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Gizmodo Australia Reports e-books are Disappearing from Kindle Store

Gizmodo Australiahas published a very disheatening piece for Australian kindle lovers or prospective kindle buyers:
…..there seems to be something happening with publishers pulling out of the kindle Store – or at least the Australian store.

“The first book I purchased for the kindle was Raymond Feist’s Krondor: The Betrayal. It’s the first book in a collection of three, all of which were available on the kindle Store when I first received the device. Instead of buying all three at once though, I opted to pick up the first book, and use the “Save for Later” feature to mark the other two for future purchase.

The problem though, is that when I went back to buy those books after completing the first, they were no longer available. They still sit in my “Save for Later” basket, but searching for them, or the author, on the kindle Store brings up no results. While the original book still sits on my device, I don’t have any access to purchasing its sequels on the kindle.

But the situation is even bigger than just my single experience. Yesterday while searching for the books, ensuring it wasn’t my imagination playing tricks on me, I noticed that the kindle Store boasted it had 285,000 odd books available to purchase. This morning, that number is sitting at 283, 292. Amazon rep Laura Porco said the other day that the number was around 288,000. So what’s going on? Why has the Store stopped selling almost 5000 books in the past week (or 2000 overnight)?

I’ve put the question to Amazon, but they have an Apple-like “no comment” response mechanism, so don’t expect too much in the way of details. Still, in the future it’s worth noting that you should probably buy all the books in a series from the outset to avoid any disappointment that might arise…”

Some angry comments on this piece which really support the claim:

“It’s already difficult to find new release books on the store from Australia ….. If they start making it harder by removing books then they’re going to get a surge of disapproval from me and hopefully everyone else who purchased a kindle in Australia.”

“I’ve found this as well. 9 out of the 10 books that I’d pre-selected for purchasing were removed from Australian sale by the time my kindle arrived. I should have just bought them all pre-delivery. The book at the top of my list? Heat Wave by Richard Castle. Now I can’t even by books by Michael Crichton, Stephen King or James Patterson.”

“Someone ought to start a graph. I wonder when the losses will bottom out. The best option at the moment is to create a fake U.S. billing address and buy books from the U.S. kindle store.”

kindle Wireless Reading Device (6″ Display, U.S. & International Wireless, Latest Generation)kindle dx Wireless Reading Device (9.7″ Display, U.S. Wireless, Latest Generation)

Posted by admin on Oct 30th, 2009 and filed under Kindle 2, eBooks, feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

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