A Bad Apple??

Apple Started Censoring Books Mentioning Rivals

The software giant decided that the best way to address the rivalry is to censor all books mentioning its competitors. That’s a weird decision, but the company has already enforced the policy based on it. Now, for instance, if you want an ebook to be used in the iTunes store, you can’t mention anything related to Amazon.

According to author Holly Lisle, she found this out the hard way. Holly Lisle has been writing a series of Internet writing guides, and was very surprised when her “How To Think Sideways Lesson 6: How To Discover (Or Create) Your Story's Market” wasn’t accepted by Apple's iBooks store.

Surprisingly enough, the work wasn’t rejected due to the wrong title – Apple rather spiked it because it had “live links” to Amazon. Holly Lisle removed the links and then resubmitted her book, but even then Apple again rejected it, claiming that they don’t want to sell her book because it mentions Amazon.

Of course, Lisle was miffed. She made an official announcement that she didn’t think this could be seen as professional behaviour on a professional market. Perhaps, if Harry Potter had been looking for the Horcruxes on Amazon instead of running around in caves full of dead people, Apple would have been deleted this book too.

Actually, the company basically wanted Holly Lisle to write a writing course which included information on publishing and self-publishing without mentioning Amazon. In fact, it’s just the place where writers were going to make most of their cash. Holly Lisle announced she was pulling all of her books from the iBookstore.

As for Amazon, it remains calm about the competition and continues selling a lot of Apple stuff.