If you follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter, you already know this, but for the rest of us: Amazon.com has made the sickening and, apparently, homophobic maneuver of hiding sales ranks for a slew of books with LGBTQ content. These sales ranks are tied in with whether/how books appear on sales lists and come up in searches on Amazon. In other words, we've got an issue of visibility and accessibility as well as (un)equal treatment here.
When Mark Probst, author of a gay YA novel, wrote to Amazon asking why his book's sales rank had vanished, he received a letter clearly implying it was because his book was deemed "adult" material. Since then, dozens (hundreds?) of other books with LGBTQ content with stripped sales ranks have been noted.
Affected books include works of literary fiction and nonfiction. Many (my beloved, squeaky-clean Edwardian romance Maurice, by E.M. Forster, among them; Isabel Miller's Patience and Sarah) are classics. Some have no sexual content or speak in the gentlest of metaphors; others have sex scenes but hardly such that they'd be considered erotica by the average reader. Some are YA books—e.g., Alex Sanchez's Rainbow Boys, the groundbreaking anthology Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence. Some are children's books; Leslea Neuman's Heather Has Two Mommies has been stripped of its sales rank. There are even pregnancy guides on the list—lesbian pregnancy guides, but pregnancy guides nonetheless.
In other words, these are not "adult" materials. Yet they're being treated as such by Amazon simply—apparently—because of their LGBTQ content. It's just the latest example of the fallacious equation of "gay" with "pornographic" made by narrow-minded people who can't stop thinking about the "sex" in "homosexual."
Meanwhile, there's plenty of straight romance and erotica (and pregnancy guides) that has not been issued the same treatment. Even Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds hasn't measured up as "adult" content on the Amazon scale.
The Meta Writer community on LJ is keeping readers abreast of the situation. Check out their round-up of what's known and how we can respond to the situation. My personal suggestions: call or write to Amazon, sign Meta Writer's petition, and spread the word.