Amazon.com de-listed gay and lesbian book titles from its sales ranking system apparently because they were too adult for the site. The move created frustration among numerous customers and was called by many as another form of online censorship. 

 

Amazon.com moved quickly and called the move “a glitch” and vowed to fix it as soon as possible.  However, no changes were reported yet.  

 

"There was a glitch in our systems and it's being fixed," Amazon's director of corporate communications, Patty Smith, said in an e-mail Sunday, The Associated Press reported. 

 

It all started on Sunday night when books like James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" and Jeanette Winterson’s "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" did not have rankings anymore. This infuriated thousands of potential customers and the issues was intensively discussed on micro-blogging site Twitter and on Facebook. 

 

Craig Seymour, who wrote gat memoir called “All I Could Bare,” wrote on his blog that his book sales rank was dropped in February. When he asked the people at Amazon.com why did this occure, he was answered that his book has been classified as an adult product. The book’s sales ranking was restored. 

 

The Amazon.com sales rank is very important because it shows how good a book sells compared to other. However, there are still numerous adult books that weren’t dropped from the sales rank system, which basically could mean that Amazon has a homophobic policy. Probably they wanted to test the customers and see their reaction to the move.