This report from The Guardian had me baffled. It roughly goes like this: George Walker is the author of the children's book Tales from an Airfield, a book that has been doing well at the bookshops. But George Walker " ... was horrified to find that his new title was featured on the site without his permission." Then he is quoted as saying, "What they are actually doing is getting the independents to do their market research ... When a book gets a certain amount of attention, they will attempt to stock it and cut the independents out. Not with my book".
An Amazon spokesman is quote as saying: "It's an incredibly unusual situation. We usually find that the millions of authors and many thousands of publishers who have books listed on the site are absolutely thrilled to see them".
Then Mr Walker, who self-published Tales from an Airfield says: "We take a very long-term view of this ... We have taken a stand to support local bookshops - that's how we want to sell our book."
The Forum of Private Business (FPB) has congratulated children's author George Walker for standing up to Amazon.com.
Hmm. I still don't get it. What am I missing here?
