It came through the pileline today that Amazon.com is removing the rankings for erotic GLBT books.
Case and point? Zane’s lesbian anthology Purple Panties has no genre ranking. Neither does the Best Lesbian Erotica 2009. But Laurell K Hamilton’s Mistral’s Kiss, with it’s infamous 100 page sex scene, is still listed in not one but three different rankings.
Mark Probst sent an email to Amazon asking for an explanation and received in reply:
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
Oh Amazon, do you mean books containing adult materials like:
Witch Fire by Anya Bast
Grimspace by Ann Aguirre
Personal Demons by Stacia Kane
Kink by Kathe Koja (which proves that Amazon actually has a category for Erotic works, yet is excluding GLBT erotica from it)
Or even Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland, a book that cumulates with a (in book) two week long violent rape scene.
So multiple rape scenes and heterosexual sex scenes aren’t “adult material”, and neither is Fighting Dogs or fighting cocks(no puns)?
Perhaps they will use Poppy Z. Brite’s Drawing Blood to prove they aren’t keeping GLBT books from being discovered (You know, just like they weren’t making the sales of books self published through businesses other than CreateSpace difficult. Or cutting off Hachett UK’s buy buttons in an attempt to strong arm the publisher into giving Amazon deeper discounts.)
GLBT books that don’t include erotica (such as Brian Keene’s Dead Sea, and the Unspeakable Horror and QueerWolf anthologies) don’t seem to have been striken from Amazon’s good list.
Honestly, I don’t have a problem with an “Explicit content warning” on Amazon’s pages, but it should be consistent practice, not used as a tool to appease a minority anti-GLBT customer base.
Yes, Amazon, the anti-GLBT can be a very vocal, very volitile minority. But so can those of us who are in the GLBT community.
I encourage others who are outraged by this to let Amazon know how you feel. And of course you’ll notice that Amazon doesn’t make it easy to contact them. Of course not! They want to sell you things, not have to actually deal with you.
So here:
Amazon. com Customer Service
PO Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226
206-266-1000
Toll free: 1-800-201-7575
Fax: 206-266-2335
*ETA: Here’s where a list is being kept of all the books whose sales ranks are being removed and their erotic content.
