Quote:
Originally Posted by CommonReader
Perhaps not a "right" that is enforceable in court but a reasonable expectation by both the customers and the authors. We are only talking about a file that is stored on a server for download, not about a physical book that requires storing space in a warehouse, after all.
However, if this isn't feasible then I expect a company of that size to be predictable and reliable in handling the issue of discontinuing books. I do not consider it as professional conduct to arbitrarily fob off one author with a completely meaningless claim that his work violates the content guidelines. We should keep in mind that apart from removing his book they also threatened to terminate his account if he submitted any more content that's considered to violate their guidelines. Yet their guidelines are so vague that they deserve the term "risible". This is what they say with regard to offensive content:
"What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect."
They might just as well tell people that they will do what they damn well please. Hardly a sound foundation for a business relationship.
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I don't see that authors or customers have *any* reasonable expectation that Amazon will keep publishing a particular self-published books. This is not in their terms of service.
And, again, I don't see how this hurts authors, customer, or *anyone* more than a tradpublisher not publishing the book in the first place.
Tradpubs: we will read your book and if it meets our standards (which we alone decide), we'll publish it.
Amazon: we will publish your book, and if we later determine it doesn't meet our standards (which we alone decide), we will stop publishing it.
Authors and customers are better off with Amazon's system.