The secret is out of the closet: Amazon Kills Sales Rankings on GLBTQ Books

Does My Amazon.com Look Big in This? #AmazonFail?
Image by doctorious via Flickr

Amazon.com, arguably the largest retailer of print material online, crossed into the badlands of censorship. The Internet noticed (the internet always notices!) and is stalking Amazon.com mercilessly.

Thousands of books containing references to gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual culture and lifestyle –including, but not exclusive to erotica — have had their sales ranks snuffed by Amazon.com.

Writer Mark Probst contacted Amazon.com earlier in the week about the issues, and was told the following:

“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.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but we think that sounds like a policy.

From Dear Author:
Amazon Using Category MetaData to Filter Rankings
“I looked up over 40 books that had been deranked and filtered out of search engines. It appears that all the content that was filtered out had either “gay”, ”lesbian”, ”transgender”, “erotic” or “sex” metadata categories.”

Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly says, “…reports sites like Information Week and CNET [state] that “adult” tag is also being given to Heather Has Two Mommies (a children’s book that explains homosexuality) and Ellen DeGeneres‘ autobiography — neither of which include explicit or racy content. Meanwhile, a raunchy memoir of porn star Ron Jeremy and Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds, which includes pictures of more than 600 naked females — are still being ranked.”

Readers are reporting that books containing references to polyamory and paganism are also being deranked. Readers also are noting that the same phenomena is taking place on the UK and other overseas Amazon sites, though there are discrepancies between what is ranked or not on each side of the ocean.

Zoe Margolis, the blogger and author of Girl With A One-Track Mind, complained on her Twitter feed that the US edition of her book, which Amazon had filed under “sexuality” or “erotica”, had lost its ranking, while the UK version, filed under “memoir”, was ranked. “It’s as if Amazon said ‘An idea! Let’s get rid of all the queers and perverts!!!’ and then reset all their search algorithms,” she wrote.

Later in the week Amazon.com claimed the problem was a “glitch” with their “filter” and was being “repaired.” If it is a “filter,” that is one incredibly targeted filter, and one aimed in a very specific direction.

How and why does a stated corporate policy become a “glitch?” Which is it, Amazon? Policy or glitch? Amazon.com knows, and if they ever drop the obfuscation and evasive actions, they might cop to what they did and tell the public what they know to be true.

Action/contact info:
Tell CNN: http://tinyurl.com/cvmvu7
Fox News: http://tinyurl.com/bg86z
Amazon customer service telephone number 1-800-201-7575
Executive Customer Service email: ecr@amazon.com
business phone numbers of the Amazon board of directors

More on this topic:

Amazon criticized for de-ranking ‘adult’ books(cnet.com)
Amazon Says Glitch to Blame for “New” Adult Policy(publishersweekly.com)
Amazon.com under criticism for de-ranking gay-themed books(EW.com)
AmazonFail: A Twitter movement in action (Daytona Beach News-Journal)
Why We’re Not Buying Amazon’s Gay Book ‘Glitch’ (Queerty)
Amazon.Com Banishes Queer SF Writers To A Null Dimension(io9.com)
#amazonfail (Twitter)
Amazonfail on Facebook

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