Comments on: sorry you thought you were buying a good book

By: what i wrote while not eating cream puffs at the WI State Fair

what i wrote while not eating cream puffs at the WI State Fair — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 18:12:57 +0000

[…] on SorryWatch, two literary apologies! One from a bookstore owner who gave refunds to customers who pre-ordered the “new” Harper […]

By: snarly

snarly — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 22:48:44 +0000

In reply to Arturo Magidin. Ah, thanks!

By: Arturo Magidin

Arturo Magidin — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 16:28:47 +0000

In reply to tanita.

Looks like the same guy. Here’s a link to the story I heard:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.3178841/michigan-bookseller-offers-refunds-for-go-set-a-watchman-1.3180461

Some quotes:
” “We had dozens of people pre-order the book,” Makin tells As It Happens guest host Peter Armstrong. Despite the surge of advance sales, the independent bookstore owner saw his customers’ displeasure once early reviews of the book went public. ”

” Like many, Makin feels the novel was mislabeled as “the latest great summer novel.” He suggests Stephen Hero (the original version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) as a more appropriate model for release. “It was published for what it was . . . an early draft . . . an academic piece . . . it wasn’t published and marketed as James Joyce’s new novel or Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Two: Portrait of the Slightly Older Man.'” Makin admits that he has not read the book. But insists his shop is “not offering refunds based on the quality of the book . . . that would be quite odd . . . we’re doing this because we were complicit,” he says. “The marketing goes through us . . . I believe I have a duty to my customers to offer them a refund.” ”

In the radio interview he goes further and says he is not offering refunds to those who bought the book and didn’t like it, and only to those who pre-ordered it under what he believes to be “false pretenses”.

By: tanita

tanita — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 14:31:55 +0000

I hope the commenter is correct, otherwise I kind of want to vomit on this guy’s shoes. I mean, really?!? Is this the future of book sales, where the bookstore owner can lead the charge on who’s offended by what? This pushes my buttons a bit because it seems like a book challenge at a public school – people who haven’t even read the book are trying to get rid of it because SOMEONE somewhere was disappointed in it. It seems an odd way to look at literature.

By: Arturo Magidin

Arturo Magidin — Sun, 09 Aug 2015 23:05:44 +0000

I heard an interview with the bookstore owner on As It Happens (unless it was a different bookstore that was doing something similar), and he explained that they were not offering refunds to people who bought the book and didn’t like it; rather, they were only offering refunds to people who had pre-ordered it when it was first announced and marketed as a “sequel to “To Kill a Mockinbird”” or “the new novel by Harper Lee”, and who were possibly misled by this (as it was not emphasized that it was an early draft of a rejected novel, etc). So it’s not really about readers being distressed or taken aback, but rather the owner argues that the booksellers misled the public and the bookstore is offering refunds to those who were misled by the early publicity. So it’s not really “refunds to those who want them”.