An uproar began on the Internet on Sunday after writer Mark R. Read the full post.
Apr 13
2009
02:05 PM ET
Amazon.com under criticism for de-ranking gay-themed books
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The only glitch is in their business acumen. And to those who say a company can’t be this stupid I have two words for you. New Coke.
For a time last night, the #1 search result if you searched under “gay” was a book titled “The Parents Guide To Preventing Homosexuality.”
That is an Epic Fail, Amazon.
You’d think people would have learned after Hilary got tangled up on that “sniper fire landing.” This is not a glitch. A mistake? Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Support publishers like Phaze that are responding directly…or even just buy from Borders and B & N. Hit them where it hurts… The balance sheet.
Thad, if they stopped ranking any of those books, I couldn’t care less.
Ed, Amazon has done no such thing. Claiming they donate to “extremely conservative people/movements” is spurious and absolutely ridiculous.
If it turns out they tried to deliberately hide the rankings of GLBT books, I will happily apologize and join you in protest, for that would be a vile policy. But it would be a huge about-face for the company, not to mention horrible PR. It makes no sense.
If I want a certain book or a certain type of book, I will find it, rankings have no affect on what I buy. I can think for myself.
Shamrock: That’s great that you don’t care what sexual orientation people are! Now if only the US government felt the same way in allowing people legal rights as concerns the people they love. If only those who commit hate crimes or disown their children felt the same way! If everyone was as enlightened as you, there wouldn’t be an issue.
Les: Yeah, they haven’t stopped selling gay themed books, technically. But they’ve made them far more difficult to find, and therefore are far less likely to sell them. So if not selling them is bigotry, and Amazon is preventing them from being sold, then by your own argument it is bigotry! Do you not understand how people use Amazon? Are you always in there typing in the ISBN of the books you want, or do you sometimes use the search feature?
So apparently the “glitch” was a hardcore cross-side scripting attack. You might have voted to flag a book as adult and not even known it.
Lauran,
Gee I didn’t know that a website like Amazon could be so complex. Usually I just type in the name of the book I want and there it is. Wow. Then I press proceed to checkout. Is it somehow different for you?
Les, that’s what I do. Maybe I don’t get it, what am I missing?
Les: To quote a comment from elsewhere, “A consequence is there are gay teens looking up books on Amazon looking for answers and help, they might be suicidal, and they are being returned anti-gay and ex-gay books when they search for ‘homosexuality’.”
That seems pretty likely to happen. It also seems like a really big deal.
I just went to Amazon, went to the book section and typed in “Heather has two Mommies” in the search, and there it was, 10th anniversary edition.
William Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch” – Amazon sales rank #4, 636. William Burroughs’ “Queer” – Amazon sales rank oddly missing. “Glitch”, my aunt Fanny.
Here’s a shocker – other people might do something differently than you. They could go to Amazon to search for a book by keyword, without a specific title in mind. Now, many of the gay-positive books will be much further down in the ranks and in many cases the anti-gay books and thus displayed far more prominently.
When I searched for “Heather Has Two Mommies” it was the 15th result, I think. That seems wrong to me.
If I am looking for a book on a subject, Amazon isn’t the first place I would go. There’s this cool website called Google that I use.
Really? When I looked it up it was #1
Laura,
If a gay teen can’t find information on the internet about homosexuality besides Amazon.com (I’m pretty sure there are other sources) then they probably should be worrying about other things besides their sexual orientation. And if you go on Amazon and search suicide, about 100 self help books show up, so your point is mute.