Current mood:	patient
Current music:	Styx - Mr Roboto
Entry tags:	politics

Amazon.com discriminating against gay and lesbian books.
"Heather Has Two Mommies" is an adult book. At least according to Amazon.com it is.

Who knew?

You're probably hearing about this from everyone, but let me add my voice to the chorus. Amazon.com is stripping the sales rankings from gay and lesbian books. As the post says:

If you write books with homosexual characters, read books with homosexual characters, please look at this:

Mark,Erastes, and Alex (among others) had their Amazon sales rankings removed over the last few days for The Filly, Transgressions and False Colours respectively. On enquiring about this, Mark was told the following:

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

Please note that just before this, Erastes' Transgressions and Alex's False Colours were topping out the rankings. Also note that "The Filly" is a YA Book, and therefore I would suggest one of the more important books to have out there for kids questioning their identity, and Transgressions and False Colours are being shelved with the Romance section of Barnes and Noble. Though as Mark points out, that is of no fucking importance because this is homophobic bias pure and simple.

I have no idea what to do about this except spread the message. If anyone has any ideas on what to do, tell me. Because I am not letting this lie. As vashtan said, they are happy to take the money, but not happy to give these books the recognition they rightly deserve.

Chris.

PS. Not linking to these books on Amazon, for obvious reasons. If people would give me other sites on which to buy them, will amend the post.

ETA: Letter to Amazon here: http://c-smith-author.livejournal.com/20968.html

vashton has begun compiling an eye-opening list.

You can email Amazon.com here (you'll need to log in).