SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (Mark Brake/Getty Images)Tesla Inc. and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Musk said it’s “time to break up Amazon” in a tweet on Thursday after the online retail giant behemoth rejected a book that struck a sceptical note about the coronavirus pandemic.
Musk was replying to a tweet by Alex Berenson that Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon-owned platform for self-published e-books, rejected his submission for a book called “Unreported Truths about Covid-19 and Lockdowns.
Berenson, a former The New York Times reporter who covered pharmaceutical , has criticised models used by epidemiologists to predict the course of coronavirus outbreaks in the U.S.
Amazon is the largest bookseller in the U.S., controlling nearly 50 percent of the printed book market and over 75 percent of ebook sales
“Your book does not comply with our guidelines,” Amazon informed Berenson in a message. “As a result we are not offering your book for sale.”
An Amazon spokeswoman said the book was removed in error and is being reinstated. “We have notified the author,” she said in an email.
Amazon has been censoring or removing books that it deems as advancing coronavirus conspiracy theories.
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