Amazon has released a bit more data concerning the “gay glitch” that de-ranked several gay and lesbian-themed books. According to a new statement, it was a massive “ham-fisted” cataloging error that affected over 50,000 titles.
“It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.”
A process of re-ranking books is now underway, not only are popular titles like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Heather Has Two Mommies” back to normal, but the Pagan-themed books I linked to yesterday have all had their rankings restored. According to the L.A. Times Amazon.com will be releasing more information about this “glitch” soon. Meanwhile, the Internet is buzzing over various theories concerning whether Amazon.com was hacked and the company is trying to cover it up (a school of thought that has mostly been debunked at this point). Over at the Making Light blog, Tor book editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden has no problem whatsoever believing this was indeed a massive cataloging error.
“If you don’t think this kind of clusterfark is entirely possible, you probably haven’t worked in a large organization. I don’t mean any of this as special pleading on Amazon’s behalf (although, full disclosure, obviously they’re one of Tor’s largest customers, so you may dismiss my views if you so desire). I just find it implausible that Amazon would want to alienate GLBT readers and their friends, who form an enormous and valuable segment of both their customer base and (surely) their own organization. Indeed, I suspect that dozens of Amazon executives and PR professionals will be having hurried meetings in Seattle this Monday morning, and that consumption of antacids at those meetings will be at an all-time high.”
None of this means that Amazon.com shouldn’t be sorry about the chaos and hurt they’ve caused (on the contrary), only that Amazon.com probably didn’t have any nefarious anti-gay (or anti-Pagan) scenarios in mind when this massive de-ranking occured. There are plenty of reasons to not like Amazon.com (or any giant faceless corporation for that matter), but actively hating on minority groups is probably not one of them.
