Blog Posting # 3

Amazon Says Error Removed Listings

In response to nearly two days of angry online commentary, particularly on Twitter, Amazon.com said on Monday that “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” had caused thousands of books on its site to lose their sales rankings and become harder to find in searches.

To read more visit (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14amazon.html)


After browsing the net in search of something interesting for my third blog posting, I came across an interesting article about a computer error that caused thousands of books on Amazon.com to lose their sales rankings which led to cries of censorship from some critics. Most of the company’s online critics complained that the problem appeared to have a disproportionate effect on gay and lesbian themed books, leading to cries of censorship. The titles that lost their sales rankings during the weekend included James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room,” the gay romance novel “Transgressions” and “Unfriendly Fire,” a recently published book about the government’s policies on gays in the military. Many of the affected titles disappeared from basic searches so that, for example, a search from Amazon’s home page for “E. M. Forster” did not turn up “Maurice,” Forster’s classic novel about a homosexual relationship. Nathaniel Frank, the author of the well-reviewed “Unfriendly Fire,” said he could not find a link to the hardcover edition of his book last weekend.

This was a serious issue because sales rankings on Amazon are important to authors. Books that receive high sales are often placed on the website’s best-seller lists and it also helps shoppers to find them. But due to this error, sales for other book categories also plummeted. For example, 57,310 books featured on amazon.com in several broad categories were also affected, including books on health and reproductive medicine.

Due to this serious issue, many shoppers and critics felt that Amazon purposely censored books that focused on homosexuality. Amazon declined that this was the case and stated “it plans to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.” But critics are still disappointed that Amazon did not react quickly enough to fix this problem and make a statement sooner to those who expressed their concerns on Amazon.com and Twitter (online commentary).

After reading this article, I was surprised by the actions and statements presented by Amazon.com. I wonder if the affected authors received any compensation for their lost sales. It was also surprising to learn that it took two days of angry online commentary before Amazon decided to approach this problem. Thank goodness for the people who noticed and even disagreed with the cataloging error mishap that censored materials/books with gay and lesbian themes.