Why would Amazon exercise its unrivaled market power to banish my book? Because the book is changing minds in a continuing debate about how best to help patients who experience gender dysphoria. “When Harry Became Sally” has been praised by medical and legal experts—and that’s what makes it unacceptable to the woke.
The timing of Amazon’s move is telling, coming the weekend before the House voted on a radical transgender bill—the so-called Equality Act—of which I have been publicly critical. Why did Amazon suddenly delist my book without warning me or my publisher? Did an advocacy group or elected official reach out to Amazon on the evening of a big vote to ask it to remove a book it had happily sold for three years? An enterprising state attorney general may have ways to find out.
State attorneys general have the authority to investigate Amazon’s conduct to learn whether the company is abusing its vast market power, doing so in a patently dishonest and deceptive way, or otherwise violating state consumer-protection and antitrust laws. Amazon’s actions potentially run afoul of both. Authorities in both the U.S. and Europe have raised serious questions about the company’s dominant position in online retail. No bookseller can deny the critical importance of placing its products on Amazon’s platform. For an author, to be banished from the site is akin to being silenced.
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