It’s right around the one year anniversary of the week that Amazon removed Macmillan books’ buy buttons in its snit-fit over the implementation of agency pricing, resulting in a lot of authors losing a week’s worth of royalties. And just in time to mark the anniversary, an interesting tidbit of information pops up on eReads. Richard Curtis reports that in a cover letter attached to the latest Macmillan semi-annual royalty statements authors have received, Macmillan CEO John Sargent makes note of an interesting adjustment to author royalties. Feeling that authors shouldn’t have to suffer on account of a battle...

And here’s a follow-up to our story about the self-published pedophilia guide that Amazon first defended, then pulled from publication. As TeleReader Brian/AnemicOak pointed out, Colorado police arrested the author of the book, Philip Greaves, after detectives in Florida ordered and received a copy of the book from him. Greaves will be extradited from Colorado to face obscenity charges in Polk County, Florida. [Polk County Sheriff Grady] Judd said he was frustrated that Greaves' book was protected under freedom of speech laws, even though it was created "specifically to teach people how to sexually molest and...

A discussion thread on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum notes that Amazon has begun removing some previously-published books or stories from its store, and from the Kindle archives. Readers who have previously downloaded them to their Kindles can keep them there, but cannot re-download them (and will be refunded the price of purchase assuming Amazon can still find the purchase record). The story whose removal sparked the discussion was an erotica title called Wicked Lovely by author Jess C. Scott. The tale dealt with incest, and involved a love scene between a 17- and an 18-year-old. However, Amazon would...

It’s the time of year when people and publications start making lists of things that happened during the rest of it, and Publishing Perspectives is kicking off a series on “the most dramatic events in publishing in 2010.” The first piece in the series is also posted at the website of its writer, publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin of IdeaLog. Shatzkin’s pick for the most dramatic publishing event of 2010 is the confrontation between Amazon and five of the big six publishers early this year over bringing an end to Amazon’s $9.99 e-book pricing scheme. Even in theory, Shatzkin writes,...

A disturbing story erupted in the blogosphere yesterday. For a while, Amazon was selling a self-published Kindle e-book entitled The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct, that seems to be pretty much exactly what it sounds like. The author, 47-year-old Philip Greaves, claimed not actually to be a pedophile himself, but wrote from his own pre-teen and teen experiences after having been involuntarily hospitalized for manic depression. Before the book drew widespread attention, Greaves said he had sold one copy (link probably NSFW). But after enraged commentary hit social networks and blogs, it sold...

Publishing professional Brett Sandusky had an epiphany last month, brought on by a panelist at a publishing conference who kept repeating the phrase, “The reader is the consumer who is your customer.” Up to this point, the publishing industry has been strictly business-to-business (“B-to-B”)—not dealing directly with consumers, but with intermediaries such as agents and bookstores. It’s as if we are an industry of ninjas, or a group of faceless factory workers buying, creating, selling, and promoting products without one genuine interaction with the people for whom we are making these products. This, of...

Steven Levy at Wired talks about the experience of finding a typo on the title page of a Kindle book. A book entitled I, Sniper opened up on his Kindle as I, Snipper. Levy emailed a friend of his who worked at the publisher about it, and his friend told him that the book was being corrected both for people who had and had not already purchased it. However, Levy found that it hadn’t been corrected for him—and when he contacted Amazon about it, the Amazon representative told him that Amazon had a policy of not correcting works...

It looks like the ghost of the Amazon/Macmillan feud is still lingering in the air. The New York Times has a lengthy piece covering the ongoing confidential discussions between Amazon and publishers. Apparently Amazon is up to its old tricks again, threatening publishers that it may stop selling their books if they do not agree to a list of concessions. Amazon is apparently conceding the agency pricing model for e-books that most of the major publishers want, but if the Times’s sources can be believed it is demanding those publishers agree to three-year contracts as well as...