[gonzo]

This by way of our good friend and official photographer Richard N bush.


One thing Amazon loves to tout about their Kindle bookstore is their huge collection of wide-ranging titles. I’ll say. Here’s a great example of something I’m pretty sure you won’t find in rivals e-bookstores: The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure. Yep, that’s the actual title.

This book can’t actually be about that, can it? Well, here’s the description:

This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian rules for these adults to follow. I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter sentences should they ever be caught.

“Liter” aside, yes, this is outrageous.

And Amazon customers are letting their feelings be known about such a book. Of the 59 customers reviews of the product, 58 give it the minimum 1 star (while one joker gave it 5 stars). And it looks like just about all of them are from today, and they’re all basically either calling for a boycott of Amazon for carrying such a book, or for Amazon to remove it immediately. A few of them say they’ve called or email Amazon and that the company has said it’s looking into it.

But one commenter says that Amazon already got back to them with the following:

“Let me assure you that Amazon.com does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts; we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions.”

“Amazon.com believes it is censorship not to sell certain titles because we believe their message is objectionable.”

Another comment says that over 100 negative reviews have been deleted so far, but they keep coming in. This could get very ugly.

We’ve reached out to Amazon for comment, but haven’t heard back yet. We’ll update if we do.

The book is Kindle-only and is for sale for $4.79. It is currently the 158,221st best-selling Kindle book in the store. That is terrifying.

Update: Here’s Amazon’s statement:

Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable. Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions.