Note about the post below: for the latest report on Amazon.com, see Publisher’s Weekly: “Amazon Says Glitch to Blame for “New” Adult Policy.” http://tinyurl.com/cacyu4
Also, an overview in the U.K. Guardian: http://ow.ly/2JTF
Amazon.com has stripped selected titles of their sales ranking, ostensibly for their “adult” content. Here are a few of the titles:
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
The Well of Loneliness
Picture of Dorian Gray
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Bastard out of Carolina
Brokeback Mountain
Fanny Hill
Giovanni’s Room
Rubyfruit Jungle
False Colours
A Single Man
The Beautiful Room Is Empty
Tipping The Velvet
For a fuller list of titles: here.
This is shocking! The majority of titles being “punished” in this way have lesbian or gay subjects. How can this be allowed? Do we not live in a democracy? I’m not buying another title from Amazon.com until they reverse this perverse move.
Outraged! I regret that most of my titles on my website link to Amazon.com.
Amazon customer service email: and the customer service phone number is 1-800-201-7575. Or email .
I’ve signed an on-line petition against it—here—and I hope others will as well.
An up-date: Lilian Nattel, reporting from Canada, said that she could see the sales ranks for the titles mentioned. I checked, from Mexico, and I could as well. I posted the puzzle on Twitter, and Holly Tucker, a historian and academic, showed me what she saw for Water‘s Tipping the Velvet, when logging onto Amazon.com from the U.S.: no sales rank. Logging onto Amazon.com from Mexico, the sales rank is listed.
And so: the plot thickens. Apparently people in the U.S. are not permitted to see the sales ranks of books involving gay or lesbian relationships. This is unbelievable.
It continues to shock me! I don’t understand why this “glitch” can’t be quickly corrected. I just posted a link to an article about it in the U.K. Guardian: http://ow.ly/2JTF
I’m happy you signed!
Thank you for the link to the petition. I have signed it as well. Don’t understand what the difference is in homosexual and heterosexual work. It should be an all or nothing policy, not blatantly discriminatory.
I signed the petition you linked to, and Amazon won’t be getting any more of my money until this has been sorted. Pathetic! I can’t believe some of the titles that are involved. Censorship is alive and well…and, ironically, will probably boost sales, ranked or not, of some of the books just from the curiosity factor.
Linda
Lilian, I’m a little confused, as well. I checked some of the titles, and you are right: they do have their sales ranking. Others do not, however.
I posted some questions on Twitter, where much of the outrage is being expressed (and mobilized). I suspect we’ll see news stories tomorrow. I think the problem is real:
http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html
http://lisagoldresearch.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/amazon-sets-the-blogosphere-on-fire/
Here is all the Twitter talk about it:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=amazonfail
Rumour is that the same policy will be applied to Amazon.ca.
Some of this is rumour, but I’d be surprised if quite a bit of it is not, also, fact. Authors being personally affected are reporting in.
Sandra, I fired off an email because I was outraged, too. But then I looked for a news story and didn’t find one. I couldn’t find an original source either–just blog postings quoting from each other. I checked out Amazon and several of those books. All have their sales rankings there. So I don’t know whether this happened and it was reversed, or whether it was just a rumour. Do you know?
Wow. This is intolerable. I’ve emailed.