Amazon removes sales ranking from LGBT books

By joan on Sunday, April 12, 2009 - 23:53

After spending this wonderful sunny Sunday outside in the garden, I came
inside only to find this tweet by Neil Gaiman staring at me from my display.

Bilder hochladen

Amazon apparently started to remove the sales rank information from books with LGBT content. Now, at first you might think: "Oh, but maybe they are removing it from erotica and porn in general and I just didn't check the straight porn." And the response Mark Probst got after he inquired, would suggest as much (but do read on afterwards, it get's bad!)

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.

Ha. So it is adult books.

I guess Playboy - The Complete Centerfolds. is not "adult" enough and The Well of Loneliness is just too spicy?
They've got to be kidding us! There is not even one single remotely explicit sex scene in The Well of Loneliness!

If you plough through the ever growing list of affected books over at the meta_writer community at LiveJournal, you find that not only LGBT romance/erotica is affected.
Non-Fiction, Biographies and young-adult books have their ranks removed too. If they deal with LGBT content, that is.
For example Am I Blue, an anthology by young-adult authors about 'growing up gay or lesbian, or with gay or lesbian parents or friends', has an age recommendation of 9-12 and has no ranking.
Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, a book on military policy, also got its ranking removed, as has The Secret Life Of Oscar Wilde!

While Amazon also removed the sales rank information of some heterosexual adult novels (see Lady Chatterley’s Lover), the number of LGBT books that are in no way erotica and still don't show any sales rank information anymore suggests that Amazon is currently removing everything with a 'gay', 'lesbian', 'transsexual'... tag.

This is just plain homophobia. No other way to say it.

Though Amazon still sells these books and you can find most(!) of them through the Amazon search-engine, the affected books won't show up in general Bestseller lists anymore. Which, in my opinion, is nothing but sabotaging the authors.
There are even examples of books that can't be found if you search for the title: Loves Last Chance (Direct Link found via google) doesn't show in this search.

As for international versions of the Amazon bookstore, I checked amazon.de and found that several of the books listed above also showed no ranking there. I have no information about other localisations. If you know anything about that, please leave a comment.

Why Amazon's ranking matters anyway? You can find a brief summary about the reasons here. Amazon is the biggest online (book)store, they set such a prominent bad example with this, that many could follow if we don't shout right now!

If you ask yourelf what is the number 1 search-result for 'homosexuality' now, here you go!

Bilder hochladen

Please join the protest.

What can you do?

Tags: amazon, campaigns, entertainment, lgbt, politics, press

This is important

Submitted by Natazzz on April 13, 2009 - 01:17.

Great article Joan.

I just wrote my protest letter and signed the petition.

Have you done the same yet?

Like Joan said, this is important. If we don't protest now, who knows what might happen next.

- - - - - - - - - -

Who doesn't have a blog these days?

Second that!

Submitted by Sandra Showtime on April 13, 2009 - 02:35.

Thanks Joan, that was fast and solid!

My response later on Twitter = #amazonfail

I, of course, also signed up and wrote a "real" protest-letter.

This IS important!

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Submitted by Little G on April 13, 2009 - 02:50.

... Too bad not everyone is in the position to boycot Amazon.

I've found that this is a good place to get books as well (cheaper, too):
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/homepage.php

Oh, and Neil Gaiman rocks!

Update *cough

Submitted by Sandra Showtime on April 13, 2009 - 02:54.

Yeah, sure. It was worth a try, huh?

Good kid, Amazon...good kid! ;)

Uh-huh: gay glitch my ass...

Submitted by Little G on April 13, 2009 - 02:58.

Were they just checking how many people they could piss off?

Pardon my language...

*lol*

Submitted by Sandra Showtime on April 13, 2009 - 03:07.

Sweet.

amazon barked the wrong tree

Submitted by hurtbroken on April 13, 2009 - 03:27.

amazon barked the wrong tree and willl be losing alot of customers!!!!!

protest

Submitted by Wisno on April 13, 2009 - 06:54.

Thanks for informing me of this. I filed my protest and will not buy books, cds or dvds from Amozon until they reverse this policy and apologize to the gay community.

As alternatives, there is play.com as well as book depository. Play.com has the advantage of selling music and dvds as well as books with free shipping.

Book Depository

Submitted by Little G on April 13, 2009 - 13:28.

I posted a link to Book Depository in my first response to this item.

As far as I know Book Depository has free shipping world wide, and is cheaper than Amazon in a lot of cases. (Another advantage is you can choose whether you'd like to pay in British Pounds Stirlings, US Dollars or Euros.)

changing bookstores

Submitted by maxime68 on April 13, 2009 - 07:11.

yup, totally right. I won't be ordering from them in the future. I just know enough of programming to know that talk of a glitch is complete bullsh**.

I checked some books on the German site and the german lesbian authors still have their sales rankings in the overall list, and on the the specific sales list as well. No foreign author though on the list.

Completely different though with american writers, most sales rankings are missing. Same situation on the french site, where I didn't even get my typical recommendation of lesbian books on the front page.

Even if they'll change the sales rankings back, I won't be running back to them, they proofed who they are really interested in.

the Amazons would be aghast... (and Xena would be livid!)

Submitted by Cath on April 13, 2009 - 17:11.

ah well, a good reason (for those living in Germany) to check bol.de and booklooker more often again. Or do a pre-search at price-comparing sites like ciao.
Not a very smart marketing decision on amazon's part - apart from being ethically wrong. But while I don't expect ethics in business, I would expect an interest in making money and not offending well-paying customers.

amazon.com just disappeared from my bookmarks. ...Oops. I don't know how that could happen. Must have been a glitch.

On the other hand, this might work in favor of the threatened species of small LBGT bookstores...

____________________________

Blogging against windmills:

1 Spaniard. 1 German. 2 pairs of glasses. 3 languages. ...and trying to get married.