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iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

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Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#111

Post by andypants »

rickmb wrote: post #73

Something is off about this story. A brief glance in the iBookstore shows tons of books on Amazon and Amazon products, including books on how to sell your work via Amazon. We're talking entire books who's sole purpose is to promote or support the use of Amazon. Clearly Apple has no problem with those.

Direct quote from the email from apple:

> Book file contains links from competitors: Amazon, in the chapter Q&A 6, under “Question 9″

I'm sure books dedicated to Amazon will contain links to them, so I think this just adds a little bit more evidence to the stories of Apple's inconsistent review process.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#112

Post by k-mcgrady »

w-ll wrote: post #87
k-mcgrady wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending Apple but your point is completely irrelevant. They don't want products in their store to mention a competitor. That has nothing to do with them using a service which they don't have a competitor for.

Your comment does't make sense... Amazon is a competitor to Apple in the realm of selling eBooks.

What I meant was that Amazon is a competitor to the iBookstore (so naturally Apple would prefer not to sell products which mention Amazon). I was pointing out that Apple using Amazon's cloud services is irrelevant because Apple does not compete with them on that product.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#113

Post by ThePherocity »

ktizo wrote: post #69
ThePherocity wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do now. Every book store decides what they are going to sell. We just didn't know about it before. The beauty is that any author can now simply take their books off iBooks and sell it in an open epub format and skip the distributor. Regardless, this is a bullshit move from Apple, and it's starting to wear on me. And that's saying something, because I do love their products and forgive many missteps because I real…

Every book store decides what they are going to sell. I am in this case amazed to find a book store refusing to stock a book on professional writing because the book contains details of other book stores that a writer might find useful, or for them to suggest to the author that those elements be removed from the book as a condition of sale. The comparison is absurd anyway as the main drive for the selection process o…

Well, B&N, Books-a-Million, and Indigo won't stock anything published by Amazon. So as far as absurd comparisons go...

http://business.time.com/2012/02/06/in-latest-moves-barnes-n...

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0206/I...

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#114

Post by Someone »

scott_s wrote: post #58
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From http://hollylisle.com/crippling-apple-ibookstore-ethical-and... , quoting Ms Lisle: 'I received an email from Apple’s iBookstore that How To Think Sideways—Lesson 6: How to Discover (or Create) Your Story’s Market has been pulled for containing links to a “Competing Website” and that in order to have the lesson put back on sale, I’ll have to remove the offending links.' I'm strongly inclined to believe that she…

There's a difference between believing someone's honesty and trusting someone's interpretation . I believe she's being honest; that she is telling the truth as she sees it. But I would like to judge for myself what Apple said.

At http://hollylisle.com/apple-made-its-decision-my-turn/commen..., she doesn't show anything else then Apple's complaint:

   Book file contains links from competitors: Amazon,
   in the chapter Q&A 6, under “Question 9″
From there, She claims:

   As noted, however, I HAD changed the lesson, HAD removed
   the links, HAD complied with their request. Since the
   links were gone, their only possible objection—NOT STATED
   —was content.
There is no way for us to verify whether she removed all those links. Even if she did, I can think of explanations that are at least as likely (e.g. human error on either side) as the conclusion she IMO jumps to.

Disclaimer: I have zero experience dealing with the iBookStore.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#115

Post by ktizo »

ThePherocity wrote: post #113
ktizo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every book store decides what they are going to sell. I am in this case amazed to find a book store refusing to stock a book on professional writing because the book contains details of other book stores that a writer might find useful, or for them to suggest to the author that those elements be removed from the book as a condition of sale. The comparison is absurd anyway as the main drive for the selection process o…

Well, B&N, Books-a-Million, and Indigo won't stock anything published by Amazon. So as far as absurd comparisons go... http://business.time.com/2012/02/06/in-latest-moves-barnes-n... http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0206/I...

B&N is stocking Amazon published books on their website according to the first article you linked, just not their physical books in the physical stores. And they are doing a blanket restriction, not picking through the contents of the books and demanding editorial control.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#116

Post by ThePherocity »

ktizo wrote: post #115
ThePherocity wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, B&N, Books-a-Million, and Indigo won't stock anything published by Amazon. So as far as absurd comparisons go... http://business.time.com/2012/02/06/in-latest-moves-barnes-n... http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0206/I...

