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Here are a couple of new photos of Ms. Whitney Houston lookin’ fab as hell upon her arrival in NYC this weekend. No word on what brings Whit Whit to the Big Apple but it is great to see her out on the scene again:

When last we saw Whitney Houston here on the blog she was making her way out of LA after making her annual appearance at the Grammy Awards in February. At the time, I renewed my excitement that she may be on the verge of working on a new album … but, again, there has been no word of any such thing since. I suppose it’s possible that Whitney is in NYC to do some recording but I’m afraid my frail little heart can’t get all excited about that possibility again. Whatever brings her to town, I’m glad to see that she is lookin’ so well. Here’s hoping there will be some news to come on the Whitney Houston front soon.

[Photo credit: Bauer-Griffin]

Over the weekend a firestorm of outrage began to swirl on the Internets (and particularly on Twitter, I first heard about this from author Neil Gaiman) over the new policy by Amazon.com to remove sales rankings of books that the site deemed “adult” … but which really stripped books that deal with gay, lesbian or transgendered characters and/or themes of their book rankings (leaving heterosexual erotica untouched and with their sales rankings in tact). This is particularly important because book rankings help books show up in product searches which translates into the sale of more of those books. Since the subject erupted over the weekend, Amazon.com has issued a statement saying that the matter was caused by a “glitch” that removed the book rankings from all of the GLBT books and that the issue would be remedied immediately. The thing that concerns me the most is that this practice was first noticed back in February and the glitch was only discovered once the general buying public started to catch wind of the practice (over Easter weekend, no less). Here is a short synopsis of what’s been going on as uncovered by book bloggers and the response issued by Amazon.com in the wake of this controversy:

1. Craig Seymour first complained about his book being adversely treated by Amazon back in February.

2. Mark Probst got a response two days ago that his book was being adversely treated by Amazon because it was deemed “adult content.”

3. If you search “homosexual” on Amazon.com, your first search result is “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.” This is because other books with the term homosexual have had their sales rank stripped. The previous algorithm is supposed to show the top selling books in the search result. If the book has no sales rank then it won’t appear in the search results. Or, as a better example: But the fact that Joseph Nicolosi and Linda Ames Nicolosi’s A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality is still ranked when Heather Has Two Mommies isn’t, says it all.

4. If you write exclusively books with erotic content (or content tagged erotic regardless of actual content), you may not exist in a front page search. See screen cap HERE (Lucinda Betts) and HERE (Jackie Barbosa) and HERE (Amie Stuart).

What’s going on?

For those who don’t know, Amazon has decided to derank and then remove from front page searches books labeled “erotic” and GLBT. For example, books that are about Lesbian parenting have been identified as “adult content” and deranked. Patti O’Shea’s book that is listed “erotic horror” despite having only one sex scene has been deranked and removed from front page search results. Amazon has deranked Annie Proulx, E.M. Forster, but not American Psycho. Mein Kampf and books about dog fighting are ranked and can be searched from the front page, but not books about gay love or books with erotic content.

You can track more of the deranked books on Twitter.

Why is this is a big deal?

It’s not because customers put any stock into the Amazon Ranking number. It’s that the Amazon Rank affects a books’ visibility on the bestseller list, on the “If you Like ___, you might like __ feature” and so forth. It is akin to the bookstore removing the books from the shelves and requiring you to go to the Customer Service desk and ask for the book or author specifically. Visibility is a huge factor in sales and anyone who doesn’t believe that is kidding themselves.

Here is the response to all of this controversy that has been issued by Amazon.com:

A “glitch” on Amazon.com has caused the sales rank to be removed from gay- and/or lesbian-themed books by James Baldwin, Gore Vidal and others. “There was a glitch in our systems and it’s being fixed,” Amazon’s director of corporate communications, Patty Smith, said in an e-mail Sunday. As of Sunday night, books without rankings included Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room,” Vidal’s “The City and the Pillar” and Jeanette Winterson’s “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.” The removals prompted furious remarks on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere online. Craig Seymour, author of the gay memoir “All I Could Bare,” wrote on his blog Sunday that his sales rank was dropped in February, then restored nearly four weeks later, after he was told by Amazon that his book had been “classified as an Adult product.”

I must admit that I am deeply concerned by this action on Amazon‘s part. It seems very fishy to me that a glitch caused all of this selective censorship. What seems more likely is that the company prolly tried to get away with this new endeavor and didn’t consider the fact that anyone would notice. I am very troubled that a company that I give much business to would try to pull something like this in the first place. The Kindle e-book reader (which I love) works exclusively with Amazon‘s book inventory. And while I try to shop at as many independent bookshops as I can when buying books in person, the ease of shopping at Amazon is very attractive. Of course I want to believe that the company actually suffered a malfunction that caused this error — after all, nothing in my experience with Amazon.com before has even hinted at this sort of business practice. At this point … I’m not sure what to do. I plan to watch this issue closely and follow the action that Amazon takes in the coming days and weeks. Not only does the company owe its customers a COMPLETE REVERSAL of this nonsense immediately but they also owe a huge public apology and perhaps some sort of reparation to the GLBT authors that were harmed by this action.

The Dear Author blog has published some helpful information for those of you who wish to contact Amazon directly to voice your displeasure:

Amazon executive customer service email is: ecr@amazon.com and the customer service phone number is 1-800-201-7575. I’ve called and sent emails. (I even called the cell phone of an Amazon PR person). There is also a petition. The louder the noise you can make collectively, the more likely action will be taken. You can use Robin’s template:

Dear Amazon,

This is nothing short of discrimination; this is nothing short of censorship. This is nothing a business that claims commercial integrity at even the most basic level would do. Consequently, as a longtime Amazon customer, I look forward to an immediate reversal of this ridiculous policy. Otherwise, I will purchase elsewhere and encourage everyone else I know to do the same.

I suspect if Amazon realizes how many people their glitch has offended they might be more quick to come back and do the right thing.

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Last Friday we learned the happy news that Sarah Michelle Gellar and hubby Freddie Prinze, Jr. are pregs with their first child (6 years into their marriage) and today we get our first grainy, not-so-spectacular-but-we’ll-take-what-we-get first look at SMG out and about in public showing off her burgeoning baby bump. Here is a screenshot of a short video of SMG at The Grove in LA with a friend of hers over the weekend … you will note that her friend is pushing a baby carriage:

SMG is notorious for staying out of the spotlight and rarely shows up in public to be photographed … so mebbe this trip to The Grove is a signal that she plans to be more visible as her pregnancy continues. In any event, I am very much looking forward to seeing more of SMG out and about and I’m really anxious to watch her bump grow. She doesn’t look very big in this grainy screenshot at all … but it’s unclear if her bump looks nonexistent because the video quality sucks or because she is still very early in her pregnancy. After the jump, check out the video in full and judge for yourselves …

Pink reader Oga and I caught an interesting tweet (message) from Nicole Richie that she posted on her official Twitter profile last night (and is currently her most recent one) that gave all of her followers the head’s up that her “sister-in-law” Sarah Madden has joined Twitter and that everyone should follow her:

Sarah Madden is Joel Madden‘s little sister … so does this mean that Nicole and Joel are married (???) or does it mean that Nicole is just being a cheeky monkey by calling Sarah her sister-in-law just cuz she and Joel are together? I suppose it’s possible that Nic/Joel secretly got married but would Nicole really accidentally spill the beans on her Twitter account? HMMMM.

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