Amazon "Glitch" Targets Gay Books

(AP)  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."

[pam_johnson]

oops do happen. When I first read about this story, I thought amazon is going to eat crow for this snafu and they will not be able to defend their 'oops'. It is the same mistake a college made a few weeks ago when they sent out 45,000 congrats messages to prospects that was rejects.

[pam_johnson]

oops do happen. When I first read about this story, I thought amazon is going to eat crow for this snafu and they will not be able to defend their 'oops'. It is the same mistake a college made a few weeks ago when they sent out 45,000 congrats messages to prospects that was rejects.

[Tallasianx2]

A book is a book, If you know what you are looking for , you will find it. If you don't you will not find it. and frankly i think it part of some Censorship BS someone trying to kick off.

[cs4466]

Was this the only genre of book that was affected? Why did it take so long for Amazon to fix it? Did they think it wasn't important enough? I don't think a glitch in the system is an explanation. That's a term people use when they know exactly what happened to cover themselves. Sounds like they may have an employee with censorship on their mind.
Posted by saturn05 at 7:36 AM : Apr 13, 2009

Very likely. Someone's been dinking with it and didn't care about preserving the integrity of the ratings or specifically deleted them out of malice. Amazon's just protecting their bigot employee(s).

[cs4466]

Yes, comments like that are certain to make all straight people have a very high degree of tolerance and love towards all you azz ********.
Posted by leeanna59 at 8:47 AM : Apr 13, 2009

What makes you think we want the respect of the likes of you?

[pacificwalter]

The gay books are the ones that get all up in your face, demand special rights, insist that they get put in with the general book population, and then hope you accept them, and their disease.
-Posted by davicar2 at 8:02 AM : Apr 13, 2009

----

Either that... or... they're books that try to squeeze some tolerance out of tightened self-righteous sphincters like davicar2.

Nobody asks to be gay. If homophobes and latent homosexuals, like davicar, want to pretend some higher morality they should follow some higher morality.

[saturn05]

Was this the only genre of book that was affected? Why did it take so long for Amazon to fix it? Did they think it wasn't important enough? I don't think a glitch in the system is an explanation. That's a term people use when they know exactly what happened to cover themselves. Sounds like they may have an employee with censorship on their mind.

[wtcmedic911]

Bush did it.