I noticed something odd on Twitter over the Easter weekend, a number of Twitterers (Tweeters?) I follow had added the hashtag #amazonfail to their tweets. On investigating I discovered that Amazon has been removing GLBT books from their sales rankings (Amazon’s Sales Ranks is a tool which shows how a good a book sells compared to other books).
This includes books for Young Adults concerning sexuality. If a person searches for one of these books by title or author, they will find it. However, that’s only so useful. Many people find books on a given subject by browsing the subject listings, not knowing what is available by title or author, or by seeing what books are most popular per sales: these derankings remove titles from those listings, no matter our book’s popularity or relevance in a given subject.
Amazon claims that this is a glitch that they are working to rectify.
For more information use the search terms ‘#amazonfail’ or ’amazonfail’ on Google or the search engine of your choice.