Monday, April 13, 2009

Tell Amazon to Stop Discriminating Against LGBT Books

It was recently revealed that Amazon has been stripping the sales rank of gay and lesbian books, labeling them as "adult" content and removing them from search rankings.

At the same time, books about heterosexual porn stars, Playboy centerfolds, and techniques on how to "cure" homosexuality remain ranked.

Please tell Amazon this discrimination is unacceptable and must be stopped immediately, and that as a public company they should release a transparent set of guidelines on how books are classified on the site.

Your change.org email will be targeted to Amazon customer service as well as Jeff Bezos the CEO of the company.

3 comments:

WickedGayBlog.com said...

Good news, it was all an error:

http://www.edgenewengland.com/index.php?ch=technology&sc=personal_tech&sc2=&sc3=&id=89580

Queers United said...

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.

LH said...

Glad to hear it. I was starting to freak out trying to figure out where I would be buying my books now.

Post a Comment