This issue is largely not censorship, since it is being done by the owners to the rights of these books and is, therefore, editing. Most books are edited for content before you ever see them. Censorship is what is being done in states that are banning books.
The biggest disadvantage is that an e-book can be quietly re-written by commissars, sorry I mean censors, sorry I mean "sensitivity readers", and then replaced on your device without your knowledge or consent. Either have physical copies, or keep your own library of DRM-free ebooks on a device that only you control (i.e. not Kindle).
The physical books being published are being changed. If you don't own the book and you go to buy it new you will get the censored version. My Kindle library is safe because I download all of my books and have auto updates turned off.
@@JesusSavesSinners As long as they allow you to have auto-updates turned off, you are good. But I'd rather have my own library (not on Kindle, obviously) of ebooks without DRM. P.S. Or until your device fails. In that case your backup is in Amazon cloud, with all the changes they've made.
@@peterj9351 I have never had a device failure. I have a 10 year old Kindle that works like new. Also your Saved books are Saved in the Cloud. If you redownload them Kindle will notify you of updates. You don't have to update them. The books you buy and Save to the Kindle cloud are only updated if you update them yourself. So every Kindle book you buy is safe from updates.
Calibre is a great way to manage your kindle books. I buy DRM free books from other sites and transfer to my kindle from there. Airplane mode is always on.
It does feel like publishers are still feeling their way with E-books, which is crazy given how long the tech has been available now. I can see benefits to publishers pushing updates to books you’ve already bought, but it should definitely be an opt in situation with release notes like you’d get for a software update. The nuclear option for readers is to download your ebooks onto a hard drive and strip the DRM - it’s really quite easy to do and means you will always have untouchable copies of your books.
Great points about how "the rules can change" over time. It's similar to movies and TV shows on the streaming services; it's shocking how different they can look when they have been re-formatted versus the original and what was put out on the old DVD versions of them.
I have to say that I read 100% of my books via Kindle, the convenience is just so worth it when it comes to being able to instantly download the book I want, select the font I want, and never having to worry about lighting issues. Now, when I’ve read a book that I truly want to keep on my bookshelf, then I will buy the physical version. As it stands, my bookshelf probably only holds about 10% of what I actually read 🤔
I've decided the thing I'm going to complain about this week is having to plug things in for charging all the time. My Kindle, my laptop, my phone, my iPod (which only holds enough charge now to play one hour of music at a go, not even an entire album, very sad).
I agree with you about all the benefits of e-readers, as well as the drawbacks. I would add two things, though. (1) With a physical book, the text on the page has a lot of inherent physical and spatial associations, like the position of the text on the page, whether it was on the left or the right page, how far into the book the page is located, etc. Because human spatial memory is very strong, and because of the connection between our senses and our memory, etc, I find that these differences make it easier to recall specific details about what the text of a book says, and also makes it easier to remember how to find important information again for future reference. (2) I find paper much easier to annotate, as well as much easier to access the annotations, than most e-readers I've ever had the chance to use. Thus, whenever my reading is purely for leisure, I am happy to use my e-reader, but if I am reading to learn, I will always prefer paper, and will use my e-reader only as back-up or as a last resort if I can't access a paper copy. Because of the sheer number of books that an e-reader can hold, I agree that it is a wonderful tool and I will always own one, and I will even put my learning books on it so that I can access them in situations where I cannot take my hard copies. But for learning, it will always be only my backup.
My problem is that I have a nomad lifestyle, I used to live in Portugal, then in Scotland, then in England, Germany, and now I am going to Belgium. This happens because I have a very niche job, where here are only a handful of vacancies every year. This means that I don't have a fixed home where I can store loads of books. I have a Pocketbook e-reader, where I buy the book and put it in my dropbox which is synced to the ereader. I have total control over my ebooks, and totalitarist cultural vandals can't touch them. I read an average of 100 books a year, so my Pocketbook ereader ereader is extremely important to me.
That is very cool! It really is an incredible technology. Can you imagine people from past generations seeing such a thing? As long as the owner continues to have control over their own purchased content, we wouldn't have these problems. But, of course, people can never leave well enough alone. Someone always wants to control things that are not their place to control.
My e-reader is the Kindle app on my Android tablet. I do like if I come to a word that I do not know (thank you Gene Wolfe) I can easily look it up. Also easier to read in low light when I have my contacts in. Getting old sucks. I do like regular books better based on the feel, smell and the fact that if I forget them at the airport, airplane or hotel room it is not a huge deal.
