Amazon Tries to Explain Blacklisting LGBT Books: a “Glitch”

[Source: WSJ blog & MediaMemo Blog] This week end, blogger Mark R. Probst received this reply from Amazon about the disappearance of the sales ranking from two high profile gay romance books “Transgressions” by Erastes and “False Colors” by Alex Beecroft:

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 then, the protest is spreading on Twitter under the tag AmazonFail (see picture). According to writer Peter Kafka, MediaMemo blog’s author, Amazon wrote a note to him and several other reporters stating: “We recently discovered a glitch to our Amazon sales rank feature that is in the process of being fixed. We’re working to correct the problem as quickly as possible.”

In my opinion, a public apology would be better than this poor statement.