Is this book (or its author) too gay for an Amazon?
3:01 PM PDT, April 12, 2009, updated at 7:04 PM PDT, April 14, 2009
My book, like many, many others, was recently deranked by Amazon. (As of Monday night, April 13th, its rank was restored. This entry is edited to reflect that.)
In other words, it was no longer listed in the sales ranks with other books of its subject or genre, no matter how good my sales are, or if my sales are above others who are currently listed. As well, my book, as is the case with many others, was not listed anymore in the subject heading appropriate to it. That deranking can massively impact us as authors, and also can impact consumers, particularly those who are trying to seek out material on a subject broadly without knowing what books are available by title or author. And with books that serve any sort of marginalized population or subject matter, finding them offline is often tough. Deranking books like mine further marginalizes the already marginalized. The books this primarily appears to have impacted are those by gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender authors, young adult or children's books addressing sexuality, some sexuality books in general (including reference books), as well as some feminist titles. Some of the titles deranked besides mine include/included: James Baldwin's, Giovanni's Room, Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, E. M. Forster's Maurice, Various, I Do: an anthology in support of marriage equality, Alex Sanchez's Rainbow Road, The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students, Kate Bornstein's Hello Creul World, Milk: A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk, Dan Savage's The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant, Jessica Valenti & Jaclyn Friedman, The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability: For All of Us Who Live with Disabilities, Chronic Pain and Illness, Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, Ruth Bell's Changing Bodies, Changing Lives: Expanded Third Edition: A Book for Teens on Sex and Relationships, Jessica Valenti's Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, Toni Weschler's Cycle Savvy: The Smart Teen's Guide to the Mysteries of Her Body, Ellen DeGeneres: A Biography and many, many more. At this time, there is still no clear statement from Amazon as to what, exactly, happened. However, one author, writing in, received the following reply: "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" The trouble with that reply is that there is PLENTY of very explicilty "adult" material which has NOT been deranked, and we don't need to guess much about if it is or isn't adult when we simply look at some of the titles: Girls Gone Wild: Girls on Girls, Surrender the Booty 3: The Search for More Arse, Jenna Jameson: Ultimate Collection, Girls Kissing: Volume One, Ron Jeremy: The Hardest Working Man in Showbiz, Candy Girl: A Year In The Life Of An Unlikely Stripper, Hot Babes… My book is intended for young adults, and is GLBT-inclusive, and penned by me, a queer author. It is not salacious, it is not pornography: it is a sexuality, sexual health and relationships reference book. Heather Has Two Mommies is a supportive and classic children's book about gay families. Hello, Cruel World is a suicide prevention book (which just happens to be written by a transgender author). That's a short list, but the point is, many of the books that have were deranked are not adult books at all, nor adult or salacious material, but what nearly all of them, so far, do seem to be are tagged or labeled in some way as GLBT, or as books addressing sexuality in a non-heteronormative or gendernormative way. To give you an idea of how this deranking has impacted a given subject you'd search for, take a look at the current list for books on homosexuality. (Note: this will now appear different. At the time of the deranking, the top book on that list was "A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.") You perhaps noticed a prevailing theme, and see that if I were looking for books on how what is WRONG with homosexuality, I'd find exactly what I needed there. But if I were merely researching to topic as a whole -- or, horror of horrors, did not want to read what was wrong with me and why I needed fixing -- I'd find a strange lack of well-rounded material on the subject, including some of the most cornerstone books on or about homosexuality. Huh. This obviously isn't about adult material. It seems painfully clear what it is likely about, and all we can hope is that a) we're wrong in seeing what we are, or that this is some kind of glitch Amazon will fix immediately, and/or b) that if we're not wrong in our perception of this event, Amazon realizes that, even for a private business who has the right to discriminate however they choose, this kind of discrimination is wrong. To keep up with what's been going on, you can see the twitter feed #amazonfail here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=amazonfail The following open letter is also very informative: http://booksquare.com/open-letter-to-amazon-regard ing-recent-policy-changes/ Why am I blogging this here? In part because I'd hope, as an author Amazon feels comfortable making a profit from, the least I can do is voice my concerns right here, where my book lives at Amazon. But also, because until this is cleared up, and we all have some real explanation and the matter is fully rectified -- and I'll adapt this post if and when it does -- I'd prefer consumers bought my book somewhere else, where we're all as sure as we can be a company isn't engaging in sexual discrimination. I put a letter into Amazon early Sunday morning myself, and got this response Monday evening: “Thank you for contacting Amazon.com. This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection. It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search. Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future. Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon. Sincerely, Customer Service Department Amazon.com Note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.” For my feelings on the "glitch" and this statement, check out my piece at The Guardian today.
