I'm on a mission today -- contact Amazon
Amazon has classified every book it can identify as gay-related -- sociology texts, novels, young adult novels, reference books, poetry anthologies ... everything) as "adult" and removed all their sales rankings. This causes the books not to show up in general searches, or to show up in improbable positions in the search results. Included are books like Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness" (whose only sexual content is the line "and that night they were not separated" and James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room." It includes actual children's books like "Heather Has Two Mommies." Recently published books without sales rankings can actually become bestsellers on Amazon without a soul knowing about it. At first, Amazon was frank about their intention:
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
Since that reply to author Mark Probst, they have claimed that a "glitch" is responsible. Did you know a computer program could develop a glitch that mimics plain old gutter homophobia perfectly? Kindly spread the word. This site has information and an extremely long list of books affected and (and this is really interesting) not affected. Tons of racy straight novels and even a book of Playboy centerfolds still have rankings:
http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html?page=2#comments
Readers are doing searches right now and adding to the totals. I discovered that any book with "queer" in the title, including anthologies used in queer studies programs in universities, the sociological study "Queer Wars" (about assimilationists versus liberationists in the gay intellectual community) and one poetry anthology, have been de-ranked.