Here at Putterfingers we like to promote fun times, enjoyable events, interesting tips, and, of course, our products. We are a business, and the aim of any business is to make a profit. We are also lucky enough that we can have some laughs and a good time whilst at work. But over the past few days, this has not been the case as we focused on an upsetting issue. On behalf of all of our team, I would like to bring your attention to this topic: namely, the selling of “pro-anorexia” books, though the claim of the books is that it is a promotion of a lifestyle choice to be slim and lean.
I do not wish to promote this particular “author” and her “book” (I am obviously using the terms very loosely), so I will not actually name her or the title of the book. But I will say thank you to Amy Steadman for starting the change.org petition; over 85,000 people have signed, and it seems Amazon listened.
A few things have also changed since I was alerted to this book being sold on Amazon:
The book was available on several Amazon sites websites.
On Wednesday (May 1), I could even browse through the book; the price was £11.99 (quite a bit of money for 79 pages).
As of Thursday (May 2), the “look inside” option was not available, and the book was no longer being sold by Amazon, but by other sellers (see below).
As of Friday (May 3), I could not locate the book on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, and Amazon.ca.
Now you may ask why am I still writing about this since it appears that Amazon has done the responsible thing and pulled this book (and similar ones). Well, I’d like to provide a bit more information:
The book was published by CreateSpace, “a self-publishing service” owned by Amazon.
You could still buy the book (at a highly inflated price) from several sellers on the websites of Amazon.co.uk. and Amazon.com:
Pieuler Limited (Ipswich)
VizK Books of Visly Limited (London)
MKmedia (this one had no information available except that it shipped from Florida)
It should be noted that as of Friday (May 3), the above three sellers do not appear to be selling the book.
There are still some on-line bookstores selling this book:
Thriftbooks (Thrift Books Global LLC of St. Louis, Missouri, USA)
Adlibris (“largest bookstore in Nordic countries”)
Bokus (based in Sweden)
Desertcart (based in the UAE)
It may be asked if there is already so much harmful information on the internet and on social media platforms, why make a fuss about a little book? Perhaps we are actually promoting this book. I came across a blog on the website https://www.feast-ed.org/; the author was also appalled by these books (and there have been a few of them), but she chose not to sign the petition asking Amazon to stop distributing the books. Her reasoning makes sense, but it is the last part of Laura’s blog that resonated most with me. “There is so much to protest in our quest to improve treatment and prevent the suffering of eating disorders.” While the protest of the book did garner it some attention, the result is it is one more “misguided tool” that now will not be available to look at or readily buy on Amazon. It might also be the inspiration needed for the other online bookstores to stop selling it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
