In the weekend I noticed something very strange on Twitter – everybody seem to talk about #amazonfail. I was surprised, but I tried to get to the bottom of this and I found out that Amazon is now removing LGBT titles from the Amazon sales rank. Why? Because gay, lesbian and erotic literature is too adult for Amazon.com therefore they will not appear in the Amazon rank.

The Amazon sales rank is a tool which shows how a good a book sells compared to other books. Amazon fail was first noticed by author Mark R. Probst who saw that Transgressions by Erastes and False Colors by Alex Beecroft, two high-profile gay romance books were removed from the Amazon rank. He thought this was a glitch, but then hundreds of other LGBT books were removed so he decided to write them a note, and Amazon’s response was quick:

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.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D

Member Services

Amazon.com Advantage

We all know that Amazon is right with this, however as Probst noticed, there are several hundreds of other adult books that can still be found in Amazon rank. This re-classification means that Amazon has a new policy and that they decided to keep it a secret. When everybody was blaming Amazon for being homophobic, they quickly responded and said that a glitch caused the LGBT titles to disappear from their sales rank. Amazon says that the glitch is now being fixed, but so far nobody noticed any improvements.

I don’t know what to say, I think that they wanted to test users and then say that there is a glitch. Amazon please stop this – gay, lesbian, and transgenders are humans too, and you have no right to exclude them!

Image credit: Bill T