This could have happened to most any online retailer… your misinformation is more problematic to me than an Amazon guy in France translating wrong.

Try not to jump to conclusions for your own personal gain so fast anymore eh…

I was the first to say it on this blog post; The guy’s an imbecile and this whole charade was just a bunch of BS.

The reason this happened is now public knowledge. A well known troll used iFrame entries to list a bunch of books as offensive and get them de-ranked. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than Amazon doing it, and it explains things perfectly. I’m sure a bunch of people are going to say that Amazon was behind it anyway, and that’s fine. At least now, the general public knows how ludicrous your theories are.

You could have just waited to see what happened and made a decision based on evidence like a decent human being, but instead you chose to scream and whine like children. I hope you got it all out of you. I’m sure you’ll sleep well tonight.

Case closed. Now can we let this idiot go back into obscurity where he belongs?

Glad I got a rise out of you. That’s more than you’ve been able to do.

And speaking of self-promotion, I’ll let you know when Shields tats are available.

http://www.edrants.com/return-of-the-reluctant-charles-shields-version/

Incidentally, that entry had nothing whatsoever to do with your book. And that was years ago (Christ, don’t you have a life?), and I haven’t thought about you since. Frankly, I find you to be more of a corporate shill than a writer.

Even if I did what you claim that I say, guess what, asshole? This is my blog and if I write something and decide not to include it, this is my choice. You’re acting as if I’ve taken any comment here from a GLBT writer and removed it.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

I worked for Amazon for years (left long enough ago to be out of my NDA). Knowing Amazon as I do (and having dealt with many problems when there), I have to say this smells like an internal mistake through & through. The anonymous developer who was quoted in the Seattle press sounds like he’s speaking truth to me – because that’s exactly how Amazon’s systems are built.

Besides which, why would a liberal Seattle company that is pretty LGBT-friendly (plenty of gay employees there, probably way more than born-again christians, especially in headquarters) do this deliberately? There’s no reason for it.

As for the poor CSRs – they undoubtedly just pasted the “porn” pre-written blurb, not recognising this as a catalog error. Pretty common, unfortunately, for Amazon CSRs to get the wrong blurb in their answers, especially when it’s an emerging problem & they haven’t yet been told what to say.

Get over yourselves already.

1) While one edition of Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” had lost its ranking, a Baldwin Omnibut that included GR retained its ranking. Also, other editions being sold thru Marketplace retained their rankings.

2) “10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Improve Their Lives” had lost its rank, but “10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Find Real Love,” by the same author, had retained its ranking.

3) “The Joy of Sex” had lost its ranking, as well as many other straight-oriented books dealing with sex.

4) One edition of “Fanny Hill” had lost its ranking, while other editions had retained their ranking.

5) Sarah Waters’ famously lesbian-oriented novel “Tipping the Velvet” had retained its ranking.

6) The Victorian porn classic “My Secret Life,” that has many gay and bi scenes, had retained its ranking.

7) Gay-oriented DVDs, ranging from “Milk” to “Brokeback Mountain” to “Queer as Folk” to “Psycho Beach Party,” were unaffected and all retained rankings.

Which makes me wonder…Why only books? Why only certain editions of books? Why not DVDs? Why so many straight-oriented books?

I’m not convinced that this is some corporate policy; if it is, it would strike me as more anti-sex than anti-gay. I’m sorry but I do feel that too many people are jumping the gun and falling all over themselves to condemn and castigate Amazon, without doing any investigating or even stopping to consider all the possibilities. This is the sort of reactionary cluster-bleep that we liberals criticize the right-wingnuts for doing. We need to be careful, cautious, and reasoned, and to think things through before taking appropriate action.

I it’s feasible, get off your fat, lazy ass, get in your car (or public transportation if you city’s big enough), and go patronize your local independent bookstore!

You’d be helping out your *local* economy instead of patronizing a corporate giant whose becoming increasingly anti-TLBG (do a search on “homosexuality” on Amazon and look what comes up!)!

The US economy’s bad enough, but when you patronize your *local* independent bookstore, you’re saving *local* jobs!