Sunday, July 19, 2009

The Case of the Disappearing Books

Authors and publishers hire book publicists to launch book promotion campaigns so that...their books can disappear from readers' digital lockers on Amazon? Ouch. Disappearing books is what happened to readers who purchased the ebook versions of two of George Orwell's books -- yes, 1984 and Animal Farm (the books we first read back in high school) -- found, much to their surprise (and according to this PC World article) This book publicist is surprised, too. And upset.

Book promotion opportunities are not easy to come by, and book sales are probably even tougher miracles to pull off these days. So now readers who have actually bought ebooks for their Kindles can have them removed from their digital lockers?

Seems sort of Orwellian to me, even though Amazon did refund the purchase price to the former owners of the ebooks. Is this all a plot to make potential purchasers think twice before buying a Kindle?

Well, it's having that effect on this book publicist!