So, I was on Amazon the other day, and I happened to notice that the link to a book by an author, who’s latest book I wanted to purchase, wasn’t working properly, so I did the decent thing and e-mailed the author to let her know that there seemed to be a problem with links to her books.

Anyway, this is the e-mail that she sent back to me:

Hi Karen,

Thanks for your email. I am aware of the problem. Amazon and Hatchette, the parent company of my publisher, are in a dispute at the moment and this is Amazon’s way of getting at Hatchette. They’re doing it to several authors in different ways.

The dispute is over Amazon demanding bigger discounts from publishers, which aren’t to be passed on to consumers, and Hatchette said no. So, Amazon are doing things like this and will keep doing it, apparently, until the stand-off is resolved.

Unbelievable.

So Amazon are purposely messing up book links so that authors published by specific houses, can’t sell their work?

Does anybody know how true this is?