Quote:
Originally Posted by Difflugia
I recently redownloaded my Barnes & Noble library to check for new editions of books. It seems that the author of a three-book omnibus had second thoughts and retroactively turned it into a two-book omnibus.
I'll say first that since it was free and I still have the original download, I'm not really out anything. It still cheeses me off a little.
The omnibus isn't for sale at Barnes & Noble anymore and I can't link to it there, but It looks like the author did the same thing at Amazon.
Note that the book listing describes a "two-book bundle", but this review lists the third book that's in the edition I downloaded in October, but is no longer there.
I don't have a problem with authors changing book availability from time to time (especially when we're talking about freebies), but taking a third out of a book that's already in my library seems a little unethical to me. |
I'd have to know the reason the author did it. There could be legitimate reasons to do it. For example, what if it was 3 books ONLY when free so no one is out anything? Then the author decided to go free with 2 books and put the third for sale? No one would be out anything since the deal was free. New purchasers would have to pay IF they wanted the third book.
Now B&N is the one who should really make a purchased book (free or otherwise) always accessible. Smash does that. If you buy version 2.3 of a book and the author is up to 8.5, you can still access your original copy or the new one. Amazon does it too. You don't lose access and you can CHOOSE to get a "new" version automatically if one is available -- or not. But you won't lose access.
Now, this may not cover the "out of business" scenarios, but we're all kind of on our own there anyway.
I'm not suggesting it was a good idea for the author to do whatever the author did, but there may be reasons (and those reasons may actually be other than profit.)