Amazon.com discriminating against gay and lesbian books.

[icarus]

"Heather Has Two Mommies" is an adult book. At least according to Amazon.com it is.

Who knew?

You're probably hearing about this from everyone, but let me add my voice to the chorus. Amazon.com is stripping the sales rankings from gay and lesbian books. (ETA: sorry! Coding fixed.) As the post says:

If you write books with homosexual characters, read books with homosexual characters, please look at this:

http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html

Mark,Erastes, and Alex (among others) had their Amazon sales rankings removed over the last few days for The Filly, Transgressions and False Colours respectively. On enquiring about this, Mark 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.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

Please note that just before this, Erastes' Transgressions and Alex's False Colours were topping out the rankings. Also note that "The Filly" is a YA Book, and therefore I would suggest one of the more important books to have out there for kids questioning their identity, and Transgressions and False Colours are being shelved with the Romance section of Barnes and Noble. Though as Mark points out, that is of no fucking importance because this is homophobic bias pure and simple.

I have no idea what to do about this except spread the message. If anyone has any ideas on what to do, tell me. Because I am not letting this lie. As vashtan said, they are happy to take the money, but not happy to give these books the recognition they rightly deserve.

Chris.

PS. Not linking to these books on Amazon, for obvious reasons. If people would give me other sites on which to buy them, will amend the post.

ETA: Letter to Amazon here: http://c-smith-author.livejournal.com/20968.html

vashton has begun compiling an eye-opening list.

You can email Amazon.com here (you'll need to log in).

ETA: Hmm. Has anyone contacted Dan Savage (dan@thestranger.com) yet?

ETA2: Yep. Dan Savage's The Kid has no ranking, is still in print, and has 126 reviews. Looks like the ranking has been stripped. I've emailed him about it. Ironically, the link from his author page goes to Amazon. So he's funneling them business while they cut his sales off at the knees.

Comments

[dementedsiren.livejournal.com]

This is total bullshit - I saw it mentioned first yesterday in erastes' LJ and thought then that it must just be a glitch in the system. Apparently not. My (admittedly a bit facetious) suggestion is that we find the books not listed as "adult" that contain graphic heterosexual romance (you know the ones, they're all over the place and contain horrible sex scenes with words like turgid) and start requesting that they have the same treatment applied to them...

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Amazon.com is typically inconsistent, even among gay and lesbian books (in many cases the rank has been stripped from print copies and not Kindle versions). But it's clearly increasing.

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

YES. I love this idea.

Not only is some of that het stuff pretty racy, the descriptions I've oft-encountered sound like they belong on weepingcock. Outside of a yaoi novel I once read, and unpublished fanfiction, I haven't seen those levels of ew in m/m sex scenes... yet that stuff is "romance" and not "adult"?

[kick-flaw.livejournal.com]

AGH. Will be posting this in my journal.

Thanks for the heads-up. They've lost my custom.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Tsk. I have ten bucks on the table that says that they got a complaint, some kid manager was told to "do something about it" and then she burned the midnight oil this weekend "fixing" it rather randomly. Now they've got a shit-storm brewing.

[kick-flaw.livejournal.com]

Think so? I hope it's something as simple as that, though I have a hard time believing anyone could be idiotic enough to do this by accident--it seems like too much of a concerted effort against certain material.

I hope it all gets worked out soon, regardless.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Not a goof. A deliberately implemented bad idea that no one has examined the implications of.

I've worked there. Amazon is not a well-run company. In fact, it is the most chaotic place I've ever encountered. Trust me, at Amazon this does not require an executive order and a clearly laid out plan. This would require one exec sending out a blanket memo "do something" and a 20-something manager coming up with an idea and implementing it over the weekend.

One thing I know it isn't, is a technical glitch. If there's one department in Amazon that runs like a top, it's the tech department.

While the managers are all running around like chickens with their heads cut off, the tech department has their shit together and can get results on a dime.

[kick-flaw.livejournal.com]

Ha, I guess that puts paid to the glitch theory, though I bet that's what they'll go with in the end.

Sounds like some poor sod is going to get fired over this (and, well, bad ideas do generally deserve that kind of repercussion, but...) even if they do manage the problem well enough to save their reputation.

I'll reserve judgment for now: if they reapply the rankings and apologize, I won't delete my account. Thanks for the info!

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

As well as pissing me off (they'll use ANY excuse, won't they?), it makes me glad as all hell that I pre-ordered Transgressions from Fishpond and not Amazon. They're here: http://www.fishpond.com.au/ and they carry a nice range of gay and lesbian-- and other harder-to-find stuff (they have yaoi novels, a lot of work from smaller, independent companies, like ms_manna's stuff, and a lot of true crime tht I haven't been able to find elsewhere).

