This past Easter, Amazon managed to de-rank more than 57,000 books from its Web site, thus removing the books from the best-seller lists and search functions. Many of the books, it was noted, were LGBT themed and sparked a flurry of Internet activity questioning whether Amazon was using its Web site to censor books dealing with sexuality, especially homosexual themes.

Amazon denies that any censorship occurred and blamed a cataloguing error. Drew Herdener of Amazon also said in a statement that books were affected in “categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine and Erotica.”  But it remains to be explained what linked these books and why they were “catalogued” as adult.  Many of the books have been restored to their previous rank and returned to the search function, and Herdener says, “We intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.”

There is still residual anger in the LGBT community over the “glitch.”  Many want answers as to how and why the glitch occurred and why it appears that certain books were targeted.  Some are even questioning the idea that Amazon had a glitch in the first place. Mary Hodder wrote a guest column at the Washington Post called “Why Amazon Didn’t Just Have a Glitch.” The article makes an interesting argument as to how the whole brouhaha occurred and how it couldn’t have been a random glitch that targeted random books. 

It remains to be seen what will happen with Amazon, but the Seattle giant will sure weather the storm, as long as it continues to fix the “glitch” that caused the mess in the first place.