It’s something of a coincidence that I spent much of my holiday weekend reading The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. I picked up Dan Shilts’ definitive biography of Harvey Milk at my local bookstore last week (shout out to Lambda Rising, one of the last LGBT bookstores in existence) on something of a whim, and I haven’t been able to put it down since.
So when I first heard yesterday about #Amazonfail, the change (purposeful or otherwise) in the Amazon.com ranking system that meant most LGBT focused books lost their sales ranking, the first thing I did was search for Mayor of Castro Street. After a weekend of reading that complex and important biography, I was pretty shocked to find that it too had lost its sales ranking. Was it a serious, difficult book? Certainly. Was it adult material? Certainly not.
Of course my experience was mirrored by many. Jezebel pulled together a list of books that saw their rankings purged,including Ellen Degeneres: A Biography, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Queer Theory, Gender Theory: A Primer, and Heather Has Two Mommies, potentially the most frequently banned children’s book in America.
Books that Jezebel pointed out weren’t removed from the rankings? Ron Jeremy: The Hardest Working Man in Showbusiness, Hot Cougar Sex, Super Beauties: Nude and Natural, and The Complete Asshole’s Guide to Handling Chicks.
(Read rest of the post here. After reading, so what have you done today? Sent an email to Amazon yet?)
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