I dunno if they do outside-of-Australia-and-NZ orders, though.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I told them my bookstore down the street sells the titles I want. I don't need Amazon, they're merely convenient.

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

Another one is bookdepository, a UK company which has free shipping to a lot of overseas countries.

(I looked for ms_manna's other Administration titles and they're not available at Fishpond at the moment. But they ARE at BD. :)

[noorie.livejournal.com]

first time i hear of this. and it makes me sick. thank you for bringing it to ppl's attention.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

[cat-77.livejournal.com]

The fuck?

I'd like to point out that, ironically enough, Amazon stole their name from one of the oldest GLBT bookstores in MN: Amazon Books. When sued, they paid more than the tiny local run place could dream of and they reached a deal that both could keep their names.

So, in summation, Amazon Books, undermining GLBT interests everywhere...

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

As I wrote elsewhere:

I worked for Amazon briefly. In my experience, Amazon treats everything as if it were an emergency. There's little sense of proportion and minimal planning. They hit the panic button on everything. Young, bright 20-something managers with no experience are given the authority to make sweeping changes overnight.

Chances are Amazon received a letter of complaint. An email went out to a kid to "do something" about it. Then that kid burned the midnight oil removing the rankings. But because it was done at 3am and she hadn't read any of these books, it was done inconsistently, just based on a key words -- and she completely forgot about Kindle.

Based on my experience at Amazon, that's the most likely explanation.

If we complain loud and hard and they start catching shit in surround-sound, Amazon will probably go careening in the opposite direction to undo the damage.

[cat-77.livejournal.com]

It looks like they are in the process of fixing it, at least per After Ellen.

Also to note (reposting what I just wrote elsewhere):
You can do a search by author, but not themes for some of them. My partner wrote and self-published a book for young adults/teens that includes GLBT themes as one character starts questioning his sexuality. We did a search by her name and got her book, but everything was gone theme-wise. GLBT was gone, as was young adult, action, adventure, etc.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Are they in the process of fixing? Have I missed something?

[cat-77.livejournal.com]

One of the blogs my partner was following (which I unfortunately don't know which as she's left for work already) stated they claim to be in the process of fixing it. That could mean anything from actually restoring the rankings and truly fixing the problem to just, "Okay man, give me another hit and let's think about this."

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Amazon emailed. Thanks for the link.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Amazon is the kind of company that will probably fix the problem. They tend to ... careen.

[rane-ab.livejournal.com]

WTF. When I first saw these posts coming up, I thought people were talking about hardcore porn. I fail to see how most of these books even remotely rate as 'adult'. Surely someone must have realised this comes across as discrimination, pure and simple?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Nope. Legal books, a critically acclaimed biography of Oscar Wilde, self-help books on what to do when my spouse comes out as gay -- looks like someone just went off key words and didn't check content. And then a clueless PR person tried to defend it.

[sarka.livejournal.com]

A librarian on my friendslist called and told them precisely what she thought of their asshattery... and now they're blaming it on a computer glitch. (http://artemisiabrisol.livejournal.com/64427.html) Interesting how that works.

[meesto.livejournal.com]

I've sent my scathing email to Amazon. Here's hoping that they blame it on a mistake and undo it all right away. I will be curious if any data will come out about what sort of increased email load Amazon has experienced this weekend.

Nothing like using a long weekend to roll out one's stupid algorithm and hope that the thinking public won't notice.

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

http://www.craigspoplife.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-amazon-homophobic.html

This guy (above) apparently had it happen to his book (a non-pornographic autobio about his "journey from grad student to stripper to entertainment journalist to college professor," as he put it) in February. He complained to Amazon and chased them up and down for info on why it happened to his book, but never got an answer. Then they changed their minds and gave him his ranking back, apparently w/o telling him why they changed their mind.

[percysowner.livejournal.com]

I've emailed Amazon and notified every progressive blog on my rss feeds list. I also emailed Dan Savage. The only reason I haven't put a call into Amazon is because I don't want to yell at some poor flunky who got stuck working on Easter. I will call tomorrow and keep saying I want to talk to someone in charge of policy to try and make my point about how angry this makes me.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thank you. (And the flunky thanks you.)

[aralondwen.livejournal.com]

I already emailed them, canceled a couple of open orders I had (And told them because I was doing it) and signed this petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy

I'd hate to stop buying from amazon.com because getting books where I live is a pain, but I'd have to find another way.

[harveywallbang.livejournal.com]

that's just so wrong....

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Amazon said that an employee switched a programming statement to "true" that should have read "false," affecting 50,000 titles. The programming types in fandom (namely seperis) say this is a plausible explanation.

[harveywallbang.livejournal.com]

i sure hope so.