I've spent about $100 on Amazon.com so far in 2009. I won't spend a $1 more until this stops.
The good people at Amazon have made a small change to the way you can search for books. It’s Easter Sunday, so you’re probably not supposed to notice. The target of their new approach is anything that they consider to have adult content, and especially anything that might involve GLBT issues. The writing community is already staring to blaze about this, but it needs much wider attention. <p>Basically, any title that Amazon consider "adult" will no longer be included in the "Best Sellers" lists – or ranked at all. These titles will not show up on all searches, even when the exact title of the book is entered. Who decides what books are "adult"? That’s not at all clear. But whoever’s making the choices is casting the net far and wide, and hauling in an awful lot of GLBT books.What are some of these books?
This is the ever-growing list of titles that have been scrubbed by this policy change from Meta Writer at Live Journal. Many are non-fiction works, such as Dr. Nathaniel Frank’s Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America and The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students.It gets worse when you go to the Live Journal site.
According to Towleroad, Amazon's now claiming this is all just a glitch -- but they've offered no explanation as to how it happened, why it happened on Easter Weekend (when few are paying attention) and, most importantly, why it mainly happened to books about gay issues or with gay characters. Quite frankly, Amazon just isn't credible right now -- this isn't even the first time something like this has happened with the website company. They owe it to their costumers and the glbt community to explain exactly what happened and what steps will be done to make sure it never happens again.
Please, sign the petition now. Angry costumers and Amazon losing money is the only way to make sure this is a) properly resolved and b) never happens again.