Amazon removes sales rankings of gay and lesbian books
Monday, April 13, 2009
Hundreds of gay-and lesbian-themed books suddenly disappeared from Amazon.com’s rankings over the weekend, causing an uproar among authors and activists who alleged it was a stealthy extension of the company’s policy concerning adult content. The internet bookseller claimed it was the result of a technical "glitch."
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Amazon.com recently delisted from its sales ranking system gay and lesbian book titles that it deemed "adult," raising the ire of some who characterize the move as online censorship.
According to author Mark R. Probst, Amazon.com has begun pulling the sales rank numbers from several gay and lesbian books, claiming that the books are "adult" and should be excluded from some searches and lists.
In response to nearly two days of angry online commentary, particularly on Twitter, Amazon.com said on Monday that “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” had caused thousands of books on its site to lose their sales rankings and become harder to find in searches.
This holiday weekend, Amazon quietly made some changes to their sales ranks, removing selected gay and lesbian books from the site-wide rankings and from some search results
Amazon.com Inc. said an internal cataloging glitch inadvertently removed more than 57,000 books from its sales rankings and main search page.
The Seattle company was hit by criticism in recent days from the authors of affected books, mainly those focusing on gay themes. But Amazon said the problem was global, and affected other categories such as health, mind and body, reproductive and sexual medicine and erotica.