B&N is stocking Amazon published books on their website according to the first article you linked, just not their physical books in the physical stores. And they are doing a blanket restriction, not picking through the contents of the books and demanding editorial control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_Books_and_Music#Criticis...

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#117

Post by nimh »

andypants wrote: post #111
rickmb wrote: post #73

Something is off about this story. A brief glance in the iBookstore shows tons of books on Amazon and Amazon products, including books on how to sell your work via Amazon. We're talking entire books who's sole purpose is to promote or support the use of Amazon. Clearly Apple has no problem with those.

Direct quote from the email from apple: > Book file contains links from competitors: Amazon, in the chapter Q&A 6, under “Question 9″ I'm sure books dedicated to Amazon will contain links to them, so I think this just adds a little bit more evidence to the stories of Apple's inconsistent review process.

It's live links that are the problem, not just containing the URL.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#118

Post by nirvana »

ktizo wrote: post #103
nirvana wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thru Apple's review process enough times, and been rejected enough times to say that Apple does apply its rules equally.[1] Given the responses I've gotten back from the reviewers, it is clear that I've interacted with multiple reviewers, and I've never seen a deviation. There is the occasional mistake, but the very telling thing about this article is she never tells us the specific rule that she broke. Hid…

How can you claim to have evidence that apple applies it's rules equally based entirely off your own experience of the process? That makes no sense as an argument.

Your question sums up the entirety of what's wrong with hacker news. I'm the only one commenting here who has actual evidence of the situation, which I presented.

You reject it because I talked only about my experiences, and my experiences go against your prejudice.

Yet every other commeenter in this thread is making assertions, without providing any evidence what-so-ever. Often very broad assertions about how apple regularly censors.

Your are blinded by your bigotry to the fact that those assertions are completely unsupported.

And since Hacker News is overrrun with unthinking ideologically oriented people like you, no useful discussion can happen in these debates.

> That makes no sense as an argument.

You are so anti-intellectual you can't even recognize an argument.

It is sad to see so many people who cannot think.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#119

Post by nirvana »

brianwhitman wrote: post #110
rickmb wrote: post #73

Something is off about this story. A brief glance in the iBookstore shows tons of books on Amazon and Amazon products, including books on how to sell your work via Amazon. We're talking entire books who's sole purpose is to promote or support the use of Amazon. Clearly Apple has no problem with those.

She has updated her comments with a link to the actual email from Apple: http://hollylisle.com/apple-made-its-decision-my-turn/commen... My reading of this is a complete miscommunication. Nowhere in Apple's email does it state they had a problem with content. I really have no idea how she jumped to that conclusion. The very simple and likely explanations are either (1) she did not remove all links or (2) the reviewer…

In other words, yet another story about Apple "censorship" that turns out not to be about Apple censorship.

People make a big deal of it when it first comes out and bash Apple when its on the front page of HN.

Now that it has turned out to be false, it is no longer on the front page of HN.

Next time someone says something bad about Apple, the denizens of HN will talk about how "apple's always censoring" and this will be one of the stories they're talking about.

Just as they said effectively the same thing in this comment.

HN has been overrun with ideology. It is a shame.

Re: iBookstore rejects Holly Lisle's writing course because she mentions Amazon

#120

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Someone wrote: post #114
scott_s wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between believing someone's honesty and trusting someone's interpretation . I believe she's being honest; that she is telling the truth as she sees it. But I would like to judge for myself what Apple said.

At http://hollylisle.com/apple-made-its-decision-my-turn/commen... , she doesn't show anything else then Apple's complaint: Book file contains links from competitors: Amazon, in the chapter Q&A 6, under “Question 9″ From there, She claims: As noted, however, I HAD changed the lesson, HAD removed the links, HAD complied with their request. Since the links were gone, their only possible objection—NOT STATED —was conten…

>their only possible objection—NOT STATED—was content //

Saw this today and was disappointed. Think she over-egged it at least.

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