Amazon Kindle books sometimes receive ebook updates that the publisher or author pushes out. The Amazon Kindle e-reader has a reporting feature in digital books for spelling mistakes that are automatically sent over and often revised. The ebook cover art will be updated to generate interest when a book is made into a movie. An example of this is Andy Weir's The Martian; the old book was orange and had an image of an astronaut, but the updated one has a massive face of actor Matt Damon. Amazon is not the only company to update ebooks; Google Play and Kobo
  • blindsight@beehaw.org
    3·
    10 months ago

    I don’t buy the controversy; editing old racist, sexist books to be palatable is a great way for publishers to try to sell books that would otherwise be unacceptable in today’s market.

    I’m sure as shit not reading unedited Dahl books to my kiddos. tbh, I’m unlikely to read the edited ones to them, either, since there are so many better books to choose from, but the edits at least make the books a possibility.

    Libraries will still have the original texts. Digital dark libraries have all the originals, too. It’s not like we’re losing our cultural heritage here. Historians and scholars can still study the originals, and anyone with interest can find unedited versions, too. But the edited “woke” versions have at least some of the prejudice edited out. Anything that makes society more tolerant and accepting is a win.

    Sure, release notes would be nice. They wouldn’t hurt. I wouldn’t even know that the Bond and Dahl books might not be terrible anymore without release notes, if not for the “controversy”. So, disregarding all the author’s reasons, I still support that release notes would be a nice addition.