Amazon.com has "De-ranked" books with GLBT themes and characters

[Godhumor]

"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. What books were "selected" and speculation as to why they were selected has led to an online uproar.

Besides the one thing they have in common, the de-ranked books are all otherwise diverse, ranging from romance novels to serious nonfiction books; policy analysis to teen novels. Amazon should have learned by now that they really can't do this sort of thing these days unnoticed.

When author Mark Probst noticed popular gay romance novels disappearing from the sales rankings and contacted Amazon about it, they explained their logic thusly:

'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.'"

http://consumerist.com/5209209/gay-and-lesbian-books-lose-amazon-sales-rank-for-some-reason

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/04/amazon-deranks-gayfriendly-books-the-twitterverse-notices.html

[Fovea]

1. so very lame.

And I really enjoyed buying books from them.

[Godhumor]

2. I'm actually really curious about this position

My guess is we will see a press release soon about an overzealous employee. Lord only knows at what level this decision was actually made.

[He loved Big Brother]

3. Jezebel is keeping up to date

http://jezebel.com/5209088/why-is-amazon-removing-the-sales-rankings-from-gay-lesbian-books

[Godhumor]

4. Bumping for the morning peeps

n/t