Lulu is certainly more explicit about what it means for the author to terminate their side of the contract, but they then go on to do the same thing that Amazon does: outline in detail the circumstances under which they may retain your work. I'd love to have a lawyer run his eagle eye over this, though. Know any, by any chance? :)

No, I don't, unfortunately, but my guts tell me to run away, run away!

It makes sense for Lulu to keep archival copies of the purchased ebooks. That's only fair, given that their terms of service to a customer includes being able to redownload the same purchase as many times as the customer wants.

Amazon's motives are the same, and even more so, since Lulu customers usually download to their desktop computers, while the Kindle Books are downloaded onto an ereader that only holds 200 books. The idea Amazon is promoting is that customers keep their permanent copies at Amazon, deleting their temporary copies from the Kindle. I'm on two self-publishing lists and one e-book publishing list, all of them populated by experienced self-publishers. None of them have squawked yet at the terms of service, except where price is concerned, and there's a division of opinion there, since a lot of the folks are accustomed to distribution discounts that are in the 50-75% range. The general reception is lukewarm: "Not ideal, but hey, it's another avenue for reaching the customer." The biggest discussions on the Kindle seem to be taking place at MobileRead. Some of them are from the perspective of self-publishers.

Maybe they haven't really looked properly at that clause yet. Like I said, I agree Amazon should retain copies that were sold so that customers can re-download them in the future. That isn't the issue I have.

Well, I've written off to Amazon about this. We'll see what they say.

Well, I found a Knowledge Base page on their site that gave an e-mail address to write to for that information, dtp-feedback. I wrote to them. They gave me a non-answer. I wrote again. They referred me over to Section 15 of the contract. Section 15 simply linked to the Knowledge Base page I'd visited before, which linked back to the contract. I pointed this out. They replied by saying that the Knowledge Base page told publishers to write to dtp-feedback for that information. :). I've written to them again, but I think they've gone home for the evening. (Either that, or they're nursing a headache from dealing with me.) One thing I will say is that they've been replying with lightning quickness.

Reminds me of an exchamge letting Amazon customer service that there is not infornatiomn on a page that there should be. The refer me to the page. The informatiomn is not there. I point this oit. They refer me to the page and tell me the information is there. I have already emailed them the full text on that page. Theur system doesn't allow me to send a screen shot. sigh.

There's nothing worse than a bureaucratic answer when you want an intelligent, honest and useful one.

When I get frustrated my typos get even worse

I sometimes have entire words written when I meant another word entirely. I don't know what's happening to my brain to fingers connection some days.

Their response: "A written notice to the provided address informing the other party of termination of contract is sufficient." I've written back, asking them what the "provided address" is.

LOL. You'd think they'd get off their butts and just word that contract more clearly.