Half the fun of collecting and reading books is the thrill of the hunt for physical copies. All of my Rafael Sabatini's are first edition copies that I paid an average of $4 each. I hate e-books.
I don't hate ebooks but I do agree that hunting for a particular book is so much fun. To me, buying a book is a treasure hunt. I also love book covers.
@@QueenoftheBlackCoast I gave up a huge library when I came to Mexico (at least 11,000 books). After a while I felt the pain of the loss. By chance I noticed that whole sets of French language authors like Dumas, Hugo Balzac were available more or less complete for prices as low as $2,00 American dollars as e-book sets. So I started buying, Then I found a lot of B list English and American writers who I liked were available in complete editions. So I started buying more. Within a year or so, I had pretty well reconstituted my library and it was more complete than the one I had abandoned with a lot of pain. I hardly ever use it, but that's because the more you write the less time you have to read. But when the urge comes it's a comfort to know there's plenty available.
Interesting take, reminds me of Fahrenheit 451, the slow elimination of paper books, replacing them with dumbed down and neutered stories for the masses.
There's nothing like getting a hard copy and adding to your home library... No charging a physical copy to read it...the joy I've gotten from book hunting is so memorable.... No censorship on your vintage books...sorry...I just think physical books blow away a ebooks..kindle which I have...
Collect physical books while you can. I'm not saying books will be banned but fahrenheit 451 will become a reality. The complete lack of pushback on censorship shows how the overton window has shifted into dangerous territory. The 'environmental cost' of physical books will be used as a convenient excuse to limit physical copies. I can forsee that.
With my getting in to the Edge series I been e-reading more but had pretty much quit tablet reading. There was a period of years I was going back and forth between physical and then an e-book. I had decided to concentrate on my unread physical books and still my main goal since see my physical book shelves rather than my digital library. Though my various digital libraries are filled with books I've never read too. I am okay with the change of the cover on e-books though would be nice if they included a gallery of the covers like they do in graphic novels in this age of comic variants. I imagine contracts with book cover artists could make it a bit hard though. I started my digital library build up with Google so the updating of covers makes it much easier for me not to rebuy something on Amazon.
My budget for books is tiny, so the majority of books I read on my Kindle come from the library. I also download free classics as I come across them. The idea that they can change a book I bought is incredibly frustrating. It's like a car dealership spray painting your car a different color in the middle of the night. Should be illegal 🙁
Thank you for your insights and thoughts on e-readers. I just recently started using an e-reader and really enjoy it so much. I will always prefer the paper book to digital but now my decision as to which I will purchase will depend on how and why I am purchasing it. Thank you
I do a book club of classic books, and from what I’ve read one can’t count on reliability of ebook versions of older books (these, I don’t think, are purposeful).
None of this is Amazon's fault. It's the publishers. The Times is correct you don't own the ebook. I use ebooks because of advantages like being able to enlarge text or flip from white to black background plus the space issue. But I check them out from my library. I've purchase a few in the past but only a few. Once I heard this and it was before the Times article I decided I would never buy another. Why spend my money on something I don't own?
Doesn't Calibre have a plugin, deDRM that removes the DRM of your purchased amazon ebooks? This solves the problem even if amazon changes the content of the ebook. You then will always have the version that you bought. Problem solved.
If I really really love a particular book, then I buy both physical and digital. Now that the price of books have gone up, I may have to decide between the two. Thanks for your two cents on this topic.
After several moves, I'm just not interested in having shelves and shelves of dead trees anymore. I have all my Kindle books backed up on my desktop computer. It's not intuitive how to do that, but you can find tutorials that explain how. That protects me from those changes. My problem is the opposite, I tend to find lots of errors in my ebooks that I wish they would fix. I find my Howard and Leiber texts are sometimes missing whole paragraphs due to problems with scanning them in. Still, I like knowing I have my whole library with me anywhere I have my Kindle. And I can instantly look up vocabulary I don't know just by tapping the word.
I appreciate being able to buy and read indie books easily on an ereader, and I have a huge library of my “pulpy” books on my ereader (media tie in series or long-running series) but yeah, if it’s a classic book, or a series I really love, I always have an unabridged physical copy.
Advantages and disadvantages. I actually prefer to read on my Kindle now. Book collecting and book reading are two different things. With all these special editions coming out that are beautiful yes, but astronomically expensive, it is just going to send people to the digital editions even faster. I don't like the situation about them altering the text of books for any reason but I don't lose sleep over it either. I follow alot of booktubers and it is amazing how many of you have copies of books in multiple formats, hardcover, paperback, ebook, and Audible. Who has the money for that? Look at the new editions of the next 2 Dune books. Gorgeous, but are they worth $60. Be well, stay safe!
