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

[Blissable]

If this is not just a glitch, then it's an insidious form of censorship that maybe they hoped no-one would notice. Sure, we'll sell gay books, but let's hide them so that if Grandma Dobson is searching for teabags, he won't faint when he finds books on teabagging. You know those silly gays are used to being invisible.

Independent gay booksellers have been on the vagaurd of anti-cencorship for decades. (I think of Little Sistes in Vancouver and Glad Day in Boston and Toronto). They risked arrest and jail in order to challenge ridiculous pornography laws the made many gay-themed books illegal and won tough legal victories so we could read the erotic novels of our choice. Trouble is we seem to have forgotten that. I doubt Amazon would be so altruistic.

The best way to protect LGBT literature is to support LGBT bookstores. But many are gone and others barely haging on. A Different Light just closed after 17 years in West Hollywood. I guess saving a buck on Amazon is a good thing, but maybe it's a false economy and gives us a false sense of security. Maybe this backlash will convince Amazon to treat everyone equally but I'm not holding my breath though. I will continue to spend my money at businesses than don't try to marginalize me. Like this one: http://www.adlbooks.com

[midknightryder13]

"A Different Light" is gone? That was the FIRST GLBT bookstore I ever went to. I was visiting L.A. at the time and there WAS no similar store where I lived. Iremember thinking how wonderful it was to be in a place where I could be myselt -- ADL in particular and WeHo in general.
I don't think it's just Amazon's fault, thought. With all the things you can get online WITHOUT having to travel, ADL isn't the only casualty.
It's both a pro and a con.

[Blissable]

Yes, sadly A Different Light is gone. A victim of the economy and the sky-high commercial rents in West Hollywood. Not to mention the apathy of West Hollywood's politicians, as they try to run the city like Beverly Hills East. Lots of time, money, schmoozing, code exemptions and lax enforcement for bars, clubs and high-end boutiques. Small struggling businesses, not so much help.

[rbryanh]

No one seems to be asking why Amazon would deliberately take an action almost certain to damage profits and achieve nothing.

Here's one possible explanation, by the individual who claims to be the perpetrator:

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

[Shiru Ye]

Probably just a filtering algorithm that was too broad and filtered a bunch of books it wasn't meant to. Amazon sells so many books they don't do any of this stuff by hand, someone just writes some code and it changes the rankings.

[Tamoomoo]

A "glitch"? My eye it was a glitch!

[TheGayPrince]

Amazon.com has a pretty good ranking (80) on the HRC.org's 2009 buyers guide so I would give them a pass on this. Mistakes do happen.

There are several other companies that I boycott based on their ranking in this guide.

Check out the guide:

http://www.hrc.org/buyersguide2009

[JessWonderin]

DANG . . . I have "glitch" . . . Amazon won't come up on MY browser ANYMORE . . . .

[IDIOTA]

I've spent a lot of money with Amazon. I hope that they are not censoring because I really hate censorship. Are you listening, Huffpolice?

[Animal Compassion]

Amazon promotes cock fighting, a felony in all but a couple of states. But Amazon censors homosexual writings. Thus the reason I don't shop there!!!

[bavb63]

glitch= homophobia­+bigotry+c­ensorship

[SCLAW]

They skew ratings all the time--
some people say so in their reviews.\

If you are giving a review that goes the wrong way
you get an error message.

Just like how Amazon tried to censor the Scientology book
right after Tommy visited their headquarters

[denlong]

As I'm sure that everyone reading this knows that a "glitch" can be fixed in a hour if they wanted.

[fbjkfmjkfm]

Wrong. The gay glitch can"t be fixed.

[deshard]

How right you are. Can't be fixed because it ain't broken.

[rainbowblue]

I really don't think Amazon the company is at fault. They have a nice collection of LGBT material, even some stuff that surprises me (stuff that I would have thought could only be bought at a LGBT bookstore). This is a technology fault, with, as some are reporting I guess, a hacker problem.

Put it this way: if they are going to sell lgbt erotica, then why would they go to the trouble of delisting lgbt material?

[jimrs6]

You are spoiling the predefined narrative here. Don't you understand there are "victims" here that are "outraged"?

[Blissable]

None of us are victims here. And victims are seldom outraged, they usually just take what's dealt out to them, that's kinda what makes them victims.

[jood42]

If the whole thing really is the result of someone taking advantage of a system that allows the site to automatically de-list any book after a certain number of complaint links have been clicked, Amazon has a lot of 'splainin' to do. That would constitute pretty wretched content management, particularly when people's livelihoods could be at stake.

[ttmatthe]

The person making the claim is a TROLL. Another coder tried the methods and they failed. Not only that, she offered some significant input: http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.html

[viragovenus]

I am so angry about this. If Amazon lets it stand, it will take away my right to search for books that are of interest to me, and it will deliberately suppress sales of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender-related books. These are very real effects on real writers' and readers' lives.

Ok, it was clearly not a glitch; there was a statement put out about "adult content"! What I want to know is, what has Amazon said about when and how they are going to fix this?!?

[Lee Andrew]

Amazon has a very negative history with artist who independently produce gay themed works as in my case DVD's an photo art books - ALL benefiting LGBT charities in Eastern Europe.

As an American and humanitarian I am appalled at the company's handling of my case two years ago) When I have the money I am going to court against the bastardos.

Lee Andrew

[e-mail]

http://www.cafepress.com/lgbtpress

http://www.lgtpress.org/dvdart.php