Download Dead Sea, Down with Amazon

My friend Tom Vater, a co-founder of Crime Wave Press, sent a note that the publisher is giving away the ebook version of Dead Sea through February 28. “The Beach meets The Deep,” Tom’s note says.

So I went to Amazon to try to download it. But Amazon told me that item is not available from my location in Asia Pacific.

How great is that? The publisher, which focuses on Asian crime fiction (and seeks submissions), wants to give away the book, and the bookstore won’t let them. Amazon needs to rethink its whole geographic discrimination policy. If Amazon imagines it’s indispensable, let it talk to Netscape or Kodak.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.