As Amazon desperately tries to sweep away the bad PR from its Big Brother wiping of e-books from consumer’s readers with a $150,000 cash settlement, a local e-book advocate says the e-retailer’s troubles are unlikely to have a major effect on the increasing popularity of digital books.

Amazon fell into a black hole of bad publicity in June when it remotely deleted copies of the George Orwell novels Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm from its Kindle readers after incorrectly believing the titles were in the public domain.

Last month it agreed to refund those who had their copies of the books deleted and it has now agreed to pay $150,000 as part of the settlement of a case brought by a US student and a fellow Kindle reader.

The payment – which will go to charity – is just part of Amazon’s bid to put the business behind it, with the online bookseller vowing that it will not delete such works in the future unless the consumer agrees, or unless a refund is requested or the work contains harmful embedded code that would hurt operation of the Kindle.

Despite Amazon’s unfortunate deletion decision, the use of e-books is still expected to explode over the next 12 months, as more devices come on the market and e-books become more easily accessible.

Digital Publishing Forum director Martin Taylor told NBR the New Zealand was expected to be well ahead of the curve when it came to taking up e-books and consumers here were unlikely to be put of by Amazon’s issues.

“Amazon did suffer some minor brand damage, but that’s what you get when you are early to market. You do stumble on issues like this and that’s part of the cost of getting in there first.

“But there will be lessons learned from the settlement and it has shown that you need to be clear about who has the rights. There are still plenty of grey areas, but the Amazon issue has raised the profile of digital publishing, along with some questions that need to be answered.”

Part of Amazon’s problem was that it did not actually sell the book in the Orwell case, just licensed it to users, a common approach that Mr Taylor said would become more prevalent and was a “very sensible” method of digital distribution.

“Retailers who are going to license books need to be more explicit in precisely what they can and can’t do, and Amazon have made it clear that an e-book purchased through them can only be used for personal and non-commercial use and not sold on to another buyer.

“Publishers, readers and retailers are all still finding their way and Amazon’s case is just another thing that raises the issue and gets it up on the radar.”