by James Perloff
There is an epidemic of political censorship going on. YouTubers, for example, have been increasingly de-monetized or flat-out expelled. Many in alternative media suspected that, once Amazon eliminated retail competitors, it would exploit its monopoly on books and start progressively suppressing “politically incorrect” material. I thus first published this article at my blog in October 2017 (titled, “The War on Truth Is a Lonely Warrior”) about my own experience with Amazon.
Since 2013, Amazon had been selling my book Truth Is a Lonely Warrior, in both paperback and Kindle formats. It had received over 100 Amazon reviews — 71 percent “five star” and 16 percent “four star.”
On October 16, 2017, anonymous Amazon staff notified me that Kindle had suspended sales of Truth Is a Lonely Warrior. It was simply signed, “Amazon.com.” No name; not even a department. Kind of like Trump getting a letter from an overseas government official, signed “Argentina.”
This was not the first sign of trouble, however. On June 30 2017 I published a post entitled 9/11 Simplified at my blog JamesPerloff.com. It made some unique observations supporting the theory that the Twin Towers were imploded by small nuclear weapons; it also proposed that the 9/11 planes were hijacked by real hijackers—not the incapable Arabs named by the government and media, but elite Israeli special ops, well-trained on Boeings.
After the article was published, an outstanding book it had referenced, William Tahil’s Ground Zero: The Nuclear Demolition of the World Trade Centre (2006), was suddenly scrubbed from the Internet, after being online for years.
That same day, Amazon reset the price of the paperback edition of my Truth Is a Lonely Warrior above $19, after selling it for years at attractive discounts, typically in the range of about $16. Amazon, of course, uses algorithms to adjust product prices, and while Lonely Warrior’s price would vary here and there, it had not sold close to its cover price.
Yet that’s where it sits as I publish this, right at cover price: $19.95
What caused the price to skyrocket by more than four dollars? There had been no recent dramatic change in sales volume to trigger a jolt from a computerized algorithm. I don’t get any extra money, incidentally, from the higher sales price; my royalty is fixed.
All the change accomplished was to make the book more difficult to buy. At the same time, I noticed Amazon had raised the prices of my other books, Tornado in a Junkyard and The Case against Darwin, to full cover price, after selling them at steep discounts for many years (although I don’t know on what date that change occurred).
However, there was one price that couldn’t be touched—that of the Kindle version of Truth Is a Lonely Warrior. Kindle prices are set in stone, by the authors/publishers. So, to make Truth Is a Lonely Warrior more inaccessible on Kindle, another strategy would have to be devised.
After four years in publication, someone at Amazon suddenly discovered three “quality” issues reported by “readers.” The anonymous notice I received said:
We’re writing to let you know that readers have reported some problems in your book. These errors significantly impact the readability of your book. We have temporarily removed it from sale so that more readers don’t experience the same problems:
Here is the totality of those “quality issues”:
(1) ONE typographical error. Here is a screen shot of the typo. There is a space missing between “The” and “1950s.”
My book is 341 pages long (in the paperbound edition). Someone had gone through it with a fine-tooth comb, finally came up with this one typo, and declared that it made the book unfit to be sold.
Have you ever heard of Amazon suspending a book for a single typo? Me neither. In fact, I’ve seen many books with multiple typos. (Fifty Shades of Grey is still notorious for its mistakes, but Kindle didn’t take it down.)
(2) I was informed that there was “illegible text” on two images. I checked and found this referred to two old maps I had reproduced. As with most maps, there is some large print along with some fine print. What the unnamed person was calling “illegible” was basically just fine print. Here is a partial screen shot of one of the maps:
Granted, that fine print’s a little fuzzy, but does anyone care? The map was only intended to show readers the larger items. Bear in mind, Amazon sells tens of thousands of books with maps that have some fine print. Is it considered a “quality issue” that merits suspension? No, or all those books would be in the penalty box along with mine.
By the way, Kindle devices usually come with apps that enable users to magnify images.
As I considered how to fix the situation, I thought: What can I do? I can’t change the original map. Perhaps I could crop the map and enlarge what was left. But I decided against such a solution, since a person at Amazon could always say “not good enough” and keep extending the book’s suspension indefinitely.
So I threw the problem back at the quality team at Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). How did they want the maps fixed? What would they accept? After four days, I received an email reply informing me that the maps no longer had to be fixed (a tacit admission that they couldn’t be), but that I still had to correct the other issues.
