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Lowenstein: #Amazonfail should remind us of our economic power
By Jenna Lowenstein 04.13.2009 10:04am EDT

It’s something of a coincidence that I spent much of my holiday weekend reading The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. I picked up Dan Shilts’ definitive biography of Harvey Milk at my local bookstore last week (shout out to Lambda Rising, one of the last LGBT bookstores in existence) on something of a whim, and I haven’t been able to put it down since.

So when I first heard yesterday about #Amazonfail, the change (purposeful or otherwise) in the Amazon.com ranking system that meant most LGBT focused books lost their sales ranking, the first thing I did was search for Mayor of Castro Street. After a weekend of reading that complex and important biography, I was pretty shocked to find that it too had lost its sales ranking. Was it a serious, difficult book? Certainly. Was it adult material? Certainly not.

Of course my experience was mirrored by many. Jezebel pulled together a list of books that saw their rankings purged,including Ellen Degeneres: A Biography, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Queer Theory, Gender Theory: A Primer, and Heather Has Two Mommies, potentially the most frequently banned children’s book in America.

Books that Jezebel pointed out weren’t removed from the rankings? Ron Jeremy: The Hardest Working Man in Showbusiness, Hot Cougar Sex, Super Beauties: Nude and Natural, and The Complete Asshole’s Guide to Handling Chicks.

Given the contents of the two lists, it has been difficult to believe Amazon’s initial response– that in deference to their entire audience, they removed books with adult content from the rankings. The explanation is not close to credible.

Yesterday evening (after the story blew up all over the blogosphere and particularly on Twitter), Amazon finally realized that their explanation wasn’t flying and started circulating a new explanation. The books had their ratings stripped, the company explanined in emails, because of a “glitch.”

Perhaps it was a “glitch,” I have no way of knowing. But that “glitch” has not, I’d like to point out, been fixed a day later. And since the “glitch” hasn’t been fixed, the most disturbing part of the situation also hasn’t been fixed.

If you search “homosexuality” on Amazon right now, the first items that come up include A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, You Don’t Have to Be Gay, and Can Homosexuality Be Healed? I can’t help but think of some poor kid searching for a book to help him deal with a complicated part of his life and being faced with those choices.

Those search results are a real problem, and they represent to me, a clear validation of that viewpoint by Amazon.

Perhaps inspired by the book I’d been reading all weekend, and it’s hero’s repeated dependence on economic boycott as a change strategy, I fired off a strongly worded email to Amazon last night, explaining how they’d lost my business until they issued a public apology for this misstep, accidental or not.

I received a form letter explaining the “glitch” immediately, but that’s not enough for me, not this time. I want a public apology and I want the “glitch” to be fixed, the sooner the better. Every minute it stands is one minute that important information isn’t available for those that are seeking it.

But I also know that my email alone isn’t going to change minds or policy at Amazon. It’s only through collective decisions, collective action, the flexing of collective economic muscle that things like this can be changed.

So what have you done today? Sent an email to Amazon yet?