Did you hear about this #amazonfail nonsense? Amazon’s arbitrarily decided to pull certain books from its sales ranking.

Those books are the ones it’s determined are, ahem, “adult.”

The problem is that some of the books they’ve determined are “adult” are romances, along with books with gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender themes (even if those GLBT books are by no means explicit) — and what’s more, they’re being two-faced about this because other books with themes such as incest and dogfighting aren’t considered “adult” for the purposes of the Amazon rank system.

You know, it’s possible that this is a coding failure, but it should bother all of us which books do get caught in Amazon’s “adult” filter and which ones don’t.

Like, seriously, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is too adult to be listed in the sales rankings, but collections of Playboy nudes aren’t?

Petition/protest is mounting here.

Amazon, get it together.

Now.

In the meantime, the Smart Bitches are on the case, with a plan that may well turn the phrase “amazon ranking” into the new “santorum.”