Amazon anti-GLBT shenanigans

This will be something of a one subject only blog, but I make no apologies as I think it's important. Because, ye gods and little fishes, what a weekend. Unbeknownst to all of us, we've actually taken something of a time journey and are now living in the 1950s. In case you hadn't realised, or are utterly flummoxed by events so far, this has been the weekend that Amazon US and UK decided to remove books with "adult" content from their sales rankings and full search facilities. Thus making it all but impossible to buy them from that great online retailer unless you put in a very, very specific title, as the "similar categories" and tagged searches option no longer apply for these books.

Moreover, "adult" books also seem to include all GLBT books, whether or not they actually contain "adult' content, or sex of any description. Therefore books such as Young Adult gay book, Mark Probst's The Filly, have been stripped of their rankings, alongside Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, some editions of Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet (interestingly the edition that survives is the one that doesn’t mention the word Lesbian in the “similar items” search field), EM Forster’s Maurice, Edmund White’s The Beautiful Room is Empty, Mary Renault’s The Charioteer, and a host of other previously high-charting modern gay fiction books. Heterosexual books with sex in them on the whole maintain their rankings in the system. Worrying enough indeed but, interestingly, Kindle versions (an Amazon product of course …) still have rankings, although in at least one case the gay label has been removed from the Kindle entry. Lord H also tells me that as of a couple of hours ago, you could buy the film of Brokeback Mountain from Amazon, but not the book. Sigh ...

Neither has non-fiction remained untouched. The behind-the-scenes book on Queer as Folk no longer has a ranking, and neither does the hardcover edition of John Barrowman’s Anything Goes or Neil McKenna’s The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde.

You can read more about this and find out about current press coverage information, including two very differing Amazon responses to objections, at my Vulpes Libris article here. And the petition against Amazon's strange anti-GLBT stance can be found here. Please do read the article, visit the links within it and, if you feel able to and haven't already, sign the petition. I think it's important, whether or not you're a reader or writer of GLBT books. It's something I feel very strongly about and we don't really want that kind of censorship in our society. Thank you.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website - sighing deeply but standing up for fairness, whether she disappears or not ...