Amazon’s Gay ‘Glitch’ Puts Books in the Closet

Posted on Apr 13, 2009

amazon.com

Gore Vidal and E.M. Forster were among the authors who had books involved in the Amazon.com controversy.

Amazon fell into hot water with the gay community after gay-themed books began disappearing from the site’s sales rankings. Amazon blamed the problem on a “glitch” and has restored some of the titles, but one author says a representative from the site told him his work had been recategorized as “adult.”

Wall Street Journal:

Despite the changes, some books were still missing rankings, including a lesbian love story by Sylvia Brownrigg and a novel about gay lovers in 5th century Britain by Fae Sutherland and Marguerite Labbe. A biography of Ellen DeGeneres by Lisa Iannucci is also missing a sales rank.

The issue flared up in recent days, after authors began to blog about their rankings disappearing. Author Mark Probst wrote that an Amazon customer service representative told him on Saturday that his book had been classified as “adult”—a class of books that is not included in sales rankings.

Other authors, including gay memoir writer Craig Seymour, reported that their sales rankings disappeared as early as February.

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