Most people have heard about the issue with Amazon labeling books with GLBT themes as “adult”, and thus no longer displaying them in search results or sales rankings. Last night when I did a search for “homosexuality”, the only results I got were anti-gay propaganda; “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality” is the #1 result. There are three theories about what happened: it was a “hack”, a glitch, or a policy decision.

I contacted Amazon via their web form:

I am extremely disappointed to read that you have labeled all literature with homosexual themes as “adult”, thereby making it unsearchable. I have been a customer of your company for 10 years and have spent many thousands of dollars at your store. If this is truly a corporate decision and not a glitch, and if it is not rectified, I will no longer be doing business with your company.

And today received the following response:

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

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.

Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

I hope they’re telling the truth. Thus far the search results look the same as they did last night.