Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, has released a formal apology for his company's act of deleting illegal copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from people's Kindle devices.

I don't want to turn this blog into a news service, but this at least brings some closure to my previous post.

It does not appear the works were restored, though the money paid for them was refunded at the time of deletion.

Here is the full text of the apology:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

Amazon's Kindle digital book reader is in the news. No surprise there. But in a moment of ultimate irony, Amazon has taken the egregious step of remotely deleting works by none other than George Orwell. One of the books… why, 1984, of course.

Is Jeff Bezos, in fact, Big Brother?

David Pogue says,

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

Rest assured, those who were affected by this did have their money refunded. But they also learned the hard way what digital ownership really means: that e-book is yours until someone decides it isn't.

You have to give Amazon some credit: they were pulling copies of such works as 1984 and Animal Farm because a third-party, using Amazon's Digital Text Platform, uploaded the books when they did not have the rights to them. And, before you ask—no, it wasn't me. Amazon also said they would not remove works from customer Kindles should this happen again in the future.

While this incident doesn't lessen my desire to purchase a Kindle, it does serve as a remainder that DRM does, in fact, suck.

A micro-book review, like micro-blogging, is a review containing as few words as possible. In the spirit of Twitter, mine will be 140 characters or less (not including this intro).

Pratt's bizarre Old West meets comic heroine, with the real world at stake. Entertaining, but I wanted more Rangergirl, less Marzi.

I recently uploaded my first fantasy novel to Amazon's Kindle Store. You can still download it here for free, but the idea behind making it available on Amazon's site is (1) to hopefully gain more exposure and (2) maybe make a buck or two in the process. I'd like to take a moment to look at the latter of those reasons by asking the following question: How much, really, can one make selling an e-book in the Kindle store?

First, there's what Amazon calls the "Suggested Retail Price", or SRP. This is set by the author at the time the e-book is uploaded:

The price you charge can range from a minimum of $0.99 to a max only Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Bernie Madoff (before he admitted to his Ponzi scheme and was locked up for 150 years) could hope to afford. Amazon, however, discourages price points above $9.99; you'll find many bestsellers featured prominently on the Kindle store-front selling at this price due to discounts Amazon has applied.

That brings us to our next point of discussion: Amazon's discount. We've all seen it, where Amazon takes a product that normally retails for $129.99 and discounts it to $69.99. The same principle applies here, though the discount in no way impacts an author's royalty. From my extensive research (which consisted of reading through a handful of posts on the Amazon DTP Forums until I found this one), I discovered this statement from Customer Service:

"...please know that as per our terms and conditions, our decision to discount products is based on a number of considerations which can vary over time. You will continue to receive the set percentage of the list price you set for every sale, even if Amazon changes the retail price for your content."

What this basically means is that while there may not be a method to their madness concerning what gets discounted and by how much, if and when they do discount your e-book, it will not negatively affect your royalties.

So now we come to the royalty itself, or how much we actually make per sale. The simple answer is 35% of the SRP. For a longer answer one can look to Amazon's DIGITAL PUBLICATION DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT:

5. Royalties. Provided you are not in breach of your obligations under this Agreement, we will pay you, for each Digital Book we sell, a royalty equal to thirty-five percent (35%) of the applicable Suggested Retail Price for such Digital Book, net of refunds, bad debt, and any taxes charged to a customer (including without limitation sales taxes) (a “Royalty”).

That means for every e-copy of The Hall of the Wood sold, currently priced at $0.99, I'll make $0.35. Amazon gets the remaining $0.64. As above, should Amazon choose to discount my e-book, I'll still make the 35% royalty on the original SRP, so still $0.35. I can adjust my price point up a bit and make a little more per unit sold, but of course can't drop it below the minimum $0.99 threshold.

So, that might be more information than you cared to know, but there it is.