This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.
Apparently, the publisher of these books decided that they didn't want to sell electronic versions after all. Amazon's response was not merely to stop selling these books, but to delete them from the Kindle's of people who had already purchased copies and credit their Amazon accounts for the purchase price.
This is outrageous. There are times when a book may be worth far more to you than you originally paid for it. An extreme case is textbooks: imagine discovering the night before a major exam that the textbook you had purchased has disappeared from your Kindle. Less extreme but annoying, imagine you are half way through a Kindle book that you are reading on a beach vacation, and it vanishes between your morning and afternoon chill time under the palapa. This is going to hurt Amazon more than I think they realized.
Oh, the author of the books that disappeared? George Orwell. Fitting.
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Very interesting about the George Orwell books. Thanks for sharing. Your blog looks great.
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