." Several authors of gay themed material have now reported that they received responses from Amazon's Member Services stating explicitly that their books were being classified as "adult themed" and, therefore, excluded from the search feature.

Amazon has claimed this glitch but has yet to explain why authors of gay themed books received word that their material had been classified as "adult" when similar heterosexual material had not. By the way, this adult content policy does NOT extend to sex toys.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10217715-93.html

Let the anger begin.

[illmanic]

first of all, in the article you posted, amazon said that they were trying to fix the "glitch." so why would they create the problem in the first place? why would they create a situation that would so obviously alienate a huge customer base?

once again, they are not stupid and would not risk alienating their customers. and if they were going to classify certain material as adult and thereby take such a risk, i doubt that they would be turning around on it so fast.

my point is that there is some potential evidence that a homophobic nut hacked the system. then everything that's happened since is just damage control on amazon's part. of course once their system is automatically classifying "gay-themed" as "adult-only," due to a hacker, then they would have to rationalize it. the alternative would be to publicize a breach of their system! admitting that someone had hacked into their system would be the scariest thing for them and would alienate ALL of their customers.

so i think that "glitch" is just their way of saying "we've been hacked into."

read the link again. the guy is pretty detailed about how and why he did it. if he didn't, i bet that someone else did. i have no feelings one way or another about amazon; i just don't think it makes sense to get angry at them immediately.

[bluguy8]

wait --sex toys aren't adult content --but gay writers are. If that not an agenda , nothing is.
Jeff Bezo's needs to get his act together .

[pickwickianmom]

Well, I MIGHT buy that idea if they didn't also get these real novels in the mix. Really now---what homophobe is sitting around steaming over "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin? (one of my favorite writers, by the way).
Baldwin wanted to be a writer---no labels. He was black, and resented writing about being black. He was gay, but this particular book treats that point so normally that the slow might not catch it.
He has a girlfriend---he has a boyfriend---it's very gender-fluent---not "gay".
Very much the way the narrator feels like he is drifting and doesn't really belong in any particular country. He's from the U.S., but he is living in Paris--not that he is particularly comfortable there, either.

I just don't understand how this particular book could have been targeted by just a dumb homophobe. It would take a homophobe/hacker with a decent knowledge of books.

[AnotherTry]

He slept with men. He's gay! Sheesh. Reread it, will ya? Just because a guy keeps a girl around for appearances, doesn't mean he isn't gay.

[mizzastor]

Okay, now it makes since and it really anger me. I'm an atheist who does Kindle searches for books on the topic yet every day on the list of Amazon's Recommended Books for me I find the Holy Bible....e­very single day. I thought maybe they kept recommending it because it was requested by a lot of people but now I know they have ulterior motives...­...shame on you Amazon....­.your holy hell will freeze before I buy one of your bibles.

[Victoria-nola]

I agree with others who say that unless Amazon can explain this and apologize and FIX IT, my dollars are going to have to find expression elsewhere. It's too obviously a corporate decision, and this is simply NOT OK for any reason.

In the theory of boycotts, ideally you start buying from the company again when they fix the problem, so that they are rewarded for good behavior, so I'm willing to extend them the opportunity to correct the problem and ensure it doesn't repeat.

We really do not need Amazon censoring people's access to books. If they claim to be the universal marketplace, they need to have the courage of their convictions.

[snork]

Wait, aren't the Amazon founders liberals like us? As I recall, Amazon is one of the few "good" companies. Might we not give them the benefit of the doubt?

I imagine what happened was this: they were SUPER careful not to offend the religious conservatives because they are such an unforgiving, scary bunch of thugs and don't want to be virtually shut down by a gigantic smear-camp­aign/boyco­tt/protest­. In doing so, they got careless with some of our books and just messed up. After all, we're on their side. We wouldn't act like the conservative nut jobs if they accidentally offended us, we wouldn't call for boycotts. We're better than that, aren't we?

[antaeus]

Who runs Amazon? Do we have names?

[bluguy8]

Jeff BEZO'S IS THE OWNER

[XCITIZEN]

JUST BOYCOTT AMAZON! JUST DO IT! THIS IS THE LOWEST - CENSORING GAY LITERATURE. FASCISTIC. BOYCOTT! DON'T BUY THE HYPE, DON'T BUY THE LIES. JUST BOYCOTT AMAZON.

[abmabardy]

Or, go to Amazon, do a search on "homosexuality" and when Nicolosi's horrific book comes up first on the list ("A Parents Guide to Preventing Homosexuality"), write a scathing one-star review, as I did.

[julietdelta]

PLEASE don't boycott Amazon totally. Every Saturday morning I get up and buy books at yard sales as cheaply as I can, then list them for sale on Amazon. This is the only way I have found to raise the money to pay my health insurance! There must be thousands of people like me, plus all the students who want to recapture some of the cost of their overpriced textbooks. A better way to hurt Amazon is to go to the Kindle section (their exclusive product,) and give the best-sellers gay-themed tags. I have sent multiple letters to customer service, demanding that they either fire the people responsible or swiftly prosecute the hacker.

[vugo]

I wonder if a glitch would ever classify Christian books under fantasy ...

[antaeus]

Best comment of the day.

[julietdelta]

Go to the Kindle section of Amazon and tag to your heart's content. The Bible is already tagged as "alternative reality."

[yulooloo]

Goodness, I do hope there's no glitch in my browser that takes me to the Powell's website every time I try to go to Amazon.com!

[AlP]

I thought that this was going to be something blown out of proportion. Then the searches started, and the rankings, and everything else. It really is outrageous. This is more than a glitch. Tropic of Cancer isn't touched.

[pickwickianmom]

It isn't? Wow. And it ends with that giant climax in the brothel. That's the entire point of Miller---live, love, fu*. Societal constraints are false strictures.

So Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" is censored and Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" gets a pass?
That doesn't even make sense.