>No, it was, in fact, not prevented from being published. The first two sentences of the article are "I launched a book this week and I went Indie with it. Indie means I released it on Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing."
Prevented from being published via established channels, then. The analogy still holds, because in the 1950s you could still publish content considered communist in photocopied zines.
Re:Banned by the Publisher
by dragonwriter on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @07:14PM
(#11077297)
> Prevented from being published via established channels, then.
Kindle Direct Publishing has been around about as long as the Kindle (they were, IIRC, announced at the same time), and is backed by the dominant online book and ebook retailer. Its a pretty well-established channel.
> The analogy still holds, because in the 1950s you could still publish content considered communist in photocopied zines.
The analogy does not, even remotely, hold, because such photocopied zines would not be available via major retail outlets, whereas Kindle Direct Publishing is directly sponsored by the dominant retail outlet.
Yes, there is a meaningful distinction between a publisher deciding not to publish a book, and a book being banned. While there may certainly be conditions where private action is so powerful in a given marketplace it is substantially equivalent to a government prohibition and raises the same issues, this isn't one. There are other publishers, and there has never been a time when self-publishing and bypassing major publishers -- especially for an already successful writer -- is easier.
The fact that this whole complaint is actually a promotional piece for the book, which is in fact being published through Amazon's direct publishing offering, demonstrates exactly why the distinction between a publisher choosing not to publish a book and the book actually being banned is a meaningful -- night-and-day -- distinction.
> The book was prevented from being published
No, it was, in fact, not prevented from being published. The first two sentences of the article are "I launched a book this week and I went Indie with it. Indie means I released it on Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing."