Amazon De-Ranks Thousands of LGBT Books
One of these authors is too "adult" for Amazon.com. Is it Henry Miller or Anaïs Nin?
If you’re anywhere within the literary community, you’ve probably heard by now that Amazon has allegedly been removing the sales rankings of books by and for the LGBT community. According to a very comprehensive article by Jezebel, as well as corroborating source The Advocate, Amazon’s spokespeople have alternately claimed that the de-rankings are a “glitch” or part of their new policy towards “adult material.”
While some may ask why the uproar, if this is indeed a new Amazon policy towards adult reading material, many question the application of this so-called policy. Authors such as Henry Miller (see: Tropic of Cancer) and William Burroughs (see: Naked Lunch) have retained their rankings, despite the adult content of their novels, while female authors like Miller’s lover Anaïs Nin (see: Delta of Venus, although apparently Incest: From “A Journal of Love” remains ranked; go figure!) have been stripped of their sales rankings. Indeed, the Jezebel article points out that Amazon.com sells sexual toys such as vibrators and butt plugs, which retain their sales rankings (see: Trinity Rabbit Vibrator) while books bearing sexual themes do not. So what’s really going on here?
Many authors noticed this weekend that their books had had their sales rankings removed from the U.S. site, including our friend Daniel Allen Cox, whose novel Shuck is listed on Amazon’s website. As authors compared notes via Twitter, the truth slowly came out: thousands of titles had been stripped of their sales rankings, though the work was done very shoddily. As a piece at Publishers Weekly notes:
Whatever the cause, titles like James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain are among the those that have lost their sales ranking. Bloggers aren’t buying the glitch explanation and some are calling an Amazon boycott, but the fact that such a wide range of titles have lost their rankings suggest that whatever Amazon may have been trying to do went haywire.
If, indeed, this is a glitch, the question remains as to why so many “adult” items were not similarly removed from sales rankings. The Jezebel article listed above carries as comprehensive a list as we’ve seen thus far, concerning the titles that have been removed from Amazon’s ranking system, and lists a number of items that should have been axed as well, if the company is telling the truth about a new policy.
In the meantime, if you’d like to voice your displeasure concerning Amazon’s actions, feel free to sign the petition that’s currently being circulated. Concerned parties are also calling for a total boycott of Amazon.com until this issue is resolved, and we at Black Heart certainly feel that’s the right thing to do. Why an enormous company that caters to people of all walks of life would be so shortsighted about their business is quite a mystery to us, but if you’ve got any insights, by all means feel free to share them in our comments section below.
(Originally posted at Buttontapper.com)
