illo lifted from io9.com–go read the articleNo explanation as yet from amazon.com about their weekend ‘glitch’ which deranked LGBT books, including mine.
Here’s a good roundup from Suvudu* of what’s been going on. And here is io9.com, in which I demand a public apology from Jeff Bezos. I also do my best to explain, in 200 words, why this kind of censorship is so very dangerous.
If you haven’t yet signed the petition, please do. If you haven’t contacted amazon.com, please do.
Many thanks to all of you for your support. Now I’m off to do some actual nothing-to-do-with-amazon writing, and to munch some more on that chocolate Easter egg I didn’t get to devote much attention to yesterday.
_______________________
* this post seems to have vanished, I wonder why…
Nicola Griffith 
Well said. I agree about the apology.I’ve sent Amazon a couple of emails, but no response yet. I see other people have gotten some kind of response, however. I’ve decided to point out to them how much money I spend there. Multiple times/day. Easy enough to do, and maybe it will be a minor annoyance to them.
Hang in there. While we may not see an apology (Bezos is famously arrogant) I believe this wrong will be righted. At the least, some other smart bookseller will see an opportunity where Amazon has failed.
As submitted to Amazon:As you might be able to see, part of this order was cancelled. The reason for this, as specified in the cancel form, is your royal screw up with regard to the search ranking of LGBT-related books (what you are now calling a “glitch”, and the rest of the internet has dubbed “AmazonFail”). Just letting you know this attitude is actually costing you money. Until a public apology is made, I’ll consider myself a person whose business is not wanted by Amazon.com, and do my best to respect that by not shopping here.
Well said, LL. I like that.
I canceled all of my pending orders, and added a note similar to LL’s.
I’ve been editing my reviews to read only “.” (ie, a period). As a protest, I’m thinking this is better than just deleting my reviews, because it’s visible.They delist you, we delist them. {shrug}
I agree that, if this was a deliberate move on Amazon’s part, it’s censorship, plain and simple. However, there is too much conflicting evidence at this point, and a lot of it makes a considerable case for the whole affair not to have been Amazon’s fault at all. If indeed they were hacked, it stands to reason that their system has an exploitable security flaw. From an economic POV, it simply doesn’t make sense for them as a business to have made that decision. And when you really think about it – why would they do it in the first place?I think the bigger likelihood is that it’s the work of a separate group, possibly of the conservatist kind, who may have had someone on the inside who helped them to pull it off. Especially when you take into account the fact that, while all of this was going on, a search across the ‘All Departments’ section on Amazon yielded only results on books which told you that “You Don;t Have To Be Gay”, and “How To Cure Homosexuality” etc. Or it could have been some kind of troll with too much time on his/her hands over Easter.
This is so outrageous and upsetting; I hope it’s a mistake, but my cynical side can’t quite swallow that. Off to write my scathing email…
I am fairly certain that this is a matter of some dweeb who, when told to write a SQL query to remove adult material from the rankings, but wasn’t given adequate details, and thus defined adult based on idiosyncratic definitions that, among other heteronormative stupidities, equates the metadata Category tag “gay and lesbian” with “adult,” hence really good books like Slow River and Always have been removed. There are *thousands* of casualties, and Quiltbag books head the list. The Category data usually comes from publishers, by the way. There’s a good discussion of it on Dear Author (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-possibly-using-category-metadata-to-filter-rankings/) with examples showing the Category data for removed books, and those that aren’t.This explains, for instance, why one edition of a book is de-listed from the sales rankings, when another isn’t, and why books like Heather has Two Mommies is, when Playboy The Complete Centerfolds is not; it’s tagged with “Nudity,” rather than “Gay and Lesbian interest.”
At this point, I care less about the how and why than the acceptance of responsibility. I *really* want a public apology.
Have you seen this from the Seattle PI?
http://tinyurl.com/ckug4j
Not an apology yet; I think there needs to be on on the front page of Amazon at the very least.
Apology, yes. But disregarding the ‘how’ and ‘why ‘in any situation is kind of a slippery slope I wouldn’t want to teeter on.
Jeff Bezos lost $80 million today, probably as a result of the mess. http://tr.im/iL1m
<>lisa<>, I saw it on the LA Times business post and got it in email from their customer service rep fifteen minutes ago.
<>lynne<>, then don’t.
<>libertango<>, my heart bleeds…
If I were losing 80 million because of this, I think I’d be doing more damage control.
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Nope, simply because I’ve seen too many instances of people being accused of things unjustly because of half-truths, rumours and broken telephone syndrome. But I do hope all of this is resolved in a satisfactory manner. No writer can argue against the fact that Amazon gets their books out to people who have little or no access to big bookstores. As someone who has on occasion lived out in the whops (country) I can vouch for that. Maybe that’s why I’m quietly watching them. For now.
I signed the petition. I also commented that, as fate would have it, my son wanted me to preorder a game for him for his upcoming birthday from Amazon, which I will not do now. Sweet!
I also told them that if they want to pander to some loud fringe subset of society (religious fundies) then they’ll suffer the wrath of the noncrazies who are mostly silent, but nontheless funny with their money.