The complaints came thick and fast when authors, bloggers and readers became aware that tens of thousands of adult and gay and lesbian titles dropped out of Amazon’s book charts. Turns out Amazon made a mistake, a ‘glitch’ they said, and that it never meant to hide or remove these books (including titles from Jeanette Winterstone – one of my favourites).

The Guardian says that the mistake occurred when Amazon was trying out a system to make its lists more family friendly. And Amazon has claimed that the missing books were not only gay and lesbian titles – but covered a broad range of other themes and genres.

But is Amazon telling the whole truth? It certainly doesn’t seem out of the question that it might have just effected an about face when so much criticism was levelled against it. And does Amazon really need to boost a ‘family friendly image’?

It’s pretty scary stuff – Amazon holds a massive sway when it comes to book promotion and sales these days. But I was delighted to see what a huge response the issue got from people all around the world – keep our books, and our writers, uncensored and widely available.