Online retailer
Amazon.com recently began to
de-rank books
containing "adult" content, resulting in what appears to be
an arbitrary censoring of many gay and lesbian titles.
The
censored titles
span a variety of genres and include pillars of gay and lesbian
literature such as
Giovanni's Room
by James Baldwin,
Rubyfruit Jungle
by Rita Mae Brown, and
Stone Butch Blues
by Leslie Feinberg.
Books that are
de-ranked lose the chance to appear in Amazon's best-seller
lists, and also may be removed from search results.
Author and independent
publisher Mark Probst noticed the change on Saturday, according
to the
Los Angeles Times.
Probst inquired with Amazon, and received the following
response:
"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."
In a display of the new
policy's inconsistency, some books with adult content, such as
Naked Lunch
by William Burroughs and
Tropic of Cancer
by Henry Miller, remain ranked. Other cases show that the same
book may or may not be de-ranked, depending on the
publisher.
Notice of the change
spread swiftly across Twitter over the weekend, and a Facebook
petition has been launched to condemn the de-rankings.
By Sunday evening, Amazon had blamed the de-rankings on a
"glitch"
that it said was being corrected.
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