I'm still not convinced Michael. While I recognise the advantages of ebooks, everything I want to read I have in paperbacks and hardcovers. In addition, here in Australia there have been so many major data thefts just this year from supposedly secure corporations and government departments that I refuse to hand over any personal information unless absolutely essential. And electronic versions of books I already have are not essential.
There are alternatives to Kindles and Amazon. I don't use either, and have never had an ebook meddled with. And since it's so easy to back-up an e-library (yet another advantage over physical books), any changes can be readily rectified.
I'm sure if all you want is a way to read for the pleasure of simply reading and no qualms about stealth censors or editing, then the miracle devices are superduper. I see how they can be a useful tool and also have unsavoury imperfections, I've no interest in a dataslate, isn't it witchcraft? The only books I've ever known are tactile physical, new, old, antique, library, borrowed, second hand, yellowing, dappled with foxing, aromatic .. books.
It might be nice if the BookTube community (and others) asked Amazon to add an option in each book's options menu to designate that we want to keep the title in its original/current DL'd version, so that it receives no further updates (unless we reset the option). Other alternatives come to mind, but I suspect this would be easy to implement(?). Whether it would appease the censorship crowd is debatable. Worth a try?
I do a lot of e-reading but cannot stand the idea that corporations can update content remotely on previously purchased things. It's just horrid, in my opinion. Luckily though it is possible to download your content and ad it to your calibre library with minimal effort, to keep permanently; In fact, It's the only way to use these things, really - Anybody who does it any other way is going to run into issues sooner or later. Side-loading is the way forwards! The ownership question is an odd one - You don't own the book any *more* if you buy it physically - You only ever "own" the physical media the book is stored upon (whether paper/ink/glue or the bit of the HD you download it to the case of digital).
Since I bought my Pocketbook Color I haven't stopped reading it. All the covers are color, illustrations are color. Audio books can be pit on there too. I have now everything I need on one device. Love my physical library also.
I like my e-book reader a lot (Kindle Paperwhite). It's easier to use than a print book, and it takes less space. As one gets older it becomes harder to hold books to read them; e-books will be a big help. My biggest problem is that not all books I'd like to read are available as an e-book. Yesterday I wanted a copy of Nelson Algren's _A Walk on the Wild Side,_ and it's not available as an e-book (in Kindle format, anyway). I assume that books from Project Gutenberg will be relatively safe from sanitation, so Edgar Allan Poe will be safe still.
The only deal breaker for Ereaders, for me, is that I read to help me sleep and screens keep me up. However, I'm not sure if there's already a fix for that already
Just a side thought; I wonder, as far as the Kindle goes, what will happen when Amazon inevitably goes out of business. No one to keep up the cloud, no one to update devices, etc. I enjoy my e-reader for a certain group of my books, but it will be interesting to see where the technology goes.
I love physical books, but at 76, Ereaders allow me to efficiently continue to read. My biggest issue is that charts and pictures don't translate very well. Most diagrams are too small to read. Now hearing about censoring, I am angry.
This is exactly the kind of thing that makes sailing the seven seas a much more reliable way to have ebooks that cannot be touched by publishers or corporations after the fact. It happened to movies, computer games, and now books. I prefer physical books but the convenience of an ebook is impossible to match though I do avoid Amazon and kindles like the plague and the ereader I have was connected to the net once when I got it to update the firmware and it's never been connected since and every book I buy I convert to epub and store.
Awesome video! I am slowly getting used to my kindle, but there is simply no comparison vs books. I have loved being able to purchase books that are unavailable in South Africa, but my biggest gripe is that certain titles that I really covet are not available.It is almost as if there is some weird censorship on books like Off Season or The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum, although I can purchase most of his other works. This to me is ridiculous, as I got a kindle to read those damn books in the first place. They are still advertised, but I can not buy them, this really sucks!
I had a E-reader for a while. Loved the convenience. But I love collecting books too much. I have a collection of over 500 books I have read over 15 years. I get so much joy looking at my shelf and taking down a book to look at it.
Why did amazon name their readers "kindle" and "fire" like as in "kindling"? This was the plan all along, and its only going to get worse. Paper publishers do the same, they've always been politically correct commissars trying to shape the world to their vision, but at least with a hard copy its not editable post publication.
