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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2009 > July > 18 > Entry
Reading 1984 when (poof!) it vanished…
Amazon.com is my favorite on-line retailer. They sell millions of books and all kinds of other stuff. I shop there all the time. I just bought a new grill from Amazon. It arrived within two days.
I’m impressed by Amazon’s efficient operation. Their website is incredible.
But nobody’s perfect-even Amazon makes an occasional blunder.
For example, you might recall that I did an interview on National Public Radio where I talked about Amazon’s top customer reviewer, a woman named Harriet Klausner. I continue to be puzzled by the fact that Amazon allows this person to be their #1. As of today, Harriet claims she has read and reviewed 19, 529 books. The number two reviewer has read and reviewed 6,665. Harriet has read three times as many books as the second place reviewer. Impossible. Read some of her reviews and you’ll see what I mean. They tend to be very poorly written. So practice doesn’t make perfect after all.
Harriet is just one small public relations nightmare in my view. Amazon just stumbled into another PR mess. The headline in today’s New York Times is very embarrassing for Amazon. Here it is:
Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle
You know, the Amazon Kindle, their proprietary wireless and paperless reading device? You can order books to be delivered by Amazon to your Kindle in less than a a minute. Well, according to the article, Amazon customers who purchased books like 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell got a little surprise. Apparently, these Orwell books were sold through Kindle without having the copyrights properly in place. When Amazon found out they simply pressed a few buttons and went into all the Kindles that had downloaded those Orwell books and deleted them. Poof! Gone.
How embarrassing. The article states:
“In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”
On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.
In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.
An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.
Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.
Customers whose books were deleted indicated that MobileReference, a digital publisher, had sold them. An e-mail message to SoundTells, the company that owns MobileReference, was not immediately returned.
Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices — and apparently to make them vanish.
An authorized digital edition of “1984” from its American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was still available on the Kindle store Friday night, but there was no such version of “Animal Farm.”
People who bought the rescinded editions of the books reacted with indignation, while acknowledging the literary ironies involved. “Of all the books to recall,” said Charles Slater, an executive with a sheet-music retailer in Philadelphia, who bought the digital edition of “1984” for 99 cents last month. “I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased.”
Antoine Bruguier, an engineer in Silicon Valley, said he had noticed that his digital copy of “1984” appeared to be a scan of a paper edition of the book. “If this Kindle breaks, I won’t buy a new one, that’s for sure,” he said.
Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over similar issues.
Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”
To read the entire article click HERE:
What a public relations disaster for Amazon. They just lowered the price on the Kindle but one can imagine that the enthusiasm of some potential buyers will be reduced when they learn that Amazon can just go in and delete stuff whenever they feel like it. Hmmm, I thought I had that book in my Kindle? Poof!
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: in the Amazone
Comments
By Mark from St Paul
July 20, 2009 6:45 PM | Link to this
I uploaded a .pdf copy of 1984 for my blog readers. The link follows if anyone is interested. http://norwegianity.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/george_orwell-1984.pdfBy irishguy
July 19, 2009 9:19 PM | Link to this
Maybe THIS is a conspiracy…By vick
July 19, 2009 11:34 AM | Link to this
Scroll down to the bottom of the NY Times article:”Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over similar issues.”By Ayn Rand
July 19, 2009 9:00 AM | Link to this
When will Atlas Shrugged be banned by Amazon?By Book Burning
July 19, 2009 8:23 AM | Link to this
It is telling that these two books are somehow mired in a “copyright” problem. They have been in print for YEARS, and there’s a copyright problem with a huge bookseller?! Right!!!! Amazon & Barnes and Noble are known to hold/bar/forbid books of an opposing political view than theirs, off the market. They lie/obfusecate/give impossible answers to questions no one has asked about why the books aren’t available. It appears to me that these two books…explaining where we are actually headed…are making them nervous. 1984 & Animal Farm explain, in a succint way, “hope & change”. They want you to live it, not be warned until it’s too late. Have they banned Ayn Rand & Atlas Shrugged yet? Wait a while…it’s coming.