reblogged from 38 Caliber Reviews

The book written by convicted Canadian serial killer, Robert Pickton, has been pulled from Amazon. Whether Amazon bowed to public outrage or the request of Canada’s Solicitor General, the book was removed on Sunday. There will be an investigation into how the book found its way to a publisher.

Links: HuffPoBCChange.org BBC TorontoStarYahoo CBC

Grim wasn't the only one:

53 minutes ago

OpenBooks.com

Dear Owned by Cats Spare Ammo blog Author :-)

We would like to invite you to take a look into Stanley Laine crime series, loved by our readers.
100% satisfaction guaranteed, as eBooks are available in open download. Our whole bookstore operates in Pay-What-You-Want-after-reading model.
Stanley Laine is an Indie Author who is one of most brilliant we ever read. His crime series about Philippa K. Dick investigations is adored by our readers and rated averagely 5 to 5 stars. I hope you will also enjoy.
If you would be so kind to publish a review on your blog, we reciprocate by promoting your blog in our social media channels. We want to help the talented author, who is also a man of a great heart and supports PWYW and economy of trust and makes his books available for everybody. By reviewing his books, you can help too. We would be very, very thankful.

The books are available here:
https://openbooks.com/books/686-the-limit-club
https://openbooks.com/books/721-strawman
https://openbooks.com/books/745-wolf-cave

With kind regards,
Monika, OpenBooks.com Team

Dear Open Books,

You have seriously fucked up. Have you paid any attention to what posters on BL like and dislike? Let me give you a clue; this is the kind of thing that gets you unfollowed, unfriended, and unread.

You must have missed so many of us posting about our dislike of Spam and I don't mean the product you find on a grocery shelf. I mean your email. You just followed me this morning so forgive my cynicism if I think it was so you could spam me and I really dislike that behavior. If you only followed me to spam your damned book, too bad for you. I'm going to block you.

You must have missed our expressed opinions of authors and/or publishers reviewing their own books in the manner you did. You can promote your book and call it the best ever, innovative, etc., but to review it in the way you did is tacky and, to my mind, dishonest.

Successful author/publishers listen to their community. They build relationships that have nothing to do with selling their book and everything to do with everything books. They make friends and build a network and when they launch a new book guess who is there for them?

But I'm not going to tell you how to run your business except to say, run it somewhere else not in my feed, not in my email.

Very shortly you might find yourself distressingly alone here or at least with fewer followers than you have now, 68 at the moment. I hope my little note will help you understand why. The pity of it is you should have known better to begin with.

Don't even try to excuse yourself.

Mahala Burlingame

38 Caliber Reviews

Spare Ammo

P.S. 12 days into 2016 and how much shit has hit the fan already?

Yesterday I posted a notice on .38 with a link to Jennifer Kacey's blog post about requesting readers no longer buy her books at EC and why and what she's going to do next. Today both Illuminite Caliginosus and .38 posted links to Piers Anthony's updated assessment of EC.

Anthony reported a new low in EC's tactics in dodging paying their authors. The sad, sad reality is even without more proof than what Anthony offers very few people don't believe it. After years of doing business in unbusinesslike ways EC has no credibility left with most of the book community.

Found this in my twitter feed, in case any blogger here has been recently contacted by a penguin "employee". This is a new sleazy tactic.