@Lori, I dunno, it depends. The YA books getting deranked are pretty arbitrary, and though gay-themed YA does still come up many popular books have been de-listed. Notably Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez.

@people who think that this was a hack or someone doing it “for the lulz”, there have been reports circulating on author/publishing industry/librarian blogs that authors were getting notifications re: being classified as “adult” as far back as February, and were told that they do not have any recourse to get their book un-listed.

About Kate’s friends statement” good people can work for companies that do bad things sometimes. And this is the sort of decision that would have come down more-or-less from the top. I’m not inclined towards conspiracy thinking, but based on my understanding of the impact of amazons policies it would not surprise me in the least to learn that this was deliberate and intentional. When people hack amazon they make all the electronics $1, etc. They don’t suddenly hide all the books that have obvious, labled, gay content.

And recommending amazon because of its ubiquity is part of why it has become the behemoth that it is today. Amazon is a huge corporation because people hear about it and do not consider investigating alternatives. Back in the bad old days the government would consider busting up monopolies like amazon that are “fully integrated” (and an earlier poster put it) into “every aspect” of peoples lives.

I’m sorry if this comes off as too vitriolic. I have spent years trying to discourage people from using amazon, and this is the first time they’ve done something to really gain the attention of a wide swath of (potentially receptive) people. My entire family (more or less) is involved with independent books in some way and the actions that amazon has taken in the last ten years seem to have affected pretty much every level of the industry.

Powell’s are an independent gone nationwide, I believe.

Also, having done some more research, apparently Borders donate a lot to the Republican Party. GOD WHY? I’m going to fashion my own books from glue and coloured paper, that’s what I’m going to do.

Not to mention LGBT allies and anyone else who feels oogy about buying products from a company that’s OK with letting “You don’t have to be gay!” manuals show up as the top results for a search on “homosexuality” -

I just went and checked Amazon.co.uk and they still fucking are! On Wednesday morning! Whatever, Amazon.

Henceforth I will be moving my online book-buying to Borders. Who, in delightful contrast, had an instore display coming up to Valentine’s Day called “All Kinds of Love” that featured (among Pride and Prejudice, rom-coms, etc) the Sugar Rush boxsets. That made me happier than I can tell you. Borders = win. Amazon = no thank you. If they don’t care whether they have my custom, fine, they don’t.

And yet, nothing was investigated or fixed until there was a mob screaming on the internet.

Personally, I’m guessing it’s a combination of bad QA and bad customer service (which explains the number of “it is our policy to delist adult books” responses to people inquiring about books that have no explicit sexual content) – I’ve worked in several big companies that experienced “programming errors” and the programming doesn’t get fixed or not fixed based on how difficult it is – it gets fixed if the company thinks it’s important. If not, not.

It doesn’t have to be an evil conspiracy to have a bad effect – neglecting to fix errors that aren’t perceived as important can have the exact same effect.

DRST