If you really had something to say, and your book would not be republished unless some changes were made would you really prefer not to be republished ? Of course, it all depends on what changes are demanded as the price of republication. But I suggest it might be a difficult choice both for financial and ego reasons.
Somehow, people think e-reader == Kindle. However, e-reader != Kindle. Plenty of other, more advanced choices. If you want 100% guarantee no one will be able to mess with your library - choose a reader that runs on Linux, and where you have to upload books directly to your device, not to the cloud. Keep a backup library as well. Yes, you might have to take this extra step. But this is the only way to keep all the advantages of both physical and electronic books, while being safe from censors.
@@troytradup ok, I might have jumped the shark here a bit. Apart from PineNote (comes with Linux) and Kobo Clara (reportedly runs Linux well if you aftermarket install it), not much of a choice right now, sadly. There's at least one Linux reader with Gallery 3 color e-ink expected soon though.
@@peterj9351 I stumbled on the PineNote site right away, but it felt like they were actively warning me away based on my level of technical savvy. Which I appreciate -- I often feel I'm barely keeping my head above water with technology anyway!
So far as I know, no digital book I have purchased as been updated to reflect sensitivity changes. Only typos table of contents, and covers have been updated. If Amazon ever did allow that, I would read them the riot act until they undid the changes or refunded the purchase. Ereading is too convenient to forgo it for physical only.
Well, they have allowed that, at least in some places according to The New York Times. I doubt they would be too bothered by your riot act either. What are we, as customers, to them?
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 I wonder what would happen if I told them fix it or I’ll never buy from you again. I buy a lot from Amazon. Maybe they would just laugh.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 What is this about hating Amazon ? Amazon (and kindle technology which Amazon developed BTW) has done an enormous amount of good for readers, indeed I can't think of any other development in the last 35 years that has had such impact. This We Hate Amazon Mantra reminds me of a movie from the 70's called The President's Analyst(starring Lee Marvin) where the villain turned out to be the Telephone Company. I never knew people hated the Telephone Company. I was amazed. And I'm amazed that people hate Amazon. I don't know whether Amazon treats their employees properly or not, but Amazon has definitely treated this customer very well on the few occasions when there have been discrepancies.
Great points which I hadn't considered..but then I don't do ebooks. I'd think the author's or their estates would sue the publishers over the unapproved (I'm assuming they're not approved) changes.
You will probably have to show some damage to sue successfully and that may be hard to do. If so, you will have trouble getting a lawyer to prosecute the case, and very little satisfaction if you, and you win. De minimis non curat lex !
@@frankmorlock9134 Good Points. I'm guessing the licensing agreement lets the publisher make editorial changes for clarity and length. But there's no way on God's green earth it was intended to alter the content or substance of the story. If a publisher can edit out a character from a story then you've given them carte blanche to rewrite it however they want. I'd sue for damages to my reputation as a writer and breach of contract. I'm not a fan of law suits but in this case I think the writers should take a stand.
Alas, poor Orwell. I knew him, Michael. A fellow of unerring and excellent infancy ... and now, jest in hand, a view of all the imagination, placed upon a pate patted with subscription renewed.
This presents me with a dilemma as I'm umming an ahing over whether to buy a kindle, but my general feeling is that the censorship is only going one way. I listened to a British author the other day and his view of where British publishing is going was not optimistic, whereas he said he has no problem getting his books accepted by Spanish publishers.
My own experience has been that it's great for old favorites that I also have in print, that I will be re-reading forever. Or for "lighter" reading that I wouldn't much care if it disappeared or was changed. (Well, except for having paid for it!) But I wouldn't trust it as my sole method. When something isn't in your full control, it's a risk.
@@Yesica1993 Thanks for the info. The main reason I probably need one is because I'm living in Spain and although I read Spanish books, I'm culturally an English speaker and it's not easy to find books in English out in the sticks.
The frustrating thing is that a Kindle edition you've bought that the author/publisher then updated to fix a few errors, Amazon will not update it for everyone. If you delete it & redownload it, you will always get the same version you originally bought. It is possible to get Amazon to update a book, but only if you can convince them that the changes are major enough - and they make it fairly difficult for the small/self publisher to even find out how to start the process. This makes me fairly confident that it's down to the larger publisher's insisting that Amazon propagates the censorship. Amazon simply won't go to that much effort otherwise. I am getting a bit bored with having to reiterate that, if you choose the download, and transfer to your Kindle via the UDB cable option (which I admit Amazon have tried to hide these days), the copies on your hard drive are safe. Amazon can alter books on your Kindle, but they can't get at the copies on your hard drive. Albeit I don't know about the Kindle app for Windows, as I never use that.
