...and I am not buying it. (Thanks to "the fan man" for the "glbtch" idea!)
According to a story just sent out by Publishers Weekly, Amazon is now claiming that a software glitch caused the stripping of sales rankings from many titles of adult or GLBT interest over the weekend.
The story notes that many bloggers are "not buying" this explanation, and goes on to say that whatever Amazon was trying to do has gone haywire.
The PW site is now not responding, even before I post the link on Kos, so that indicates a certain level of interest in the story. To paraphrase, the editors at PW aren't buying the Amazon cover story.
They note the customer service email received by Mark Probst stating that certain "adult" titles would not now show up in Amazon searches. I would imagine that Amazon is currently scrambling to undo whatever it was ... and I think we know what it was .... they were trying to do.
According to Mike Mesnick of Techdirt:
After the controversy continued, Amazon changed its story and started claiming that it was actually all just a computer "glitch." Of course, this sounds remarkably similar to the computer "glitch" Amazon found when it suddenly deleted a bunch of negative reviews of EA’s DRM-encrusted video game Spore. Whether it’s true or not, Amazon is certainly giving off the appearance that it blames any such mistake on a "glitch," but never seems to provide anything in the way of details to support that.