After removing then restoring gay and lesbian book titles to its sales rankings, Amazon.com has been caught in a logic loop that defies all logic. And thanks to Twitter and Facebook the story that somehow thousands of books mysteriously disappeared from the sales ranks after Amazon adjusted its listings of “adult” books spread like wildfire. On April 13th the AP reported the story this way:
Amazon ‘glitch’ removes sales rank from gay books–AP
NEW YORK A “glitch” on Amazon.com has caused the sales rank to be removed from gay- and/or lesbian-themed books by James Baldwin, Gore Vidal and others.
“There was a glitch in our systems and it’s being fixed,” Amazon’s director of corporate communications, Patty Smith, said in an e-mail Sunday.
As of Sunday night, books without rankings included Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room,” Vidal’s “The City and the Pillar” and Jeanette Winterson’s “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.” The removals prompted furious remarks on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere online.”
That’s right, it was just a glitch. Right? Only apparently it wasn’t. And gay author Francine Saint Marie did a little experiment to prove it:
“We pulled every single Saint Marie LGBT title from the Kindle store, deleted all gay/lesbian categories and tags from them, republished them as plain, old, ordinary romances, and then sat back to see what would happen. If we were right, if our theory correct, we reasoned, then we should have sales rankings in approximately twenty-four hours…
Twenty-four little hours later, I couldn’t help but whoop with joy. There were sales rankings on all of my titles in the Kindle store, and some were even on the bestselling lists! A week or two later, we began gingerly adding the gay/lesbian categories once again. This time, however, without the search tags — and without consequence.”
Which means all those bestseller lists, including Kindle lists are worth the pixels they are printed on. The irony is that Amazon.com is ne of the biggest seelers of gay themed books. And videos. And DVDs. Maybe thats whats up with that little babana shaped thing in the logo?
