Amazon decides LGBT books such as the picture book HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES are “too adult” for inclusion in its sales ranks.
Smart Bitches Trashy Books responds. (HT: ReviewerX)
If you Twitter (I don’t), read #amazonfail — apparently the most-searched Twitter trend within hours of Amazon making the change today. Author Maureen Johnson has some good tweets up on her blog, which is now in our blogroll.
This is not the first crazy/horrible Amazon corporate decision — they’ve long been censoring books critical of Scientology, for example — but it is possibly the most stupid. Haven’t they heard? There’s a new gay rights movement.
If anyone’s got updates (or other good parodies/responses to Amazon), please share!
UPDATE: Good blog coverage; you can read #amazonfail even without a Twitter account; and a petition to sign.
UPDATE #2: Jezebel says it all in pictures.
-->Feed me text
April 12, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Okay, I know the SBTB response is down at the moment. It was up just 10 mins ago, so hopefully will be again soon…
April 13, 2009 at 1:00 am
Yup, that link is back up.
Also, since my friend Sherry’s about-to-be-published book is one of the victims of this censorship, I will give her the very mild compensation of a link to her very awesome book on the publisher’s website. Screw you, Amazon.
April 13, 2009 at 2:25 am
This is horrid. I have no words.
Apparently it’s also feminist books. And books on rape. Jezebel is covering it pretty well. Ugh. I hate that it’s amazon.com. I used to love ordering from them, and this is wrong. It really makes me shudder that the first hit from “homosexuality” is a book on preventing it. I mean, that really gave me the creeps.
April 13, 2009 at 9:50 am
Wow, I haven’t seen the stuff about it being feminist books and books about rape — just wow.
Totally true on the homosexuality search (I did it last night), but I wonder how much of that is that only the creepy anti-gay books use that word? When I was testing this last night, I found that I could still find normal gay books, but I had to search for them pretty specifically because with no sales rank, anything else that meets the search criteria will show up higher.
My friend Nicole tells me that this also includes things like the autobiography of actor Stephen Fry. Stuff like that is why I’m just a bit stunned that anyone at Amazon ever thought this was a good idea.
April 13, 2009 at 10:27 am
[...] Outrageous. [...]
April 13, 2009 at 2:58 pm
May I advocate an alternative theory? The timing and subject of the censorship make me wonder if it’s a bunch of religious zealots trying to advance their agenda by disrupting bits of the internet.
Rather than deposit a huge post in your comments window, I’ve put something on my own blog:
http://www.daweaver.free-online.co.uk/2009/04/amazonfail.html
April 13, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Weaver: I’m not sure whether or not I find your theory plausible. I definitely think an organized anti-gay campaign is likely somewhere at the root of this, but it seems to me that Amazon is at least complicit.
Here’s a post about how they’ve responded by saying it’s “just a glitch” but initially defended the exclusion of books to their authors.
April 13, 2009 at 6:26 pm
It’s still pretty upsetting. They really need to revamp their system if it was a “glitch.” In what world is a book on Playboy Centerfolds not “adult” but the children’s book “Heather Has Two Mommies” not? Also that link on Jezebel about that book targeted towards men on dating wasn’t adult but the one targeted to lesbian women was adult. (Guess which one had a more explicit cover?) GAH!
It’s obnoxious b/c I loved Amazon.com. I mean, I still like the company, but I don’t like what happened this weekend. Ugh.