Re: What Amazon doesn't want you to know.

Margaret Shiels <margaretnospamplz@xxxxxx> was inspired to say 
Gentle uk.religion.interfaith reader,

First, my apology for cross-posting to this NG. Be assured that this is a one-off. It will never happen again.

My sole purpose is to draw your attention to what I believe are dubious practices by Amazon.co.uk. I also believe that at stake here is freedom of expression.

Amazon have rejected my reader review of a novel by John McGahern. In the UK and Ireland it was published under the title, "That They May Face The Rising Sun". In the USA and elsewhere it's entitled simply "The Lake".

You may have read it. You may even have thoroughly enjoyed it.

That is not the issue. The issue is that Amazon refuse to publish my review. First, they ignored it. When it failed to appear, they fed me the excuse of their moderators being too busy to read it. Next they insisted (three times) that it did not comply with their review guidelines.

I copied their guidelines to my Amazon correspondent and asked her to specify the guidelines with which my review did not comply. She replied that she could not be specific.

[snip]
It's terrible. I could not get beyond page 36. I tried; I genuinely did. The lacklustre prose is indistinguishable from that of Alice Taylor – in fact Taylor's outdoes McGahern's quite often. There is a myth, no doubt put about by McGahern himself, that he overwrites excessively, then prunes remorselessly. If that's the case, then the out-takes of "TTMFTRS" must have been excruciatingly bad.

If you couldn't get beyond page 36, how are you qualified to review the book?

Mike
--
Michael J Davis

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