By now I'm sure you've heard of Amazon Fail. If you were out doing things like having Easter dinner this weekend and happened to miss the internet, here's a quick recap: a bunch of GLBT books were removed from Amazon search results. Aside from assuring everyone that they are working to fix it, Amazon has declined to comment further.
While this was most likely a boneheaded programming error, it certainly looks from the outside like a conspiracy to sweep GLBT authors and books with GLBT themes under the rug. I sincerely doubt that this is the case, but I can't fault anyone for taking the harsher view. At the very least, it's an appalling disaster, and one which has apparently been going on for several months before it rolled onto Twitter and into the global internet consciousness.
Two books by openly gay science fiction authors have been caught up in Amazon Fail: David Gerrold's The Martian Child, and Nicola Griffith's Ammonite. Science fiction blog IO9 asked David Gerrold and Nicola Griffith for their reactions. David Gerrold seems miffed but slightly amused by the inconsistency. Nicola Griffith, on the other hand, is not at all amused. And who can blame her?
"Writing is my only source of income. No listing = no sales. Taken to its logical extreme, this policy could mean I starve-that I starve because I'm queer."Amazon will presumably have this issue fixed shortly. In the mean time, I suggest that you show your support for Gerrold and Griffith by purchasing copies of their books... from anywhere but Amazon.