Subscribe to Breaking NewsAmazon.com decides gay books are “adult”
What does a classic gay novel like James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room have to do with gay porn?
You’d think the answer would be pretty much “nothing.” But if that’s true, why would Amazon.com strip the sales ranks of almost all gay and lesbian books on their site — including E. Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story and 20s lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness — at the same time it’s removing the sales rankings for adult novels?
And it’s not just fiction. The blog Meta Writer said that affected titles also include The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students, Taking a Chance on God: Liberating Theology for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Lovers, Families, and Friends and The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience. And indeed, not one of those books has its sales ranking listed.
Asked “What’s up with that?” by a number of authors, Amazon sent out a form response:
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.
It’s hard to know what’s more disturbing: That they’re removing gay and lesbian books from their search results and sales rankings in the first place, or that they’re categorizing anything about our community and our lives in the stigmatized “adult” category even when there’s nothing “adult” about it.
I mean, in what universe are books like Vito Russo’s Celluloid Closet, Randy Shilts‘ The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk or Dan Savage’s The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant adult books?
I checked the gay young adult titles by AfterElton.com’s Brent Hartinger, and they all still have their sales rankings. A few other YA titles I looked at didn’t, however, including John Fox’s The Boys on the Rock, Jim Grimsley’s Dream Boy and, ironically, The Heart Has Its Reasons: Young Adult Literature with Gay/Lesbian/Queer Content, 1969-2004.
Neither did Speechless: Silencing the Christians: How Liberals and Homosexual Activists are Outlawing Christianity (and Judaism) to Force Their Sexual Agenda on America or Heather Has Two Mommies, which has got to be one of the most banned books in American history. Nice company you’re in, Amazon.
Amazon.com has not responded to a request for a comment by AfterElton.com.
It looks like a similar thing happened at Amazon.ca, where the most popular Gay and Lesbian books are almost entirely anime books now. Consider that “Undoing Gender” is the 23rd book in the Books – Gay and Lesbian category, sorted by Bestselling order. But it’s 1st on the list of Bestsellers in the Books – Gay and Lesbian category. What happened to the other 22 books? Running with Scissors is 6 on that list, but doesn’t seem to appear at all in the other list.
I hae an Amazon.com credit card. I’ll have to do some research on the Amazon website to see how I should proceed with them.
Just an FYI, I just logged onto Amazon.com and Suze Orman’s book was front and center. I guess as long as “the gays” are making money a sh*t load of money for them, they are okay.
From Yahoo News
Amazon ‘glitch’ removes sales rank from gay 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.”
There are other companies to buy books from, even when ordering online.
If the books that might interest me won’t show up in searches, then regardless of politics there’s no reason to use such a site.
Right Amazon? If I can’t search for the titles in which I might be interested, aren’t you clearly saying you’re not interested in my business.
Regardless of politics if an online bookseller removes the titles in which I am interested from their search lists, then they are clearly telling me that they are not interested in my business. I see no other way to interpret that.
The good news is that even online there are plenty of other places to buy books.
Well, good news for us though I guess it’s bad news for Amazon.
And don’t try to sell me on a glitch. A glitch that mysteriously affects titles across genres who happen to have the connecting theme of being LGBT related in some way. Quite an accident.
Amazon’s decision should be to BN’s, or whoever else you feel like using’s, gain. Is the price difference (usually around a dollar), worth putting up with this insult?
Removing the titles in which I am interested from search engines is a pretty clear indication to me that a site doesn’t want my business.
And please don’t insult with a story about a “glitch” that mysteriously affects titles across genres, all of which just happen to be LGBT related. An apology would work much better than such a story.
Luckily, even online, there are plenty of other places which are happy to facilitate the spending of my money by helping me find such titles.
Here’s your glitch Amazon:
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
Anybody else ready to cry BULLSH*T ?
This article is not accurate. I just went on the Amazon website, and anyone can buy “The Joy of Gay Sex, in addition to Brokeback Mountain, The Well of Lonliness and every other book title mentioned in the article. Can the 365gay.com author please explain this?
OK people the reason why they did that is because the only thing straight people think about when it come to gay people is use have SEX
Well hell, if you can’t have an ol’ timey book burning, at least you can pull the things you don’t like off the racks, eh?
I’m glad I stopped shopping there years ago. Now there is a perfect reason for not shopping on Amazon. My friend usually buys books through them, but not anymore. I’m saying loud and I’m saying proud “NOT AMAZON”
I think Amazon.com was motivated by the fact that gay and lesbian themed books are too popular.
This is giving book reading the image of being a homosexual activity and that of their heterosexual liberal allies.
They must see this image as bad for motivatiing Middle America to enjoy book reading.
Amazon customer service responded to me with the same “glitch” explanation:
“Thanks for contacting us. We recently discovered a glitch in our systems and it’s being fixed.
“Thanks again for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.
“Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question”
Amazon should be ashamed. Most gay bookstores that closed because of them, and this is the way the pay us back. This is just really sad. They need to remember what happen to Blockbuster, they never rented gay films, then Netflix showed up and kick their asses. This a bookstore for people that reads. Unless they discovered that they can rely only of Christians and Republicans customers I wish them good look in their peculiar way of improving sales. I wonder what other books, besides glbt titles, are being affected in this Amazon book burning party. I never thought they would be able to pull a Ronald Reagan, too prudes to even name us, if that’s the case I’ll buy my stuff somewhere else. I’m sure as hell I’ll write them an email to tell them how I feel.