Sorry for the boredom! I am well aware that there are ways to hide your ebooks so they will not be changed. My point is that you shouldn’t have to do that. It’s ridiculous that anyone should have to go to the trouble to protect a book they paid for in that way.
I think a lot of books, especially sci fi are not being printed or ebook because of the times..which are more sensitive to racial and misogynistic stereotypes.. a lot of good stuff is lost. Renting means don’t have loads of books unfortunately.. as I’m finding out..
Neither physical nor electronic books is really "better" as such, except in that ebooks don't deal with illustrations and art well (and also seem to be far more prone to typos, depending on the source and quality of proofreading, which can obviously be a problem in physical books too), and print books don't need to be charged all the time. That's an undeniable advantage for them :) But the convenience of ebooks still wins for me As for Amazon "changing stuff", this is why you leave the Kindle wireless permanently OFF and you transfer your books to it yourself using a third party program like Calibre with DeDRM added. It's worth the small bit of extra effort to take at least some control back from Amazon. I agree that you shouldn't have to opt out of things, though.
I HATE eBooks and that mags and newspapers have been replaced! I do like audiobooks, especially, when well voiced with accentuated audio surroundings to set the mood. Reminds me of the old slide shows theyd show us at the library in the early ‘80s. I was listening to Sanderson’s The Way of Kings and could see these types of media being put to slides while listening, akin, to the old Hobbit animated movie or Heavy Metal. Better than an over edited, abridged-too-far movie any day!
In Stine's case, I believe the changes are being made with his consent. Even so, I don't like it. I still think it's wrong and I'm not going to support it.
If I was a man of odd ideas, I would almost say the "licensing" issue is just an issue if you do it the proper legal way. Not that I condone anything, but the gaming and movie industry both have gone through huge changes to make such sharing a worse way than the proper ways. perhaps it is time for books to do the same, since "Changing the texts" is our times way of burning books.
Minute 7: 22 "Once you own this book, like I've got this book. Amazon can't change the cover. It's always going to be this cover. The text will not change. They are yours...Paper books are safe." --In some future year, paper books will no longer be safe from changes in cover art and text. Amazon will have employees who will go stealthily into unlocked home libraries to switch out earlier books with new politically correct versions. Amazon will then charge you again for shipping.
I 100% eRead, but I don't use Kindle I have been doing ePubs for many, many years on my iPad, Apple to my knowledge have never changed covers nor edited in any way, once you have an ePub its yours, I would guess with ePubs and Apple authors still maintain control, also advantage iPad when you read on an iPad if you iPad is held in landscape mode the "book" is two pages just like holding a real book, the experience is simply better, I also like a page count instead of the Kindle %, page count is just the way it should be, overall iPad does a better job of mimicking a physical book,
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 No issue at all, the iPad has a feature that allows you to set the back or page light, I set to "Calm" in the daytime and "dark" at night, it works well and I originally posted I really like the landscape two page "normal" feel that Kindle just doesn't have,
Even if you side load Epub files with no DRM, Amazon could either turn your device into a unusable brick to get you to stop, or they could make it that you can only download books from their kindle store from now on, with no option to side load anything else.
Fortunately, there are plenty of other e-readers that are not Kindle and where only you control what's on your device. Most are more technologically advanced compared to pretty backwards Kindle (e.g. run in Linux) - one has to compete!
These issues aren't relevant if you get your ebooks from nefarious internet sites and store them on USB drives and in online storage. You can cram like 4568 on a google drive and have plenty of space left. At least that's what I hear from the people who do that sort of stuff. 😉
You didn't mention one significant disadvantage of ebooks: they are still limited in how they format text, unless you get a pdf version. The Annotated Lovecraft that I've seen as an ebook does not replicate the appearance of the page in the print edition, which I really dislike. Also, one solution for the problems you mention is to get an ebook reader that's independent of Amazon. Then remove the drm from the books you buy and read them on the non-kindle ebook reader. I haven't done this in a few years with the e-ink competitors to kindle, so I don't know the current state of readers apart from kindle. They used to have a lot of problems that kindle did not have. So the reading experience was more difficult. I've been thinking of researching the newer ebook readers to see how things have improved. But I usually just use a tablet and an epub reader app, which works fine.