Initial post:
April 12, 2009 4:48 PM PDT
elizabeth says:
This is disgusting. as a librarian who studies YA queer novels, and relies on sites such as amazon to properly index items, this revolts me.
Thank you for pointing this out, and don't keep quiet! (I love your book - was a gift from a friend, and it's amazingly useful!)
Posted on
April 12, 2009 5:40 PM PDT
George Kirk says:
Amazon's discriminatory, bigoted policy here disturbs me. I will have great difficulty continuing to be a consumer to an organization that so blatantly seeks to marginalize gays and lesbians.
Posted on
April 12, 2009 7:52 PM PDT
Last edited by the author on April 12, 2009 7:57 PM PDT
Rebecca Dawn says:
(serves me right for hitting "sign in" before I was done typing. D'oh.)
I'd be a lot more inclined to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt and assume algorithm glitches or whatever would cause this to happen accidentally, were it not for the response the Mark Probst received when he emailed in to see what was going on. It's much easier to excuse a website glitch than a change in policy, so why, if she's just making excuses, would this woman say that it was Amazon policy and not just a glitch, or something they hadn't yet figured out? It's complete BS, and I can tell you that me (vaguely genderqueer, polyamorous, feminist DYKE) and my TWO GIRLFRIENDS will be driving to the bookstore or ordering from another site for the foreseeable future, and I know plenty of people who feel the same.
Posted on
April 12, 2009 7:58 PM PDT
L. Smith says:
Thank you for blogging about this ON the site in question! Very nice.
Posted on
April 13, 2009 3:06 AM PDT
Darren G. Burton says:
All of my books have been deranked, and they are in the "Relationship / Dating" genre for straight people. There is nothing sexually explicit, controversial, gay, lesbian or otherwise in my books, yet Amazon felt the need to derank them.
So, Amazon's deranking of books in various genres seems indiscriminate and somewhat random. I saw all this deranking starting to happen on Friday. I'm not sure if any more books have been deranked since then. I've been following my own titles and the ones paired with them (some have lost rankings and some haven't) and none of those have changed since Friday. A few weeks ago Amazon deleted all the reviews I'd written on other books and started deleting reviews on my own titles. They also deleted all of my Listmania Lists and So You'd Like To Guides. There is more to this than just a glitch in Amazon's system. And there is more to this than removing the sales rankings.
Posted on
April 13, 2009 6:01 AM PDT
Joshua D. Nathan says:
I am revolted by Amazon's policy, and I am glad you are raising alarm (on this site of all places). I encourage you to keep up pressure on Amazon until they grow up and join the 21st century. Good luck!
In reply to an earlier post on
April 13, 2009 8:45 AM PDT
Wildly Parenthetical says:
I'm not convinced it's 'random', Darren. If you take a look at all the books tagged under amazonfail *on* amazon, you'll see a fair whack of disappeared books, mostly focussed on 'gay and lesbian' themes, but including academic texts, feminist texts, texts about disability and sexuality (some academic, some self-help). Whilst I agree it's not *only* queer stuff that's been excluded, it's telling that only those straight texts which might have sex in them (or, as theory I read somewhere, might have 'sexuality' as a keyword) like yours, even if not sexually explicit, are deranked, whilst het romance and even porn get the a-OK. I don't think it's indiscriminate; but I think that the keywords that have been used to select texts for de-ranking have biased it unfairly towards GLBT and other non-normative sexual content: probably things like 'sexuality', 'queer', 'gay' (given that anti-gay lit usually uses 'homosexuality'), 'gay romance' etc were deemed 'adult. That's a serious problem. I agree, though, that it's bigger than sales rankings: they seem to have also 'moved' all of those books deemed 'adult' so that they're only accessible via subcategories (where the subcategories are already 'self-evidently' 'adult'). The deletion of reviews is exceedingly troubling, too...
Posted on
April 13, 2009 9:44 AM PDT
Renee Bianchi says:
Heather, this is atrocious. I canceled my Amazon card. I did business with them for my store, Stone Buddha. I will no longer be doing that. Boycott in place.
Posted on
April 13, 2009 4:07 PM PDT
jennyblues says:
Amazon's policy is unacceptable, and until they fix it and explain what happened, I will not be making my purchases here. Thankfully, I already have Heather's book!
In reply to an earlier post on
April 13, 2009 8:53 PM PDT
Heather Corinna says:
I'll write more on this tomorrow, but I did finally hear back from them -- though I'm not particularly satisfied with the response -- and my ranking has, just now, been put back.
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