Amazon Gay Books Row Continues
Gay book "The Filly" by Mark Probst
The Amazon gay books row continues despite the huge online store saying they would undo their actions that resulted in the recategorisation of gay and lesbian books into their own ‘adult’ category. Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener has described the company’s actions as “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloguing error”.
The gay and lesbian category is comparable to ‘top shelf’ and products within this category do not receive an Amazon ‘sales rank’ or appear in bestseller lists.
This means that Amazon gay books are much harder to find and will not sell as well. The majority of the books that have been moved do not contain adult content, including both Stephen Fry’s and John Barrowman’s autobiographies, and a gay romance novel by the American author Mark Probst.
Amazon Complaint by Mark Probst
On his blog Mark Probst tells how he had complained to Amazon after he noticed his book “The Filly” had been moved into the gay and lesbian category. Amazon originally responded “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.”
Amazon Gay Books Petition
Amazon’s actions drew huge protests at the Twitter networking site, and a petition in protest at Amazon’s new adult policy has been set up which so far has already attracted 21000 signatures and this continues to grow at a huge rate. It remains to be seen whether the scale of the public protest will encourage Amazon to make further statements on this matter, or offer to compensate the people affected by their actions.
Herdener pointed out that it was not only Amazon’s gay books that were affected by the recategorisation error, and that the errors are being corrected as soon as possible. He did not accept claims that a hacker was responsible for the debacle by misusing the company’s system for reporting inappropriate content.
by staff writer
(c) Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
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