I haven’t read a lot on ebook, but when I have, I feel at a loss to understand the provenance of the text. When I read _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ recently, I had the Penguin edition, but found it a lot more convenient to use the ereader. In general the texts were similar. Some chapters had been moved from one volume to another, without explanation, and the ebook had a lot of weird typos that didn’t occur in the Penguin. But the strangest thing, was the ebook was an annotated edition of a sort, in that even Gibbon’s footnotes had footnotes done by an anonymous editor about whom I could find no information. It seemed contemporary, but no credit was given and no explanation as to editorial principles which guided the nameless editor. Sometimes the footnotes - Gibbon’s and the anonymous editor’s - merged into one and you couldn’t tell whose was whose. At least the Penguin had info talking about the publication history and choices that had been made; with the ebook, I _thought_ I was buying a specific edition, but it was not that of the link I clicked, rather something generic put out by Amazon. I’ve read and am reading some James Baldwin and Patricia Highsmith; the Baldwin is a new edition, but even that has textual oddities I wonder about. The Highsmith, again, I’m out to sea as to the provenance of the text. Granted, if I just picked up a copy at the Good Will, it would be obvious from its appearance it was a cheesy mass market paperback from the 1960s when people didn’t care that much about textual integrity; but as an ebook, I _expect_ more - placing the blame with my expectations.
E-books are not as satisfying as real books. Real books cannot be surreptitiously censored and so remain intact. I have the urge to buy as many of the more contentious ones, though, before they are replaced by politically sanitised versions.
I don't think it is sacrilegious to edit offensive material from books. I'm a published author, and while I don't like my publishers making changes in my works without my knowledge or consent (they do occasionally) so long as the changes are trivial (and most are) I don't say much about it. I went to some trouble to get a friend of mine (now deceased) here in Mexico published by one of my publishers. He got into a big fight with them because he didn't like the cover page they put on it. It wasn't an unsightly cover, actually it was rather comical and well done. His book was about Omar Khayyam and he thought it was disrespectful to Omar. He thought they were unprofessional and I thought he was. He made a fuss about it for years. Look, as far as offending people goes I really don't want to offend people unless I really do want to offend them. Sometimes I do want to offend . And I probably won't want to change the offensive material even decades later. On the other hand, it's possible I said something that has become offensive because of the passage of time. Attitudes and sensitivities change. It wouldn't bother me too much if such material were toned down or possibly eliminated. Especially, if I would be likely to avoid the subject or the words had I written the material recently. Alas, my books do not sell well enough for this to be even a minor problem. Would that it were !
@@frankmorlock9134 Fair enough. Though I think the anecdote with the cover is a fundamentally different issue. Who gets to decide what cover goes on a book is most likely, at the end of the day, a basic contractual question. But changing an author’s already-published words later in time without their consent is wrong in my opinion. I think it’s great that some, like yourself, would be amenable to it. But I just don’t think publishers should assume you will be. That honestly would offend me as both a writer and reader. If an author decides to publish a work, and a reader decides to buy and read that work, then that’s an agreement between author and reader, and I think it should be free from some subsequent interference by third parties. As always, anyone who doesn’t like the words as written doesn’t have to read it. It’s a very slippery slope when others start deciding we’re no longer able to read certain words.
@@BookBlather In the days when I was gainfully employed I was a lawyer. I'm not sure whether the issue of the cover was addressed in the contract or not, If it was, I'm quite sure it would be the publisher's decision, since unless the writer has a reputation already (and most do not) the publisher is paying for the cover artist and other book production costs. The publisher can simply refuse to publish the book. I've published quite a few books and only once raised the issue with my publisher. I did not think the cover for my dramatization of Dostoievski's Idiot was really a good choice, and I told him so, and let it go at that. As to whether there is an agreement between the writer and the purchaser (reader) while I agree with you in principle, it is simply not legally binding on the publisher who is in contractual relations with the author or his heirs. And the purchaser (reader) is in contractual relations with the Vendor (who is a bookstore chain not necessarily the publisher. Moral indignation is fine, but it doesn't work in court, and you need to accept that. The public simply doesn't count.
@@frankmorlock9134 Well, you’re certainly right about that… that’s typically going to be the case legally (dependent on whether it’s still under copyright and the nature of the grant of rights… also a lawyer 😂)… which of course is why they do it. That also sounds like an interesting book you wrote there!
Half the fun of collecting and reading books is the thrill of the hunt for physical copies. All of my Rafael Sabatini's are first edition copies that I paid an average of $4 each. I hate e-books.