Which brings us to the final one:
(3) A few external hyperlinks no longer work, especially in the end-notes. Of course this happens, because some content on the Internet disappears after a while, which is beyond my control. In other words, I link to an article in an online newspaper, but after years, the newspaper takes down that article. This is routine and expected on the Internet.
Truth Is a Lonely Warrior included a disclaimer expressly warning readers that this could occur. Here is a screen shot from the Kindle book:
How many books does Kindle continue to sell having expired hyperlinks?
I emailed the KDP staff the following question:
“What does Kindle plan to do with the books of authors who die? Will their books be permanently suspended because they are not alive to update older hyperlinks?”
Unsurprisingly, they didn’t answer this question. Nor did they dare to, because no author would want to do business with Kindle under such conditions.
The reason I put hyperlinks in my end-notes was so that readers could easily check my statements against the original sources. This was an effort to maintain high quality. If I was lazy, I could have left the end-notes as plain text—no active hyperlinks. Had I known Kindle would punish me four years later because a few hyperlinks expired, I would never have hyperlinked the text.
There is a double standard at work here; that is, Amazon is applying extreme standards to my book that, as anyone can see, it does not apply to countless others. This is “book burning,” 21st century style.
No reader had ever complained to me, or in an Amazon review, about any of the alleged issues. Had Kindle been sincerely concerned about its readers, sales, and author relations, here is how they would have handled the matter. They would have sent me an email to this effect:
Dear Sir:
We have detected a few issues in your book we would like you to fix, which are listed herein. Please have these corrected within 21 days; otherwise we will be required to suspend sales until they are addressed.
But I received no such advance notice. Instead the book was killed without warning. Yet someone at Kindle surely knew the suspension was forthcoming, because they obviously spent a very long time combing through the book looking for something to complain about.
After nine days, Truth Is a Lonely Warrior became available for purchase again in the Kindle edition, even though I had not yet re-uploaded the book with the demanded changes. Possibly someone decided the suspension was not worth the negative publicity it was incurring, or was tired of exchanging emails with me. However, the sell page now contains a warning to buyers of “quality issues”:
This is very misleading language. What it refers to (as noted above) are: one typo, some fine print on two maps (which Kindle staff have now admitted is not an issue), and some expired external hyperlinks. There is no problem navigating inside the book, and never was.
I want to stress that, in writing this post, I am definitely not leveling accusations at everyone who works for Amazon or Kindle Direct Publishing. Some KDP staff sent me apologetic emails, and seemed bewildered by the whole travesty, which was likely the work of one or two individuals, perhaps after receiving instructions from someone to kill the book.
Update. Although I received no notification, Amazon has removed the quality warning from the sell page after I re-uploaded a new version of the book that met 100 percent of the demanded changes. Hopefully this ends the siege.
–James Perloff and is the author of many books, and is the host of an excellent website: JamesPerloff.com. The above October 2017 article was originally published as ‘The War on Truth Is a Lonely Warrior’.
Too late, bought this book years ago, and a better book explaining events in the World past and present is hard to find. IMHO, everyone should have and read a copy of this book.
It is sweet of the author to not criticize the employees at Kindle:
“Some KDP staff sent me apologetic emails, and seemed bewildered by the whole travesty, which was likely the work of one or two individuals, perhaps after receiving instructions from someone to kill the book.”
But this is now universal– the young employees are told to do the dirty. They have already been taught that lying is the cultural norm — AND that “everybody does what is necessary to make a living.”
Dear Youngies: you heard it hear first. It is terrible to lie and the whole practice of it lets the Biggies at the top do terrible things to society.
https://gumshoenews.com/2014/12/27/everything-is-in-place-and-nobody-can-stop-us-now-dr-day-1969-lecture/
poorJames: Para 43linkedabove.
Or see hiswork!
someone tellhim aboutreality.
Ned offers this from Dr Day number 43 item:
“Some books would just disappear from the libraries.” This was in the vein that some books contain information or contain ideas that should not be kept around. But I seem to recall carrying away this idea that this would include thefts. [A designated person will steal the books.]
Further down the line, not everybody will be allowed to own books. And some books nobody will be allowed to own.
— so spake Dr Lawrence Dunegan in 1988, recalling Dr Day’s 1969 speech.
