Amazon.com is catching some heat this week for removing gay and lesbian-themed books from its sales rankings on the grounds that they contained "adult" themes, even as more explicit heterosexual content remained.
Mark R. Probst, author of "The Filly," noticed last Friday that two gay romance novels, "Transgressions” by Erastes and “False Colors” by Alex Beecroft, disappeared from the sales rankings. Hundreds of other books followed, including Probst's story of a man in the wild west discoving his sexuality, which contains romance but no sex.
An online petition followed, noting that "Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds," Alan Moore's "The Lost Girls" graphic novel and several books with explicit heterosexual romance remain in the sales rankings while gay and lesbian romance books with no sex whatsoever were removed. When a book loses its sales rankings, it remains on Amazon's site, but does not show up in best-seller lists, making it harder to find.
Yesterday, CNet spoke with someone in Amazon PR, who called the derankings a "glitch," but elaborated no further. As of this morning, some of the gay and lesbian-themed books are being placed back into the sales rankings.
Backlash is ongoing, with an #AmazonFail tag on Twitter and signatures added to the online petition as this article is being written. I'd like to forgive Amazon if this was truly an honest mistake, but I'd also like to see the site come clean on the nature of the "glitch." How did it originate and why wasn't it corrected sooner?