Ta; Mary. we are going to read more of the control/commie freak’s agenda from Day
deniedinvalidcrap
Censor;Ionlymetioned Disney comic books. GETALIFE.
Burn:DonaldDaiseyGoofeyFidoHeckleJekyl-
andPluto,henowrunsthe world…bonedTom&J.
Trygetting1984from yourlibrary
34-37. invalid!
Boring. Explanarion.
On one service I am restricted to about three words and the occasional posting of a link.
To overcome restrictions I combine comment to about three ‘words’
Sorry. Beyond me.
To comment as here I was hit with another I’m alid security token, what the f that means
‘Invalid’ again.
What the hell, does the robot think I am a Russian?
On book repressions and disappearances…
Books on the vast and global history of democracy that I was referencing from Maroochydore Public Library (Qld) in 2007, had all disappeared by 2012. I made enquiries and, encountering great difficulty and obstructionism, I finally discovered that certain discarded books could be made available free to the public whilst others on a certain list, were to be burned. Literally, burned.
Officially, discarded books were those never booked out but I had borrowed my texts a couple of times so they should have remained on the shelves. I was never able to identify the person who identified books marked for rejection.
By 2012, it was no longer possible to find any books on democracy other than those which described the investment bankers version, which is the right to elect a preselected representative of the party duopoly so that this person can do out thinking for us. In practice, the representative is told what to think and do.
This applies to the ALP, CLP, LNP, Greens, CP and off-shoots, and One Nation.
Of possible interest to Gumshoe readers: one fascinating (now destroyed) book was about the promotion of genuine democracy by the Irish Monks. They enthused to the European world about the 3rd to 7th century Finnish kingdoms, in which the kings had purely administrative and executive roles whilst all policy emanated from the people. Interestingly, the most famous Irish Monk was a woman, and 30% of all monks were women, until a pedophile/homosexual/misogynist-dominated lobby took over the Vatican and, in the 7th century, enforced celibacy on all male monks and banned women. That era of enlightenment (3rd to 7th centuries) continues to be described as The Dark Ages, presumably to discourage research.
A few researchers believe the Vatican lobby has never abated and is strengthening today and includes groups such as Skull and Bones, upper Masonics, and the group often referred to by kids as the Illuminati. Since 1973, feminism has been hijacked to attack family values and other normative-behavior-promoting vehicles.
Meanwhile, in 1994 I was invited by Oxford University Press to submit a manuscript of the book Rethink, a genre of which they said had not been written in more than a century. By 2006 they denied all knowledge of this book. No other publisher would touch it.
Why? Because (I believe) I had identified all 17 elements of the globalisation programme and also the means to defeat it. That resulted in a media black-ban on anything I wrote.
Censorship? Hell yes. That is why Rockefeller set Murdoch up to run the global media.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=hitlers+book+burning&view=detail&mid=AE5D6EF9E9F87229A35EAE5D6EF9E9F87229A35E&FORM=VIRE
Thisisnowreal
and without lighting a match.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/27/google-youtube-southern-poverty-law-center-censorship/
James Perloff, you are my hero in the anti-vax department.
I mean my Seppo hero; my Aussie hero in the anti-vax department is Dr Viera Scheibner. She is totally a genius in neuroscience.
A sick society, indeed! Especially, big business.
Next they will be complaining that authors do not use their services.
TYPO WARS
What a hoot. I just hopped over to amazon to see the reviews and found this one:
“Amazon recently tried to make the kindle version unavailable due to a ‘typo,’ a broken hyperlink, and fine print on a map. Best advertisement to buy the book ever.”
What needs to be understood is that everything disseminated via copyright can be scrapped per political convenience:
“The origin of copyright law in most European countries lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers.…..While governments and church encouraged printing in many ways, which allowed the dissemination of Bibles and government information, works of dissent and criticism could also circulate rapidly. As a consequence, governments established controls over printers across Europe, requiring them to have official licences to trade and produce books.”
REF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law
But as already acknowledged, said “controls” are ultimately bound to implode
Berry, “copyright” is now a bit of a joke. The Authors Guild, to which I belong, fought Google in court last year, to no avail. Google is copying [for whom?] all books everywhere.
I don’t actually mind them doing that. But I mind the next planned stage which is for libraries to stop keeping books. “Physical books.”
Makes ya wunda.
The value of “physical” records is that they cannot be physically altered. And I’m not just talking censorship